Full Transcript for Our Town Chapter 3: One Little Bacon-Wrapped Sausage

Susan Burfield, and you're listening to our town. This is chapter three, one little bacon wrapped Sausage. The town of Moscow sits among the pine forests of the Northwest. In the eighteen hundreds, the town went by Hog Heaven, then Paradise Valley. Now it's Moscow, spelled like the Russian city, yet pronounced Moscow. It's home to the University of Idaho, but the town is also known for something else. Division In Moscow, a town of about twenty seven thousand, there are two kinds of people, those affiliated with Christ Church and those who are not. Christ Church is a deeply conservative, evangelical, and patriarchal denomination that has royaled the university town. Take a walk down main Street. It's only six blocks and you can see the divide with your own eyes. There's seemingly two of everything, coffee shops, restaurants, bookstores, one for Christ Church members who call themselves Kirkers, and one for everyone else. Sometimes you can tell this from flags or signs in the windows. All work, no woke for Kirkers, black lives matter, or a pride flag for everyone else. Kirker comes from the Scottish word for church, kirk and their goal. Their church's goal has always been to turn Moscow into a town of Kirkers, a town under Biblical law. 00:04:58 Speaker 4: Happy born to the limass, No celebrade your freedom, fredop bless to Root. 00:05:06 Speaker 2: My reporting partner Susan, and I went to Moscow in the summer of twenty twenty five for July fourth You was it you that for the fourth year in a row, Kirkers put on their own parade right down Main Street. It was the only Fourth of July parade that day, Oh. 00:05:27 Speaker 10: Say can uy. 00:05:31 Speaker 8: By the Donza. 00:05:33 Speaker 2: In years past, protesters head lined the route, but not this year. This year, it was the absence of the rest of Moscow that was noticeable. The only businesses that stayed open on Main Street were Kirker. The people who came to watch seemed mostly Kirker. Kirkers have a strong entrepreneurial spirit. They've started lots of businesses and schools in Moscow, and while Kirker's remain a minority the town. Their presence to some can feel outsized and disruptive, to others downright threatening. Christ Church and Moscow have been in a years long battle over while almost everything COVID requirements, taxes, zoning, even this parade, and standing along the route smiling proudly, was the man who could take credit for cleaving Moscow in two the head of christ Church, Doug Wilson. Wilson is tall, with piercing blue eyes, a gray beard, a very grandfatherly presence. He was there alongside his wife, Nancy, the church's matriarch, watching the parade go by. Fifty years of hard work on display. Wilson has gotten a lot of attention lately inside and outside Moscow. One big reason is that he's made himself the de facto spokesperson for Christian nationalism, the movement to turn America into a theocracy for Christians to take over everything. 00:07:13 Speaker 3: He's one of the

rare American Christian pastors who is willing to engage on questions of culture and politics. That we are honored to have him. His name is Doug Wilson. 00:07:22 Speaker 8: That's a hunter to be here. Thank you, Thank you. 00:07:25 Speaker 2: This is Doug Wilson on Tucker Carlson in twenty twenty four, his first appearance. 00:07:30 Speaker 3: So I'm sincerely confused by the phrase Christian nationalism, which seems like an attack on Christianity to me, What is it to the extent you understand it? And are you a Christian nationalist? 00:07:41 Speaker 8: So I'm willing to be a Christian nationalist because, ok, because I prefer that phrase to the phrase I usually get called, what are you usually doing? White supremacist? White supremacist, slave advocate? 00:07:53 Speaker 2: Ohis, Wilson rejects all those labels, except, of course, Christian nationalist. 00:08:00 Speaker 8: As a Christian, I would like that national structure to conform to the things that God wants and not the things that man wants. 00:08:09 Speaker 2: That's Christian nationalism for Wilson. Turning America into a theocracy a country with a Christian constitution is a generational mission. This is what christ Church has been trying to do in Moscow for the past half century. 00:08:25 Speaker 8: Our tagline is all of Christ for all of life. So we want to be seven day a week, twenty four hour Christians. 