Lessons for Boys and Girls from Douglas Wilson, Publisher of Garden City Academy Textbooks
Girls should learn to have a "sweet and submissive demeanor" and boys should learn to exercise "dominion" to become "dragon slayers" and "lords in the earth"
Depending who you ask Douglas Wilson is one of the most famous, or infamous, figures in the evangelical Christian world.
An unabashed Christian nationalist, Wilson has made a career building a small but influential Calvinist empire consisting of a church, a private K-12 school, a private college, an unaccredited pastoral ministry program, and a publishing house in Moscow, Idaho. His work in that small college town, home to the University of Idaho, has garnered international media attention.
Some has been favorable, like when Tucker Carlson had Wilson on his podcast.
And some has been more critical, like this piece from Vice News.
Earlier this year, Christianity Today called him “an aspiring theocrat.” His words and teachings have created so much strife in his own community a homegrown watchdog called “Douglas Wilson Says,” authored by a local evangelical couple, popped up to push back against what the authors view as Wilson’s “heretical” theology and malevolent influence on their town.
“We are writing because our consciences will no longer allow us to remain silent while Doug Wilson continues to distort the gospel, continues to harm God’s children, and continues to make the name of Christ abhorrent to a watching city, and world,” they wrote. “We write this to warn others to stay away from his unsound doctrine, and we pray that Doug and his followers would turn to the clear, undistorted gospel, and no longer see the world as their enemy, but rather be filled with compassion for those who are lost.”
According to women who have left Wilson’s church, he and his pastors teach that wives are not allowed to deny their husbands sex.
“These pastors told me a wife is not allowed to tell her husband no,” one former member said.
Wilson’s publishing house, Canon Press, has produced titles like “The Case for Christian Nationalism” by Stephen Wolfe. In it, Wolfe argues for the establishment of a Christian theocracy where blasphemy and sabbath laws are enforced by a government led by a “Christian prince” whose power comes from God rather than the people.
“Our time calls for a man who can wield formal civil power to great effect,” Wolfe wrote. “And shake the public imagination by means of charisma, gravitas and personality. The civil power of the prince comes immediately from God as the root of civil power.”
A subsidiary of Canon, Logos Press, publishes many of the textbooks Grace City Church’s new private Christian school, Garden City Academy, requires its students to read for Bible, literature and history courses.
What follows is an overview of a textbook written by Wilson himself, titled “Basic Christian Living, A Survey On Practical Christianity.”
In it are 25 chapters, titled “lessons,” as well as a fascinating peek into Wilson’s mind.
Due to spacial limitations we’re going to focus mainly on Wilson’s instructions to boys and girls (with plenty of context). However we’ll also delve into what Wilson thinks is “cool” and how Christians should handle their money and understand property rights.
If you want to read the whole thing you can order it here.
Let’s start with the differences between men and women, as Wilson sees it.
The Meaning of Masculinity, and Femininity
Men are “designed” to dominate and they have a Biblical “dominion mandate” to uphold, according Wilson.