Hush Up, Now, Little Lady… or Else

From flame-thrower pastors to online trolls (sometimes the same guy is both!)

Troll cosplay, screenshots of Doug Wilson in his fire-centric November videos.

It’s November. For my writer friends, that makes it NaNoWriMo, and some of you may be spitting out pages of a new novel. For Americans, we’re headed toward Thanksgiving, a time for family that can be joyous or as complicated as the holiday’s origin. But for Doug Wilson, intentionally controversial pastor based in Moscow, Idaho, it means video trailers of himself setting fire to things, followed by a month of putting others on blast. For all the damage caused by his ministry and teachings, Wilson is a master content creator. The whole month of vicious wordplay on his blog is a tool for advertising his books (published by his own press). He’s happy to give them away, they’re so good! At the end of a month of gnarly posts, he packages the whole thing into an anthology. Click. Hate the libs. Read more vitriol. Repeat. Buy the anthology!

Douglas Wilson, on a flaming couch, for his 2018 No Quarter November trailer. SOURCE: YouTube

Sadly, at this point there’s little new about a shock jock pastor, ready to spew incendiary comments for attention. Wilson does play with actual fire more than others. But for as macho (and wildly dumb) as his tactics are, it’s also part of a broader strategy of fear and control that should be taken very seriously.

Since I started reporting on Moscow and the impact of Wilson’s teachings, I’ve heard from people all over the country. Some were originally from Moscow and determined the only way to leave the church and feel safe after criticizing Wilson was to move. Some hide their location out of lasting safety concerns. Others attend churches with pastors trained at Wilson’s Greyfriars Hall pastoral program or who attended Wilson’s New Saint Andrews College, and as his model of control spreads across the country, those who ask questions about Wilson’s aggressive behavior and appalling rhetoric find themselves attacked at their churches, silenced by their pastors. Some are in frightful marriages where wifely submission is demanded, as dictated by Wilson’s writings. Some took their kids to what seemed like excellent educational opportunities through Classical Christian co-ops or schools, only to be shocked by the worldview baked into some of the curricula. (Wilson founded the Association of Classical Christian Schools.) Others attended Wilson’s K-12 Logos School and are still recovering from harassment at school, or weird, racist, classroom lessons, or one-on-one questioning by Wilson about each moment of their fledgling sex lives. Or they live in Moscow and know if they openly criticize Wilson, their business will be boycotted.

Many, too many, have lasting hurt that is very hard to describe to others—because most people can’t understand Wilson’s level of influence over some people and those who would understand are still under Wilson’s influence and will likely never speak to them again.

Setting fire to things is the least scary thing about Wilson, but as the flames dance behind him, across a desk, or a couch in an open field, he conveys a message to those who would challenge him: even fire cannot touch him. And if necessary, he’ll torch your life too.

For Disobedient Women, I interviewed a rape survivor whose assailant admitted to the rape on tape. She carried the resulting pregnancy to term. She also had the audacity to cut Wilson, who saw himself as her counselor, out of her life. Obviously, it was a delicate situation. She ought to have been treated with great sensitivity. What stayed with her was that after she reported her rape to police and went public about the rape and pregnancy, Wilson posted on his blog something he entitled “Potiphar’s Wife, Survivor.” (For centuries, Potiphar’s wife, from the Genesis story, was famed as having lied about Joseph attempting to rape her after her own advances failed to woo him). The post pretended to be a #MeToo-type retelling of the ancient tale, citing rape culture and Joseph’s “grooming.” In Wilson’s telling, one fictional commenter talks about how Potiphar’s wife stepping forward might have given her courage to come forward too. It’s meant as farce. How funny, in Wilson’s view, women sharing stories of assault and finding courage—underscored with a sense that surely, it’s all (in the Bible story) based in a lie.  

This November, I wonder which people Wilson will try to crush with his words, not because I’m desperate to see what he has to say—often, his sentences are so laden with alliterations and lists of synonyms as to render them unreadable. My interest is with the folks he’ll target. So often, when men of a certain ilk get nasty online, their energy is directed at women.

Just this morning, in my inbox I found a moving essay by

Connie Schultz

, Ohio’s favorite columnist, describing how recently after posting a selfie, she was likened to Miss Piggy and was told her mother should have aborted her. Schultz, a tireless advocate and outspoken woman whose writing has appeared online for decades, is no novice at being trolled by “keyboard cowards.” She describes the importance of admitting the threats and gruesome behavior can bother her, because she wants other women and perhaps one day, her granddaughters, to understand a vital lesson: “Every time someone stoops to attacking our looks, our age, or our gender, we win. They are unhappy people leading with their injuries, and they want us to feel demoralized and ashamed.”

Writing for

Public Notice

, Liz Dye noted the string of threatening messages and death threats directed at Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, Fulton County Sheriff Patrick Labat, and federal judge Tanya Chutkan. There is a limited order on Donald Trump’s speech from the DC court (not allowing him to target certain parties at the court, including staff, witnesses, and prosecutors) and another gag order in New York due to Trump’s posting a picture of a court clerk on Truth Social. But the wave of threats starting in 2020, winding through people at the Capitol screaming “Hang Mike Pence,” and continuing to this day show how dogged commitment to an influential figure who is willing to say anything can motivate dangerous impulses in his followers.

There are people stirred up and angry on their own, then there’s the group intentionally so stirred.