00:08:32 Speaker 2: Here's what it would look like a place where men would be commanded to take authority women must submit. We're only heads of households. Mostly men could vote where same sex marriage is outlawed, an abortion band. 00:08:47 Speaker 8: Women are created by God to be helpless to their husbands, to conceive children, to bear them, to nurse them, to take care of them by God, to be domestic. And when they are this is the radical they're happy. And whenmen are. 00:09:16 Speaker 2: This is not the Christianity of the normies and the grillers. As Wilson says, his ideology is absolutist and prescriptive, filled with clear rules, a rigid framework for how to live, had a parent, had a husband, had a wife. Over the years, he's published scores of books explaining it, all books with titles like Future Men, Virtuous, A Study for Ladies at Every Age, and It's Good to Be a Man. Wilson's ideas his rules have attracted evangelicals from all over the country, and it's these ideas and the people in Moscow who follow them that have divided the town, with one group trying to overtake another. But it wasn't always like this before Wilson, Before christ Church, Moscow was just a typical university town, a blue spot in a red state. 00:10:14 Speaker 9: There were people from all over the country that came here because the University of Idaho was really appealing. This was, you know, this is kind of the cosmopolitan part of Idaho, right. 00:10:26 Speaker 2: Marilyn Beckett sat in the back of what Wilson calls an enemy coffee shop as she recounted her move to Moscow in the early nineteen seventies. She was eighteen years old from a small, ultra conservative town in Washington State when she arrived in Moscow. 00:10:43 Speaker 9: You know, I was a young woman, and when I came here to go to college, that kind of cosmopolitan feel for a small town was really just so uplifting. 00:10:55 Speaker 10: You know. 00:10:55 Speaker 9: It just really made me feel a part of some thing, and I think that's probably why I'm still here. 00:11:04 Speaker 2: Doug Wilson also wanted to be part of something when he moved to Moscow in the nineteen seventies. After serving in the Navy, he went to the University of Idaho, like Maryland, then became a pastor. 00:11:19 Speaker 10: He was just a few blocks away on me. 00:11:21 Speaker 2: You know, they had a garage back then. Wilson was preaching in his dad's garage. Congregants sat unfolding chairs next to cars and mid repair and Wilson delivered his sermons beside a drum set and Jesus murals. It was very seventies God's Garage they called it. 00:11:41 Speaker 10: It wasn't like he had a big message that anybody was listening to. 00:11:45 Speaker 2: Wilson was easy to dismiss, playing a mellower, shaggier version of himself. 00:11:50 Speaker 10: You know, he was a joke. People used to laugh at and make fun of him. 00:11:55 Speaker 2: But soon Doug Wilson outgrew God's Garage. He sharpened his ideology and strategy, started a primary school to educate the next generation of Kirkers, then a publishing company to spread his gospel, followed by a college to train leaders for the Christian society he envisioned. Wilson even launched his own denomination, all in just two decades. But even with all that, to many in Moscow, Wilson was still an oddity of sorts, and Wilson knew it. He wasn't getting the attention he craved, nor the antagonism. 00:12:33 Speaker 8: All The potential for hostility was there, but it wasn't in evidence because there was no real awareness or sense of a threat from Christians. 00:12:45 Speaker 2: Wilson wanted hostility between the church and town that to him would be a sign of progress. Worship is warfare is a christ Church motto, but so far he'd failed to provoke the town to locals. It seemed preposterous that Wilson and his Kirkers could radically change Moscow. 00:13:06 Speaker 11: Yeah, but back then too, it was such a French yeah thing. 00:13:10 Speaker 10: Yeah. 00:13:11 Speaker 2: Nicki Woodland and her husband Brett moved to Moscow from Portland, Oregon, two decades ago, to be closer to Brett's family. Nicki said she'd give Moscow a year. 00:13:22 Speaker 1: I was like, nobody lives on the polue. You go to school on the police, you don't live there. 00:13:26 Speaker 2: The polue a delightful word. And also the scenic hilly region where Moscow sits. 00:13:33 Speaker 1: And that was twenty one years ago, So we really like it here. 00:13:37 Speaker 10: Yeah, and it worked out. 00:13:39 Speaker 2: They now run a popular restaurant and a motel in town while raising three kids.

