Secretary of Defense Pete Hegeseth has been talking about the war in Iran in distinctly biblical terms, citing Psalms, the resurrection of Jesus, and the Book of Quentin.

And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to capture and destroy my brother.

President Trump is comparing himself to Christ. Vice President Fance is fighting

with the Pope. Watching all of this is the increasingly influential pastor Doug Wilson. He

co-founded the church that Hegset attends. Wilson's a Christian nationalist who would like the USA

to be a theocracy. He'd also like to help us get there, though he doesn't think it's going to

happen anytime soon.

I believe that it is accelerating. I believe that we're making significant gains. I see assembling

resources, and I'm encouraged in that labor. But I don't expect to see what we're praying for in my lifetime.

Pastor Doug Wilson and how much you should worry about his

plans coming up on Today Explained from Vox. This is Today Explained. My name is Douglas James Wilson.

I'm the senior pastor at Christchurch in Moscow, Idaho. So I'm a pastor and I'm a writer.

Pastor Wilson, I've heard you say that you are okay being called a Christian nationalist. Do I have

that right? Right. I'm okay with it. It's not a term that I would have picked off the menu myself.

But when it was assigned to us, I thought,

I can work with that, because I prefer it to the names I usually get called.

He gets called a theocrat, a fundamentalist, an extremist, and Wilson can be extreme.

He said that Muslims shouldn't be allowed to hold political office in the U.S.

He said that it was better to be a black person in the South during slavery than to be a black baby in a state that allows abortion.

He can also sound very rational, as you're going to hear. And we're talking to him because he's gaining influence in a country where many people are disappointed by what secular liberal

democracy has gotten us. There's a character in one of Hemingway's stories I've heard who said,

who was asked how he went bankrupt. And he said, well, at first gradually and then suddenly. So what

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