This small North Idaho town kept to itself. Then a Christian nationalist church asked the U.S. government to intervene

TROY, Idaho – The streets are usually calm in this town of less than a thousand people a dozen miles east of Moscow.

With the exception of a historic lumber mill, the city has, for the most part, remained quiet.

But a couple of years ago things changed when a Christian nationalist church asked the U.S. government to help them establish a congregation within the city.

“I sent an email to the Justice Department,” said Matt Meyer, an elder in the Christ the Redeemer church. “I said, ‘I want you to be aware, according to your law, and if you’re interested in this stuff – I think I’m being discriminated against.’ “

Years ago, Meyer felt like he was asking something relatively simple of the city: He wanted the city of Troy to approve a conditional-use permit for his building, an old bank-turned-event center on Troy’s main street, so his church could host events and Sunday services for 80-150 people. The church had been established in Troy so worshippers wouldn’t have to commute to Moscow. At this point, because the church has been “particularized,” its decisions are not made by Christ Church but the elders within Christ the Redeemer, Meyer said.

Instead, the city denied his request on the basis of its zoning code, which prohibits any church from establishing itself in the two-block radius of its downtown business district.

The reason for prohibiting churches within those two blocks is to encourage more business to open in a district that was shattered by the COVID-19 pandemic, the city’s denial states.

Meyer wasn’t satisfied. He believed the animosity against his church, a “daughter” church of Christ Church that has drawn the ire and public rebuke of the citizens of Troy and the nearby town of Moscow, could be the reason for the denial.

“If it would have been the Boy Scouts who wanted to meet every Sunday, the city wouldn’t have any problem,” he said.

Christ Church is controversial. Its leader, Doug Wilson, has advocated for male-dominated Christian nationalism in his blog posts and maintained that Moscow, a small college town of more than 26,000, is a place fit for a biblical takeover.

“We should want America to be a Christian nation,” Wilson wrote on his blog in 2022. “We want our nation to be a Christian nation because we want all the nations to be Christian nations.”

But the controversy largely centers on what he’s done – namely, co-authoring a book defending southern slavery, speaking at Confederate heritage conferences, blogging derisively about women’s breasts, calling the LGBTQ pride flag the “death and sin rag” in his blog and writing that women need to be “led with a firm hand” and “surrender” to a man who “conquers” and “penetrates,” in one of his books.

Wilson denies any claims that he is sexist or racist, he wrote in an email Thursday.

Christ Church’s growth in Moscow has sparked controversy as it has slowly acquired buildings and businesses in the city’s downtown core.

The church owns nearly 20% of properties in a six-block area, according to reporting from Boise State Public Radio, including a small college. Wilson says about 3,000 members – known as “Kirkers”because the church was nicknamed Christ “Kirk,” the Scottish word for “church.”

Residents see a pattern – the fight to expand into Troy is just another method Christ Church uses to exert power and control over small towns with scant resources to fight back against religious extremism, said Brian Dennis, a longtime Troy resident and retired professor at the University of Idaho.

“It’s the Christian Taliban,” Dennis said. “If the city isn’t careful, they will take over.”

Meyer sees it differently – the expansion into Troy isn’t a takeover, but rather a trust in God that everyone could become a Christian if church members are sharing his word.

“We do share this truth and hope that everyone comes to the same conclusion. If they did, then you could logically conclude that the city would become Christian,” he wrote in a text.

When Meyer reached out to the Justice Department two years ago, he told the agency the alleged discrimination was most applicable under a Clinton-era law known as the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, a law signed in 2000 to prohibit “unreasonable” and “substantial burdens” on religious assembly.

“I can tell you that the city of Troy violated the RLUIPA standards to the moon and back,” Wilson said in an email.

Meyer would reach out again and again, but the federal government refused to shed any light on what was going on behind the scenes, he said.

Nine months came and went with no contact from the Justice Department, Meyer said. And then came a change in the White House.

On Tuesday , the Justice Department sued the city of Troy under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act – the same act Meyer had brought to their attention – claiming Troy was treating the church “less than equal” to other institutions, imposed a substantial burden upon the church and discriminated against the church on the basis of religion.

The government is now asking the city of Troy to allow the church to operate within the building and prohibiting city officials from enforcing the code, the lawsuit states. A spokesperson for the Justice Department declined to comment on the lawsuit via email.

Troy’s city attorney, Todd Richardson, said the denial has nothing to do with Christ Church’s reputation and religious affiliation; rather, any church in that block would be denied a permit under the city code.