00:13:44 Speaker 8: Oh, he kind of. 00:13:45 Speaker 11: Fell in love with Moscow because it did remind us a little bit of like a mini Portland. 00:13:50 Speaker 2: They hadn't heard of Doug Wilson or christ Church before they arrived in Moscow, but by the mid two thousands, Wilson was finally starting to provoke the hostility from the town that he wanted. 00:14:01 Speaker 1: Almost immediately we started hearing about it. And the big thing that happened right before we moved there was they have this coffee shop called Butzers, and they had distributed these. 00:14:13 Speaker 2: Pamphlets Southern Slavery as it was. Wilson had actually written it about a decade earlier, but it hadn't gotten much attention in Moscow until he organized a conference at the local university and the pamphlet was being distributed around town. 00:14:30 Speaker 1: Explaining how slavery was mutually beneficial to the slave and a slave owner. 00:14:35 Speaker 2: And yeah, slavery as it existed in the South, it read was a relationship based on mutual affection, was like a you know. 00:14:45 Speaker 11: A give and take between the slave and the slave owner, and then African Americans ended up staying and having a better life than they would. 00:14:51 Speaker 8: Have back in Africa. 00:14:54 Speaker 2: Moscow just couldn't look away. Chatter about the pamphlet erupted across town. 00:15:00 Speaker 1: It was immediate. 00:15:01 Speaker 2: The town paper ran dozens of stories. There were angry editorials, letters to the editor, ads condemning Wilson. People protested in the streets and staged counter events During Wilson's conference, but locals also probably didn't realize that Wilson had other ways to spread his ideas, like in his school curriculums that he sold across the country. Around that time. There was one assignment titled a slave Letter. Pretend you live in the South. It begins, write a letter to a relative or friend in the North who thinks that all slaves are mistreated and beaten. Explain how your family treats your slaves well. Another lesson instructs children to pretend to be a slave and quote go outside, act out what it may have been like to be on the run. It suggests students who own hunting dogs role play with them, take turns hiding in the woods, it says, and let the dogs find you. By the time the town was waking up to Wilson's ideas, he was decades into the work, expanding his sphere of influence and shaping the next generation of Kirkers. During the year the pamphlet the Church did something else, something more permanent and very worrying to many people in Moscow, Wilson's college knew Saint Andrew's, which had been founded in a small house with makeshift classrooms purchased a new building downtown, right on the corner of Main Street, next to Moscow's Friendship Square. Friendship Square for decades had been home to community celebrations, concerts, protests, and now it would be the hub of christ Church's growing educational empire. Education is Wilson's long term strategy to convert Moscow and the nation into theocracy. Wilson calls his schools his munition's factories. They're over five hundred of them across the country, places that raise boys to be warriors, to practice a quote theology of fistfighting. 00:17:16 Speaker 12: Wanted young men to rebuild Western civilization. 00:17:21 Speaker 2: This is an ad for New Saint Andrew's College. 00:17:24 Speaker 12: Must be unafraid of pain, blisters, intellectual rigor. 00:17:29 Speaker 2: A way to recruit young men. 00:17:31 Speaker 12: Must be impervious to manipulative women of all sorts, giggling virgins, cyber skanks. 00:17:38 Speaker 2: Recruit them into his fight for a Christian nation. 00:17:41 Speaker 12: Exhaustion guaranteed, conflict, guaranteed mortality guaranteed. New Saint Andrew's College Liberal Arts for the Undaunted. 00:18:02 Speaker 2: Now, this liberal Arts School for the Undaunted was unavoidable, standing right in the middle of downtown Moscow in the middle of Friendship Square. 00:18:12 Speaker 11: And so now where it was that you'd hear about Doug Wilson and christ Church and you'd see some college kids downtown. Now we're just inundated with hundreds of kids. 00:18:22 Speaker 2: Brett Woodland the restaurant owner again. 00:18:25 Speaker 11: And so now it's not just their ideology in your face, but it's physically they're everywhere now downtown. 00:18:32 Speaker 10: It's like, how did the city do that? How did they let that happen? 00:18:38 Speaker 2: Looking back, it's clear to locals what a decisive moment this purchase had been. 00:18:43 Speaker 1: I think that's where Moscow went wrong. 00:18:45 Speaker 11: That was kind of the beginning of their foothold in the heart of downtown. 00:18:50 Speaker 2: That foothold was the start of christ Church staking its claim on Main Street. 00:18:56 Speaker 11: They started buying up a lot of downtown, like big buildings, historical buildings downtown, and now you know their schools are downtown, and people like us are like, wait, what just happened. 00:19:08 Speaker 2: Kirker started more companies, opened more restaurants. It made room for more new Saint Andrew's students. 00:19:15 Speaker 13: People will see a new business come in and they'll say who owns that. 00:19:18 Speaker 2: Julia Parker has been in Moscow since two thousand. 00:19:21 Speaker 13: Who's going to do repairs on your home? What doctor they'll go to, and what doctor they won't go to. And you know what they're asking is are they affiliated with Wilson that is a citizen. Is kind of this cognitive dissonance that I have to deal with all the time. 00:19:37 Speaker 2: We just did not. 00:19:40 Speaker 1: Think that they had they would be able to accomplish everything that they had. 00:19:44 Speaker 11: And it's silly because they said from the get go, we want to make Moscow a fundamentalist town. And we're all like, yeah, yeah, whatever, whatever. You know, Mosco was too weird or too liberal for that.

