Conservative Christianity entertains a dangerous romance with far-right, patriarchal nationalism. At least, that’s the impression left behind by CNN’s interview with pastor and online personality Doug Wilson a few weeks ago.
The situation escalated when U.S. secretary of defense Pete Hegseth retweeted Wilson’s interview with the caption, “All of Christ for All of Life.” CNN also showed a clip of Hegseth attending Wilson’s newly opened church in Washington, D.C.
While Wilson’s interview with CNN focused on his advocacy for Christian nationalism, Wilson mentioned his positions on women in military roles, women’s function in society, and women’s voting rights. Wilson supported repealing the 19th Amendment, replacing women’s suffrage with a “household voting” system, under which only the head of the household can vote. Since Christianity teaches that husbands are the “heads” of their wives, Wilson’s system would exclude many women from voting.
In a separate reaction video, Wilson explained his position is not fundamentally about reversing women’s suffrage. “Our concern in all of this is not the enfranchisement of men over against women. Our concern has to do with the disenfranchisement of the covenant household,” Wilson stated.
Wilson believes that households are the fundamental units of political society—a view he believes contradicts universal suffrage. “If you recognize the family as a political reality, then the family will need to have a representative spokesman. … That household will be represented by its head,” Wilson explained.
To establish households as the fundamental political unit, Wilson appeals to the Bible. Wilson pastors Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, which currently employs a household membership system. The church’s “Book of Worship, Faith, and Practice” highlights biblical passages where households are greeted, evangelized, or judged collectively rather than individually.
The book further argues that household membership is necessary to combat excessive individualism in current culture. “We tend to think that the only legitimate units of membership in a church are individuals. Thus, what in Scripture is presented as an organic but diverse whole has become, in many of our churches, nothing more than a list, or roster of the names of individuals,” the book states.
The above argument resonates with conservative Christians who are disenchanted with liberal democracy and are eager to find straightforward answers. “A lot of the reason we’re getting the attention we’re getting is that people are hungry for answers that don’t just whitewash it, that don’t sugarcoat it. And, as I’m fond of saying, it’s Christ or chaos,” Wilson said on CNN.
According to Wilson, Christ Church’s location in Moscow, Idaho, has doubled in attendance since 2019.
Despite its allure for conservative Christians, the argument for household voting falls short on two main grounds.
First, the argument for household voting oversteps the support which Scripture appears to lend it.
The biblical passages that Christ Church’s page references support honoring households as important entities, but do not go so far as to structure church membership or political voting processes around them. Nowhere does Scripture explicitly prescribe household voting for either the church or for society. Just because the Bible acknowledges households as distinct entities does not immediately imply that household voting is necessary.
On purely logical grounds, this argument for household voting is far from watertight. Even if households are political entities, the argument does not explain why this entitles households to a vote. For example, corporations are arguably political entities, yet few suggest that corporations should be able to vote.
Furthermore, the argument gives no reason to believe that household voting and individual voting are mutually exclusive. For instance, one can imagine a system where individuals retain suffrage while the heads of household can cast an additional voting representing the household, a set-up reminiscent of Demeny voting.
These logical gaps force proponents of household voting to reckon with reality: household voting simply isn’t found in Scripture.
The second reason that the argument for household voting falls short is that it forgets the rationales behind individual voting.
Proponents of household voting rally against excessive individualism and feminism, neglecting the moderate, healthy forms of individualism and feminism. They throw out the baby with the bathwater.
The Bible is unequivocal: individuals are a fundamental political reality. Individuals are morally responsible beings who are accountable directly to God. At the end of time, God judges each person on their own; the Lamb’s book of life lists individual names, not household ones.
According to Romans 13, the administration of justice is the primary function of political community. If God administers final justice individually, human governments must at least acknowledge individuals as a core political reality.
Moreover, individuals are the kind of political beings that warrant suffrage. Classical liberalism points to individuals’ rationality as the spring from which voting rights flow—in addition to the idea that legitimate governance is based on the consent of the governed.
In terms more congruent to the Bible, individuals have both a sense of justice and a stake in how justice is administered. Humans’ innate sense of justice is rooted not in any collective group but is written on the heart of each individual. Households, strictly speaking, have no access to natural law, and there is no reason to privilege the head of household’s sense of justice over anyone else’s.
Furthermore, individuals have a stake in the administration of justice. In Scripture, God honored the case brought to Moses by the daughters of Zelophehad. These women brought their case as a group, but without representation by a head of household. Additionally, Deborah participated in Israel’s government as a judge without needing to be represented by her husband.
Both these qualities of individuals—their sense of justice and their stake in its administration—suggest that individual suffrage is a prudent and biblically justifiable system at the least.
Even if suffrage is not an inherent human right, a just government cannot capriciously privilege one class of people over another, especially when injustice and abuse are likely. In the case of household voting, the words of Abigail Adams ring true: “Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could.”
In the end, Wilson’s remarks on CNN’s nationwide platform gratified illiberal audiences while misrepresenting biblical support for individual suffrage. Classically conservative Christians must combat the reactionist and illiberal impulse, lest the next generation be seduced by unbiblical extremism.
