Jean’s husband raped her over and again a couple of times a week for about a decade, either with violence or by waiting until after she took a prescription sleeping pill. The friend attended a Christ Church plant-a seedling congregation based in Christ Church’s doctrine and culture-and “she said the same thing was going on in her marriage.” Marital rape, it seemed, was normal. She called a kirker friend about it the next day. “These pastors told me a wife is not allowed to tell her husband no.” “When he was done, he passed out drunk and I locked myself in the bathroom and cried.” She was bruised and her insides bled. He pinned her down, so she used her legs to kick him. She tried clawing away, then pushing him away with her arms. She told him “not tonight,” that she was tired. He pulled her over, lifted her nightgown. One night, after their first was born, her husband came home drunk after she was asleep. Starting nine months after they were married, they had a baby every other year until the couple had four children. The wedding, officiated by Wilson, was four years after she moved to Moscow. They brag about how their women are more beautiful than ‘pagans’ wives.’” “That’s a big deal to men in leadership,” says Jean. After her vows, kirkers came up and shook her hand, saying how beautiful she was. Jean, who had been raised on a steady diet of purity movement books, felt like she had no choice but to marry him, “or I was somehow unclean and unworthy.” Before they got married, she joined the church, taking covenant vows in front of the congregation. He’d get her drunk and refuse to accept her wishes not to have sex. Within their first year dating, heavy petting turned to coercive sex. “I had stars in my eyes,” remembers Jean. By her second year, they started dating and soon he said he wanted to marry her. To learn about Christ Church’s culture of abuse and social control, VICE has interviewed 12 former and current church members and Logos students, and reviewed court and medical documents, church correspondence, and business filings. Ex-kirkers describe a punitive community in which women are told they must defer to church leaders and cannot say “no” to their husbands, men are taught to strictly control their homes, and those who speak out can be isolated and harassed.ĭuring Jean’s first year as a non-matriculating student at New Saint Andrews, Christ Church’s college of about 150 students, she met a charming, handsome upperclassman. At the center of it all is notoriously controversial Douglas Wilson, the firebrand pastor who’s been presiding over his Mother Kirk fiefdom for more than 40 years. Depending upon whom you ask, the town hosts either a Calvinist utopia or a patriarchal cult in which women must submit or face discipline at home and at church. But the conservative congregation also is at odds with Moscow’s more liberal population (surrounding Latah County voted for President Biden in 2020). Mother Kirk can be a joyous, faithful community. “You’d never guess there was such hatred.”ĭepending upon whom you ask, the town either hosts a Calvinist utopia or a patriarchal cult in which women must submit or face discipline at home and at church. She thought that it was like any number of religiously affiliated schools and that Christ Church was just another church. Jean and her mother hadn’t joined Christ Church before they arrived, but Jean had plans to attend New Saint Andrews. The in-town farmers’ market is populated by friendly, well-dressed “kirkers”-local shorthand for members of Mother Kirk, the nickname for Christ Church, which boasts about 900 congregants in the town of 25,000. Christ Church is a communal ecosystem unto itself, with affiliated institutions throughout Main Street and the business district: the K-12 Logos School a publishing house, Canon Press an unaccredited pastoral ministry program, Greyfriars Hall and a private college, New Saint Andrews. Moscow is an idyllic university town, most notably anchored by the University of Idaho, dotted by historic buildings, and known for its thriving arts scene.
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