00:19:57 Speaker 2: But for all the social and economic power Kirkers have amassed, what they don't have almost fifty years in is political power Moscow has kept them from. That doesn't mean they haven't tried, though. In the mid eighties, Doug Wilson himself made an unsuccessful run for city council. Since then, Kirkers have entered other races for city council, for mayor, for school board, the library, with very little success. 00:20:25 Speaker 14: We're terrible at politics. 00:20:28 Speaker 2: Andrew Krepaschetz, a christ Church elder an entrepreneur, founded a pack that funded three local candidates. 00:20:34 Speaker 14: And I'm going to try and push on these candidates, and I did that because I had nothing else. 00:20:38 Speaker 8: To do with my time. 00:20:39 Speaker 2: One for mayor and two for city council. The men he backed were conservative Christians, but not Kirkers. 00:20:46 Speaker 14: So I did the darn thing and I raised some money and it was great. 00:20:51 Speaker 2: They all lost. Now he's reflecting a bit. 00:20:56 Speaker 14: I will say that one of my great gifts in life is mobilized the left in town. So if I get involved personally in any election, I feel like the voter turnout on the left is unbelievable. 00:21:09 Speaker 13: People saw his name and probably said, oh, well, now I know who not to vote for. 00:21:13 Speaker 2: Juliet Parker had been elected to the city council just a few years before. In twenty twenty one. She was part of an albeit briefly, all female council. 00:21:23 Speaker 13: You know, and it wasn't just all women, but it was all really great women. We weren't all exactly the same political stripe either, but it was kind of a nice little fuck you. My mother won't listen to this, right. 00:21:40 Speaker 2: It was also, she says, a way to remind Moscow and those beyond that christ Church wasn't all powerful. 00:21:47 Speaker 13: They have an outsized presence in this attention economy, and I don't think that translates into real concrete numbers or. 00:21:59 Speaker 2: Influence political influence, but they're still trying. Andrew Krapaschet's the Church Elder is building a big housing development on the edge of town. Five miles away is another Kirker led development. Neither of these are just for Kirkers, but some will move there and they will vote in Moscow elections. In the meantime, no prize is too small for Kirkers. 00:22:25 Speaker 11: They will run people for the local food co op board the co op. 00:22:31 Speaker 8: That's our thing. 00:22:32 Speaker 11: I mean, come on, that's you know. 00:22:33 Speaker 2: That's more from Moscow after the Breaking meets to Eat you. We met Doug Wilson this past April at the headquarters of his publishing company, a large, newly renovated space right on Main Street that was once Moscow's flagship departments. I was waiting to see if you might know where my name came from. 00:23:03 Speaker 8: Marava. Oh, yes, it is in Arabia. The water is of Mirava. 00:23:11 Speaker

10: Yes, you passed the. 00:23:14 Speaker 2: Pub Wilson talks to a lot of journalists. He's really adept at it. He's charismatic, always ready to spar tries to amuse. Tucked into the back corner of the room was Wilson's flame thrower. He likes to make videos where he straps it on and lights stuff on fire. 00:23:34 Speaker 10: Yeah, do you have any questions for us before? Okay? 00:23:40 Speaker 2: We chatted with Wilson for the better part of two hours about Moscow. 00:23:45 Speaker 8: Jesus said, the house divided cannot stand being perpetually at Dagger's drawn. Is not good for any society, any community, any town. 00:23:53 Speaker 2: About his rise. 00:23:54 Speaker 10: So what's changed? 00:23:56 Speaker 8: So I think that what the fundamental thing that has changed is the. 00:24:00 Speaker 2: Country about his feelings on things like feminism. 00:24:04 Speaker 8: I hate feminism, So I just hateminism. 00:24:07 Speaker 10: Sorry to here. 00:24:09 Speaker 2: And we talked about that one critical area where the church has fallen short local politics. 00:24:15 Speaker 8: Moscow remains a liberal town, primarily in terms of elections. 00:24:21 Speaker 2: Wilson says the church doesn't have a master plan for local politics because if it did, it would be failing. 00:24:28 Speaker 10: So political power isn't necessary for what you ultimately want. 00:24:32 Speaker 8: No, it's not necessary. Correct, it's the caboose. 00:24:37 Speaker 2: But Wilson says it's only a matter of time before Kirkers get there. 00:24:42 Speaker 8: The people who are freaked out about us. Sometimes talk as though they're afraid of a military takeover or some sort of hostile takeover. And that's not a legit worry at all. But in regards the substance of what they're worried about, Yeah, they have got every reason to be worried. 