“The Department of Justice complaint is misleading. And incorrect,” Richardson said. “The city has five or six churches … We invite churches. It is a great city, it is a religious city. The people of Troy are the salt-of-the-earth Idahoans.”

A town with 925 people, one main road, a couple of schools and some businesses might look small, but Richardson believes Troy can still be a mighty front against the federal government’s antics.

“Are we ready to fight them?” Richardson said. “Yes, we are.”

DOJ ice-out

Meyer said that for months he would inquire about his complaint and rarely hear back. If he did, the government declined to tell him anything.

From the middle of 2023 to April 2024, Richardson was in communication with the government, begging them to work with the city toward a solution. The DOJ eventually opened an investigation under the Biden administration. Then, the DOJ sent a letter to the city in April of this year expressing belief Troy was being discriminatory, but wouldn’t elaborate further, Richardson said.

At one point, the Justice Department even floated the idea of asking Troy to sign a consent decree, a government-ordered plan to enact reform within a jurisdiction or agency, he said.

“We asked how they think we should change it, but they wouldn’t tell us,” Richardson said.

On May 13, Richardson wrote a letter in another effort to mitigate the issue, accusing them of refusing to work with the city.

“… Your office has consistently and flatly refused to provide any information to the City or to discuss in any detail what problems you claim and refused to discuss resolution,” Richardson wrote. “It is not the City that has been slow to agree to work on this issue and toward a resolution.”

City officials worked to avoid further interference from the government – they didn’t enforce the permit, they passed an ordinance to address future growth should the city expand, and they consulted a law firm to analyze the zoning code, according to the letter. The law firm should have a decision within six to 12 months, and after, the church’s permit can be re-evaluated.

Just days after Richardson sent that letter, the city was hit with the lawsuit.

“I find it very interesting the federal government chose to pick a religious battle with the proverbial David,” Richardson said. “… They start off with bullying tactics.”

The Clinton-era act being used to sue the city of Troy has a long history of lawsuits in its wake, but the differences are visible with the changes in presidential administrations. According to the Justice Department’s website, multiple lawsuits under the Biden administration tend to focus on fair housing, homelessness, addiction recovery, sexism and racism.

Under President Donald Trump’s administration, the lawsuits appear to mostly focus on Christian churches, with the exception of an Islamic organization in New York.

Meyer pondered whether the change in administration has anything to do with the lawsuit, but said either way, “If I was a city, I wouldn’t want to have a lawsuit with the government.”

In November 2022, Meyer submitted his conditional-use permit request after he bought the building from a banking corporation. In it, he writes the uses for the “event center” include “civic, social and fraternal organization meetings; community center events; health club or dance classes; business/professional office space and a meeting place for a church.”

All the other buildings suitable for a group of the church’s size within the city aren’t available for rent on Sundays, and the town is quiet enough to where parking and church members would not disproportionately disrupt downtown’s functions, he wrote.

When the city held a public hearing on the permit, as required by law, most of the people who attended weren’t pleased to hear a “daughter” church of Christ Church had moved into the city. Those who detested the idea called the church “extreme” or a “hate group,” according to the Justice Department’s lawsuit.

In March 2023, the city denied the permit on the grounds that it “does not promote the revitalization of the commercial district of the city” because the church is not a commercial business, as outlined in the city code. Approval could prevent future business growth the city so desperately needs, according to city documents.

The church is also within 300 feet of a bar, something barred by Idaho law since 1947. Even if the current council approved it, future councils may not. The move could bind future bars from opening on the street near the church, city documents say.

“In June of 2023, we decided that we’re going to meet anyway,” Meyer said.

That seemed to change little – the city never enforced the permit denial, so it seemed like the church and the city “were in a truce, like a ceasefire,” Meyer said.

Either way, people were coming up to Meyer on the street and telling him to keep up the good work.

Silently, more disdain was brewing. Dennis, whose home sits across from Troy’s old high school, has watched from his window throughout the years as Christ Church overtook the school’s gym.

To Dennis, it feels like more and more people in the area are moving into the small, neighboring towns of Moscow and Troy to be part of it.

From across the street, he’s seen a few church basketball tournaments and some defiance of COVID-19 mandates. Quite a lot of gatherings, too.

“They thumb their nose at restrictions,” Dennis said.

But the most noticeable is an apartment building Dennis had once owned being “crammed to the rafters” with kids attending Christ Church’s school, the New Saint Andrews College.

“Their objective is to take over the government and impose their religion and control on other people,” the former professor said. “They’re a political organization, not a religion. A disguise.”

