The Christian Nationalist Rewriting American History

Idaho pastor Douglas Wilson is having a moment. The 72-year-old Christian nationalist was recently the subject of a CNN story. He just planted a church in Washington, D.C. The secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, is a disciple. In the age of Trump, Christian nationalists like Wilson, who once presided over a fringe wing of American evangelicalism, are becoming mainstream. 

In his talk at the 2025 National Conservative Conference (NatCon) last month, Wilson argued that the United States is at war over two different “origin stories.” One of these stories, he said, is built on “lies” and is a form of “apostasy.” It is advanced in colleges and universities by “regime historians” advancing the “popular mythology” that the American founding was “thoroughly deist.”