00:24:58 Speaker 15: You will be able to take over. 00:25:00 Speaker 8: Yeah, takeover is sounds militaristic. I would just say organic growth. I have three kids, I have eighteen grandkids. In the meantime, the local liberal paleo hippie five is one point seven children. It seems to me that we're past the point of no return. This is what it's going to happen. 00:25:23 Speaker 5: So once there's enough people who are sharing your belief. 00:25:26 Speaker 8: Yeah, it is so. And what would we call that when it happens. I'd call it democracy. So right down here on the right is a place called Roman Roads. So just on this stretch, one block, two publishing houses. 00:25:46 Speaker 2: After our interview, Wilson took us on a walk down Main Street. On our way out, we passed a massive photo of Wilson with Charlie Kirk across. In big letters, it read give everything. 00:25:59 Speaker 8: Yeah, all right, So let's walk just one block up this way. 00:26:03 Speaker 2: We come to a coffee shop with its pride in Black Lives Matter signs, one Wilson refers to as the enemy coffee shop, not a place he'd go into. 00:26:13 Speaker 8: I'd rather not go there, and they'd probably coaching and they'd probably rather not have me come in. 00:26:21 Speaker 5: Do you do you go into businesses that aren't Kirker owned? 00:26:23 Speaker 8: Oh yeah, yeah, there's a bagel shop that I've not gone to recently, but it's a really, really good one. 00:26:29 Speaker 2: The shops on main Street are intermingled, some Kirker, some not, but those who know know which is withh. 00:26:36 Speaker 8: House Kitchen some of our people. 00:26:39 Speaker 2: Just beyond there's a thirty thousand square. 00:26:42 Speaker 8: Foot building that's the old Cadillac Jacks nightclub and so. 00:26:46 Speaker 2: Soon to be New Saint Andrew's North campus. In the three blocks that we've walked, what's the footprint of christ Church and also just the parishioners if you want to break it down. 00:26:58 Speaker 8: Maybe say thirty to four something like that. 00:27:02 Speaker 2: Meanwhile, Kirker's account for only about eleven percent of Moscow's population. 00:27:08 Speaker 8: Everything comes to him, who hustles all the ways. 00:27:12 Speaker 2: Then we approached New St. Andrew's main building, the foothold the building Doug Wilson is still proud to talk about more than twenty years later. It's purchase, he told us earlier, was meant to send a message. 00:27:26 Speaker 8: It was symbolic, it was strategic. It was it was on Friendship Square when we bought that building. We were doing here, let's touch your eyeball. It was a bit of a provocation, and the Friendship Square was before that, you know, pot smokers and hacky sack players. 00:27:44 Speaker 2: Wilson would like New Saint Andrews to take over even more of downtown, but a few years ago, the city passed a new law that limits schools to only two buildings downtown. This posed a roadblock for New Saint Andrew's expansion. Remember that hustle Wilson talked about. 00:28:02 Speaker 8: So over here on the left on the corner. 00:28:04 Speaker 2: Wilson pointed to a building across the street. We leased it and to get around. 00:28:10 Speaker 8: The law, so we created another business, Moscow Business Services Moscow bs, and we farm our work out to them. 00:28:22 Speaker 2: That signature hustle. It found a loophole. 00:28:25 Speaker 8: The city was just yanking us around, so we were creative. 00:28:30 Speaker 2: Then Wilson lights up, and. 00:28:33 Speaker 8: Then have you seen the church hall there's thirty acres there. 00:28:37 Speaker 2: Even more land on the eastern edge of Moscow, thirty acres on Dominion Road. 00:28:45 Speaker 8: They've just broken ground on the Tolkien building. 00:28:48 Speaker 2: Wilson is a big lord of the rings fan. The resources to acquire this much land and the buildings downtown come from a few different revenue streams. There's the congregation itself. 00:29:00 Speaker 8: There are people are giving tithing. 00:29:02 Speaker 2: People kirkers are asked to give ten percent of their income. Then there's what comes from the publishing company, which Wilson says has an

annual revenue in the single digit millions. Christ Church's expansion is something locals have tracked for years. 00:29:18 Speaker 8: Now. 00:29:19 Speaker 2: They know it well at this point. 00:29:21 Speaker 11: They're very dedicated, they're very well funded, and they definitely have their eyes in the prize. 00:29:26 Speaker 2: But then the pandemic came and Moscow suddenly saw christ Church as an immediate threat, not a distant one. The town had been quick to implement mask mandates bans on public gatherings, and Wilson openly defied both. He held church services, let a psalm sing outside city hall with dozens of people and a huge wooden cross. One local business owner said this behavior struck a nerve with locals, many of whom hadn't paid much mind to the church. 