Shrouded in controversy

Defining Christ Church as a Bible-following group is just a thin veil for hatred, said Keely Emerine-Mix, a United Methodist member and former pastor of a Spanish-language church in Washington. She moved to Moscow in the early 2000s, held a position on Moscow’s school board and has spent her time there “nipping at the heels of Doug Wilson.”

While in Moscow, she said the church has continually fought zoning codes as a way to establish more influence and “remake” the town.

This is a similar instance of what she’s witnessed before – like how the new owner of her house had multiple New Saint Andrews College students boarding inside without a legal permit to do so, she said.

Or like when Moscow revoked the status of two tax-exempt properties when they weren’t being used for religious purposes, the Lewiston Tribune reported.

“Zoning laws don’t reflect community sentiment about politics and religions. Zoning laws support businesses,” she said.

Wilson, who described himself as a Christian nationalist on Boise’s NPR podcast series, faced massive backlash in Moscow for his view on enslaved Black people in the South.

In his co-authored book, “Southern Slavery, As It Was,” he describes the relationship between white slave owners and Black enslaved people as affectionate and in harmony, even “godly” in some instances, and said later that same-sex marriage is far worse than slavery itself.

The Southern Poverty Law Center most closely associates his views with the neo-Confederate movement, a revisionist brand of white nationalism that portrays the Confederacy and its actions in a positive light and strongly supports white supremacy or segregation.

Wilson has instead described himself as a “paleo-Confederate.”

“To defend slavery should’ve been a bridge too far for anyone,” Emerine-Mix said. “He’s a heretic. He is a purveyor of dangerous heresies. I don’t know why that doesn’t matter.”

In another post, Wilson says if a woman is raped by a boyfriend, the rapist should “endow the woman” who was “defrauded,” which would re-establish her as a “free woman” and then, if the father approved, marry his victim.

In 2021, Vice News published an investigation into alleged abuse within the church – one woman came forward asserting she was being raped and abused by her husband, also a church member, but that when she went to seek advice, pastors told her she wasn’t allowed to tell her husband no.

Boise State Public Radio’s podcast “Extremely American” also details the ins and outs of the church, with one episode featuring a woman who alleges she was sexually abused within Christ Church and believes it was swept under the rug.

Wilson has numerous posts discussing his disdain of women’s liberation, calling it a “false flag operation.” Some of these posts involve talking about women’s breasts in graphic language, comparing a woman leaving her husband to a slave owner and their slave, and saying “wives are to be submissive to their own husbands in everything.”

He has hosted talks at the University of Idaho, which are most of the time met with protests. In one event titled “The Lost Virtue of Sexism,” he called a Super Bowl performance a “skankfest,” according to reporting from the Moscow-Pullman Daily News.

“Persecution has become a war cry. A banner for the unpleasant and belligerent,” Emerine-Mix said. “I would want Moscow to be known for things other than for being ground zero for the birth of Christian nationalism. I would like downtown to reflect the diversity of Moscow and the values of understanding, community and respect for education.”

Wilson got his footing as a pastor in the 1970s but co-founded the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches in 1998, a denomination that oversees Christ Church.

Notably, U.S. Department of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is part of a church that belongs to the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, known as “CREC.”

The denomination is traditionally conservative. According to a pamphlet from the church, CREC church services have “a lot in common with what visitors might call a ‘traditional worship service.’ “ A pamphlet about CREC posted online also says the denomination is “uniformly hostile” to abortion, gay marriage, women in combat and “the leftist agenda.”

Wilson helped start the church in Troy until it was able to become more independent, according to an email he sent to The Spokesman-Review.

Meyer, when asked about Wilson and his controversies, believes criticism of Wilson and the church is unfair. He’s known Wilson since 1981, and he even officiated the wedding between Meyer and his wife.

“I think people who have determined a negative feeling about Doug is largely because they read the internet. They don’t know him,” Meyer said.

Asked if Meyer shares the views of Wilson, Meyer said it’s the Bible that dictates his views.

“I believe that the Bible is 100% God’s word,” he said. “I read my Bible and I try my best to interpret it in the light of what Jesus would have us do, and that’s what we try to do here.”

When Meyer was a young man in the 1980s, he began attending the Community Evangelical Fellowship, where Wilson was the primary pastor. He said the church was a place where he felt the members “unapologetically believed the whole Bible” and obeyed God’s word.

“… I love the community of Christians who love God, love his word, and who encourage one another to put that into practice,” Meyer said. “When I talk about obeying God, it is not in some dour, work-harder, sort of top-down thing. We insist true obedience is from a heart that has experienced and continues to experience God’s free gift of forgiveness all the way down to the bones.”