In the northern Idaho university city of Moscow, Christ Church, a Christian nationalist center of national note, is an ongoing controversy. A few miles away at the town of Troy, it has become a federal case.
Like many communities anchored by higher education, Moscow long has leaned blue (usually voting Democratic for major offices), and the growing Christ Church community and its leader Doug Wilson have been a counterweight to that. More than that, really.
It is much more than just a church where people gather to worship, though that is part of it. The entities associated with it include a small religious college (St. Andrews), a private school, a publishing house and more. Its philosophical stance is distinctive, its focus on “traditional” family and gender roles is on the cultural edge. In 2004 Wilson set up a conference arguing that slavery created “a genuine affection between the races.” And so on.
But that is not all either. One analyst, Heath Druzin, who has examined the church extensively, said that “What Doug Wilson wants to do, according to Doug Wilson, is change society; create an American theocracy.”
It is a force in the community. It may have been a decisive factor in local legislative races, and has been active in city politics. A significant part of downtown is now owned by the church or its allies. Wilson’s view of its future clearly is not that of being just one element of the community among many. When his church proclaims (as it does on its website) “our desire is to make Moscow a Christian town,” it means their kind of Christian, not anyone else’s, and dominated by their church.
This hasn’t gone unnoticed. Last December about 200 people gathered in Moscow to consider how to respond to the growing group, prompted in part by a recent podcast about it that has had more than a million downloads.
Christ Church also proclaims on its website “a regular series of church plants on the Palouse.” Troy, presumably, would be one of them.
One University of Idaho wag famously remarked that without the university, Moscow would be known as “the gateway to Troy,” but Troy is nothing like Moscow, and is much like most of the smaller communities in northern Idaho and in Latah County. With a population of about 900, it is conservative and Republican in its voting. In 2024 Donald Trump won its precinct 546-230, Republican Representative Russ Fulcher 532-226 and Republican state Senator Dan Foreman (who has had harsh things to say about Moscow) 478-330. That’s a pattern consistent over recent years.
So you might think a proposal to plant an outpost of Christ Church in Troy would go over well. It has not. That city’s government, reacting to public attitudes, has blocked an attempt by a Christ Church member to set up a regular Sunday morning meeting in a downtown Troy location (a building owned by the church member).
It hasn’t. And it’s now literally a federal case – a lawsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Justice., alleging that the city’s action has blocked Christ Church’s freedom of religion, a violation of federal law. DOJ said: “The lawsuit alleges that Christ Church had outgrown the space where it had been worshipping and was unable to find a space to rent. It then sought a CUP [conditional use permit] to operate a church in the City’s C-1 [commercial industrial] zoning district, where nonreligious assembly uses such as clubs, museums, auditoriums, and art galleries were allowed. Local residents vociferously opposed the Church’s CUP application, and many of their written and verbal comments reflected animus against Christ Church’s beliefs. In its denial of the Church’s CUP application, the City cited the fact that the public was ‘heavily against’ it and that the ‘great majority of the city residents’ opposed granting the CUP.”
Put aside for a moment the regulatory and legal details, which seem a little murky in places. Consider instead the attitudes being uncovered here.
Motivations are hard to assess conclusively. But, was the opposition in Troy really about the church and its doctrine and spiritual beliefs or about the larger political and social picture of what Christ Church locally is seeking to be and do?
Put another way: Might it be that the people of Troy aren’t too keen on the idea of being taken over?
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