00:29:59 Speaker 16: Many of those people, we're like, now, I do see this as a threat. You know, not seeing them is so harmless anymore. That they were making a statement like we've got our own rule book, We're not looking at for the rest of you. 00:30:14 Speaker 2: And so, in the weak of the pandemic, locals got more assertive, and after years of Kirker scooping up real estate, residents decided they could too. 00:30:24 Speaker 1: There's a couple of different groups. 00:30:26 Speaker 2: Locals began pooling their money, forming investment groups, so they're ready to buy the buildings themselves, the. 00:30:33 Speaker 1: Idea of it just being ready to go. And then there's one large one. It's like a co op that's been set up. They ask for one thousand dollars from each investor. And I think it's really important and as much as you can buy at real estate before they do. 00:30:52 Speaker 11: Yeah, yeah, put your money or your mouth is kind of a deal. Like, if you really do care about this, you can't just sit back and bitch. 00:30:58 Speaker 1: Think about it. 00:31:01 Speaker 2: The investors are just getting started. So far, they haven't actually bought any real estate. They say they haven't been able to find the right building, one worth their money. But they're ready. Nonetheless, to some it's hope enough that these groups are even forming. Their town is still progressive, still weird, still largely Moscow. 00:31:22 Speaker 1: They have not taken over the spirit of the town. 00:31:25 Speaker 13: You know, we are a pretty tight knit community. 00:31:28 Speaker 2: It's been twenty six years since Julia Parker, the former city council member, moved to Moscow, and she's learned a few things about herself and protecting her town. 00:31:38 Speaker 13: I think it's hard, but I think being vocal about it, when you push back, you know, publicly, I think it's valuable because you know that they're going to keep pushing this narrative that they've already taken over. You know that it's a done deal and that now your town is Wilsonville. It's been funny, you know, Moscow, Idaho seems like we're thirty years behind in terms of fashion, and you know, like we're not on the cutting edge. But one thing we have done for the last fifty years is fought against Christian nationalism, and so you know, here we are on the cutting edge. 00:32:21 Speaker 2: Yes, they were. Moscow, it turns out, is the place that others elsewhere could look to as a warning or as a beacon. 00:32:33 Speaker 12: People are asking can that be replicated in other places? 00:32:37 Speaker 8: Can this be done elsewhere? My answer is yes. 00:32:41 Speaker 2: This is Wilson talking on the new Founding podcast about it. New Founding is that venture firm behind the Gainsboro project, and. 00:32:49 Speaker 8: I think that's the whole design. What we're trying to do here is a little or derv It's one little bacon wrap sausage. That's all it is. That is an indicator of foretaste that this this is actually doable on planet Earth. 00:33:09 Speaker 2: I am now convinced that places like Moscow are the future, something that may go nationwide. Josh Abbatoy wrote on social media in November twenty twenty two. Abbatoy, the CEO of Ridge Runner, had just taken a trip to Moscow. He'd been invited to speak to the board of New Saint Andrew's College. While he was there, he met with Doug Wilson and spent time at Kirker businesses. In one tweet, Abbatoy described the vital joua devive of downtown Moscow. 00:33:41 Speaker 7: There's like a dynamism and an upward mobility in a community like that. 00:33:46 Speaker 2: Less than two years later, Abbatoy began talking about a plan for his own Moscow. 00:33:52 Speaker 5: So we just got back from an undisclosed location in the mountains of Appalachia scouting land and looking at doing a prety big real estate deal up there. 00:34:03 Speaker 2: This would become the Highland Rim Project, the partnership between Ridge Runner and newfounding Nate Fisher's venture capital firm. Back in Gainsboro, Diana Knaff was connecting the dots. 00:34:19 Speaker 5: You know, well, there are definitely parallels, there are similarities that it all kind of jelled. 00:34:25 Speaker 2: Moscow had always been an experiment meant to be scaled, and now that experiment was in Tennessee, in Gainsboro, right outside Diana's door. 00:34:35 Speaker 5: I mean, we are a little little test tube in a very wide ranging experiment. 00:34:44 Speaker 2: But Nate Fisher and Josh Abbottoy had a different timeline than Wilson to build the America they want to live in, not in generations. They want to build it now. And one reason they think they can really troubled Diana. 00:34:59 Speaker 7: Mosco remain. They remain a political minority. 00:35:02 Speaker 5: Of that Moscow continued to be troublesome to Doug Wilson. 00:35:07 Speaker 7: So they remain in many ways at war with the town council and things now. 00:35:11 Speaker 5: The difference is that the community that we're building in our values align. 00:35:16 Speaker 8: Our goal is. 00:35:16 Speaker 7: Something where we actually have, where we actually have the concentration where we can we can control. 00:35:23 Speaker 5: The town and

