Pete Hegseth & Doug Wilson: Power, Politics, and Patriarchy
Sons of Patriarchy
Peter Bell & Sarah Bader
4.2 • 649 Ratings
🗓️ 28 May 2026
⏱️ 51 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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Enjoy this episode from Dismantling Doctrine (and please subscribe to Clint's podcast!) which recently had both Peter and Sarah as guests.
In this episode, I welcome Peter Bell from the Sons of Patriarchy podcast for a deep dive into the world of Doug Wilson. He's a self-ordained pastor from Moscow, Idaho who has spent decades building a network of Christian nationalist influence.
Together we trace Wilson's origins, his controversial "Southern Slavery As It Was" pamphlet, his founding of the CREC denomination and the Association of Classical Christian Schools (ACCS), and how his fringe ideas gradually moved into the mainstream — culminating in his recent sermon at the Pentagon.
The conversation then turns to Pete Hegseth, now U.S. Secretary of Defense (or War), and the web of connections linking him to Wilson's world through classical Christian education and the ACCS, Fox News, Christian nationalism, and the fringe CREC denomination.
Both of us, as seminary-trained theologians, share deep concern about a man with limited theological education wielding militaristic, crusader-inspired religious rhetoric--all the while overseeing the world's most powerful military engaged in an illegal war against Iran.
We argue that the through line--traced from R.J. Rushdoony's Christian Reconstructionism to Doug Wilson to Pete Hegseth--represents a genuinely dangerous convergence of weaponized theology, patriarchy, and political power.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Is it time to dismantle some doctrines? If you don't know what that means, then come along with me. |
| 0:05.9 | I'm Dr. Clint Hacock, a former evangelical Bible college teacher and pastor of more than 20 years. |
| 0:11.6 | Join me as we deconstruct whatever dogmas and beliefs have held you behind, |
| 0:15.7 | and together work to reconstruct and rebuild your authentic self. I'm super happy to welcome Peter Bell from the Sons of Patriarchy podcast. |
| 0:47.1 | Welcome Peter to the Dismantling Doctrine podcast. |
| 0:50.4 | Thanks for having me on. |
| 0:51.6 | This will be fun. |
| 0:52.3 | I know a little bit about this podcast being sent it a few years ago and happy to see that you're kicking you back up again. Exactly. Yeah, we were just saying before we hit record, we had a bunch of stuff that I did on Doug Wilson probably three or four years ago now. And there's another name that we mentioned Sarah Bader. So is she part of the Sons of Patriarchy? |
| 1:11.9 | What's her role in that as well? Yeah, she's both co-host and co-producer. And she's also lived in |
| 1:17.0 | Moscow since 1997, I think, or 1998, one of those two. So she's on the ground in Moscow, |
| 1:24.4 | knows all the people, knows all the institutions, knows all the things, all the |
| 1:28.1 | stuff that doesn't get covered in big media that happens in Moscow. |
| 1:33.7 | But so she's co-host and co-producer, and we are, as it were, sort of like attached to the |
| 1:39.2 | hip as producers. |
| 1:41.1 | So, yeah, she always needs to be talked about or discussed when it comes to Doug |
| 1:46.3 | and Moscow because this is her home ground. Now there was a reason why she didn't want to be, |
| 1:52.0 | did she not want to be a part of this recording today? I'm trying to remember because we've been |
| 1:55.2 | emailing back and forth for about maybe a month or so now. Was she not available to be on this? |
| 1:59.9 | Because I think it would have been really good to have her on. Yeah, she's in the Pacific time zone. So she's 11 a.m. So this is like right smack in the middle of her workday. And I work remotes. So it's a lot easier for me to maneuver my schedule around this. So it's either both of us or it's just her or it's just me. It just depends on who we're |
| 2:18.0 | talking to and what time it is and all that fun stuff. Exactly. And I hear I, you know, six hours ahead of you over here and eight hours ahead of the West Coast. I'm originally from Seattle. So yeah, I'm familiar with the time zone differences. It's always a challenge. Especially here. I'm in Georgia. Yeah. |
| 2:33.5 | Yeah, we change our clocks at a different, we do ours about three weeks later than you do in the state, |
| 2:38.8 | but then in the autumn, the fall, we do it three weeks before. |
... |
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