we can control them. 00:35:27 Speaker 2: With a population that was mostly white, conservative Christian and no university in town to muck things up, Fisher and Abatoy assumed they'd found the perfect spot in Gainsborough. 00:35:39 Speaker 5: The warning I took from that was that looking at Doug Wilson, when someone feels that they can control your community because they are convinced that you believe exactly the way they believe, that tells you that they've got big plants for your little peace of the. 00:35:59 Speaker 2: World, big plans for Gainsborough and beyond. 00:36:05 Speaker 4: What Moscow is is an example of the kind of things that we should be building right. Builds Moscow is all over the place, right it shouldn't be the only one. 00:36:13 Speaker 2: Andrewsker, the Christian nationalist podcaster who is planning to build a church at the heart of the Ridge Runner community, also looked to Wilson for inspiration. 00:36:23 Speaker 4: Why why is there no one else? 00:36:25 Speaker 5: Right? 00:36:25 Speaker 4: Why is there no one else in evangelicalism. That's that speaks that way, that says we're not giving up, We're not going to surrender. Why is there no one else willing to fight? That's that's the reason why people are attracted to Moscow. 00:36:39 Speaker 2: Iscar actually knew Doug Wilson well. He'd been his intern. He'd studied under Wilson in one of his munitions factories. 00:36:47 Speaker 15: At Great Friars Hall. We know that the Word of God is living and active. 00:36:51 Speaker 2: Grey Friars Hall, Wilson's seminary was established a few years after New Saint Andrew's College. 00:36:57 Speaker 15: We live in times of turmoil and a vision, times that require holy and faithful churches led by mature pastors who preach God's word with courage and clarity. But many seminaries are on the business of training soft men in loser theology, teaching their students to unhitch from the Old Testament, drift with the cultural current, and live beneath the progressive gaze, not to mention the progressive gaze. 00:37:24 Speaker 2: Gross and now Iskar had brought all he'd learned and then some to Gainsborough. 00:37:31 Speaker 15: Light the fire, sharpen the sword, use the hammer. 00:37:38 Speaker 4: Our enemies have power here and they we know that they are willing to destroy us. 00:37:44 Speaker 2: He was there to carry on Wilson's mission. 00:37:46 Speaker 12: It's a spiritual war. 00:37:48 Speaker 4: I mean, we are we're doing war with demons here. 00:37:53 Speaker 2: To gather people to his new church, to the town. But even though Iskar was trained by Wilson, it's not clear if his church would be welcome in Wilson's denomination. Wilson says it might not. 00:38:07 Speaker 8: He's very affable, very yeah. I like him a lot, had a good relationship with him while. 00:38:12 Speaker 3: He was here. 00:38:14 Speaker 2: Now, Wilson says he's got some differences with Isker and with other men of i Iskar's generation. From his perch, Wilson says

he sees this. 00:38:25 Speaker 8: Explosion of white boy angst is all over the country. 00:38:32 Speaker 2: They're impatient for change, which he says is a problem. And while he and Iskar didn't agree on everything while Isker was at Greyfriars Hall, in recent years something. 00:38:43 Speaker 8: Happened where he really flipped on that abandoned libertarianism and adopted the sort of conservatism that he embraces now. He along with a number of al right or radical right guy younger guys. Part of this is a generational thing. Part of it is an ideological thing. I have differences with Andrew on the Jews and World War two and issues like that, and I believe that that emphasis is going to be something of a spoiler in any attempt to build a ridge Runner thing, because Winston Churchill once said that a finatic. I'm not Andrew of this, but a fanatic is someone who can't change his mind and won't change the subject. And what's going to happen is you're going to get the kind of fish that you're baiting for. You're going to attract a lot of weirdos. 00:39:45 Speaker 2: Wilson says he's not anti Semitic. Still, in his vision of a Christian America, a nation under Biblical law, everyone who isn't Christian would be banned from public office. Christ or chaos, he says, as for ridge Runners broader venture. 00:40:04 Speaker 8: I wish them, well, it's a great idea. Okay, good luck. I'll just say this, And this is going to sound like I'm slamming them. I'm not slamming them. I'm just saying, watch out for this. You don't want to come across like you're delivering Riven Dell in an Ikea box. Some of it is more organic. 00:40:26 Speaker 2: Wilson goes on, and it's. 00:40:28 Speaker 8: Really easy to have a shiny pressure and perspectus and great ideas, but I think you really need an established worshiping community first. Airlifting the whole thing in is harder than establishing a beachhead and building it up slowly. 00:40:49 Speaker 2: More after the break, Diana, having studied Moscow, was now reviewing what had happened in her hometown and regretting what she may have missed. 00:41:01 Speaker 5: Golly, one of the tracts of land that's been bought across from the high school, they're calling it Jennings Creek, Colony, Ridge Runner. Is that land belonged to his great granddaddy. 00:41:14 Speaker 2: Her husband, Barry, his great grandfather. 00:41:17 Speaker 16: And so the land that bab actually first bought one hundred acres across from high school, was that part of that land. 00:41:26 Speaker 6: I'm afraid to say it is. 00:41:29 Speaker 2: Those ninety nine acres the farmland Bryan Allen, the metal detectorist, so badly wanted to explore. 00:41:37 Speaker 5: Seeing it go toward that purpose is hard for him. 00:41:43 Speaker 2: Barry was kicking himself, and now every time he drives by, which is just about every day, he has to look away. 00:41:52 Speaker 6: I have to look over to the school when I pass it now, because I just can't. I cannot believe that I let, you know, I let that get by without getting it, you know, to keep them from If I wish I had just known to talk to him. It was quite heartbreaking, you know, you know, imagine they Yeah, that's that's a tough one. 00:42:17 Speaker 2: Diana didn't want more heartbreak, not for Barry or anyone else in Gainsborough. If Moscow had taught her anything, it was that buying that building on the square, the one with the coffee shop that she'd heard Josh Appatoy had been interested in. That purchase had been a smart move. 00:42:34 Speaker 5: If we can send a clear message that unlike what Nate Fisher said, this community. 00:42:41 Speaker 2: Cannot be controlled. 00:42:42 Speaker 5: If we can send that message, they won't try to, you know, move on to our town square and all the things that Doug Wilson did so long ago right in Moscow. 00:42:55 Speaker 2: So Barry and Diana anxiously watched for other property to go in the market. They snatched up one house just off the town square on Murray Street, where Nancy Prewett, the retired our teacher lives, and where the podcasters live too. Then they bought a second house on Murray Street. 00:43:13 Speaker 5: Murray Street is very important. There's a lot of families that live on there that've lived there a long time. There's a great sense of community there, you know. 00:43:22 Speaker 2: It's just it needs to. 00:43:24 Speaker 5: Be protected that street. 00:43:26 Speaker 2: Diana and Barry have stayed ready, ready to strike again if needed. 00:43:30 Speaker 5: We do keep an air to the ground. 00:43:32 Speaker 2: To prevent Ridge Runner from expanding its footprint downtown. 00:43:36 Speaker 5: Where were you going to end up in that Moscow situation? I mean it clash of the Titans. No, no, we're not. No doesn't mean that we'll be able to buy every building on Yeah, and if and hopefully if it's not us, it'll be somebody else who actually really wants to start a business and benefit the community, not create more division because we just don't need it. 00:44:04 Speaker 2: But division was coming to Gainsborough by way of things far beyond the town or its control. In the fall of twenty twenty five, something happened that would change everyone's calculations. Next time on the final chapter of our Town. 00:44:21 Speaker 12: They would like to see me die. 00:44:23 Speaker 4: They would like for my children to grow up fatherless. 00:44:25 Speaker 2: That they would like that, they'd like my children to be. 00:44:27 Speaker 17: Harmed he led people to believe that his neighbor, which was me, wanted harm to come to him. 00:44:35 Speaker 2: Have you always slept with a shotgun? 00:44:36 Speaker 8: Next year, Bet, I'm very grateful to the Secretary of War Pete Heseth, both for starting this meeting and for inviting me to be here with you today at christ Church at Moscow. We understand that worship is warfare. We mean that I would never in a million years have expected that my hometown would be a place where this conflict is happening. 00:44:58 Speaker 5: To call it shocking is probably mild. 00:45:02 Speaker 17: I'm in my bedroom, sound asleep, and I hear something banging on the door, and I got up and I hear Miss Pruitt. Miss Pruitt called nine one one. 00:45:17 Speaker 2: Our Town is written and reported by me Marrabn Knight, and Susan Burfield. Rebecca Lax is our senior producer. Ken Armstrong edited the show with additional editing from Rebecca Lax. Original score and sound design by Alex Segura, fact checking by Onica Robbins, additional production and editorial support from Julia Weaver, David Fox, and Laura Newcombe. Special thanks to Bloomberg's Alana Sussnow, Bob Blow Kristin Powers, Anthony Mancini the Big Take podcast team, and Will Pearson at iHeart Podcasts. Additional thanks to Kristin Cobez Dumet for her helpful insight as we researched and reported this episode. Our executive producer is Nicole beemster Bar