Doug Wilson rebukes ‘unhinged’ Candace Owens at AmFest

The Rev. Douglas Wilson, who serves as senior pastor at Christ Church (CREC) in Moscow, Idaho, rebuked conservative podcaster Candace Owens during Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest in Phoenix, Arizona, last week, and explained the various Christian schools of thought regarding modern Israel.

Speaking during a half-hour panel with TheBlaze host Steve Deace that was moderated by Dr. James Orr, a British theologian, Wilson also condemned antisemitism among Christians, which he defined as “Jew hate” and an example of sinful “backsliding.”

But he also noted that being critical of the Israeli government is not necessarily antisemitic, nor is urging Jews to believe in Jesus Christ.

“I don’t like using the term ‘antisemitism’ when I can help it, because like the term ‘racism,’ it has been greatly devalued through numerous misapplications,” Wilson said. “It is not antisemitism to disagree with [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu. It is not antisemitism for Christians to want Jews to believe in Christ. It is not antisemitism to differ with Israeli policies in the West Bank.”

Wilson said that antisemitism instead often emerges “in the way in which such things are held and argued.”

“Actual antisemitism, or what I prefer to call ‘Jew hate,’ is what happens in my Twitter feed anytime I mention Israel. Jew hate is October 7 [2023 terror attack]. Jew hate is Bondi Beach. It is the belief that Jews are a uniquely malevolent force for evil in the world, and that this fact justifies a one-size-fits-all negative response to anything related to them,” he said.

Professing Christians who are “backsliding into Jew hate” out of anger toward Jews for rejecting the Gospel, Wilson argued, are themselves disobeying Jesus and likely serving only to further harden hearts.

“Jews are the enemy, it is thought, but Jesus commanded His followers to love their enemies, which you are manifestly not doing,” he said of such Christians. “So why should Jews listen to Jesus if you don’t?”

In a hypothetical argument he later claimed was intended as a “reductio [ad absurdum]” to illustrate how Owens draws conclusions, Wilson floated the theory that the Israeli Defense Forces conducted its famous two-hour attack against the USS Liberty in 1967 because the CIA under former President Lyndon B. Johnson was playing both sides in the Six-Day War.

Wilson contrasted legitimate debate about Israel as it relates to foreign policy with unsubstantiated conspiracy theories such as those floated by Owens, who has suggested Charlie Kirk’s assassination could have involved the Israeli government or an internal TPUSA plot, among other possibilities.

“Debates about whether the organizers of this conference were complicit in the murder of Charlie are in another category entirely, a category best described as demented or unhinged,” Wilson said to applause.

“If passive aggressive gaslighting insolence had a basketball team, it is long since time to retire Candace’s jersey. Those assertions are not in the same universe at all, and so the latter one must never be allowed to hide under the former.”

Wilson, who is Reformed in his theology and adheres to a postmillennial eschatology, also took time “to lay out some basic definitions” regarding different historical Christian views regarding Israel.

Noting that Zionism as a Jewish movement largely emerged during the 19th century among both observant and non-observant Jews who wished to return to their ancestral homeland, Wilson went on to define “Christian Zionists” as “Christians, usually dispensationalists, who believe that the reestablishment of Israel in 1948 was the fulfillment of prophecy, and that Jews have a divine mandate to hold the land.”

“De facto Zionists,” Wilson explained, “are those who don’t believe that the promise to Abraham in Genesis 12 has anything to do with it, but who recognize that almost 8 million Jews are there now with the same right to defend their territory that any other country would have.”

He likened such a practical view to his own situation of living in Idaho, despite not believing in the doctrine of Manifest Destiny that drove American westward expansion and made his state possible.

Wilson also delineated the differences between various subsets of “replacement theology” or “supersessionism,” which the Encyclopedia Britannica defines as the belief that “Christians have replaced the Jewish people as the chosen people of God or as the heirs of the divine-human covenant described in the Hebrew Bible.”

Wilson defined it as “the view that the Church is Israel now, and it’s the lawful heir of all the covenant blessings promised in the Old Testament. This is the view that in Romans 11, the Apostle Paul described the one olive tree as straddling both eras: Old Testament and New.”

“This is the view of most Reformed or covenantal theologians, and it is the view that I hold,” he said.

Wilson noted a distinction between “hard supersessionism” — which believes “today’s ethnic Jews are now entirely outside God’s covenantal dealings, and are just one more tribe living alongside the Japanese, the Swedes and the Navajo” — and “soft supersessionism,” which he said “is the idea that although unbelieving Jews were cut out of the olive tree because of their unbelief, Paul prophesied that they would be grafted back in again, which would be a great spiritual blessing to the entire world.”

The pastor said he is among the latter group of supersessionists.

Last summer, Wilson weighed in on a viral clash between political commentator Tucker Carlson and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, about the Christian duty toward modern Israel.

Describing both of their views on the issue as “problematic,” he affirmed the historical Reformed position that the Jewish people have a future role to play in the redemptive story, but also noted the complexity of delineating between the Jewish people and the modern political entity of Israel.

“The Bible, taken as a whole, does indicate that there is a role to play for the Jewish people yet to come in Israel,” Wilson said at the time.

Calvin Robinson, a British-born Catholic cleric who attended AmFest, noted that the panel with Wilson and Deace was the only debate about Israel to feature at the conference, which was marked by fierce infighting over the issue among prominent conservative voices such as Carlson, Ben Shapiro, Megyn Kelly, Steve Bannon and others.

Robinson suggested in an X post that the fractures within TPUSA and among conservatives generally indicate simmering generational tensions over the post-WWII consensus regarding Israel.

“Where the old hats can see Jews as especially persecuted because of WWII, Gen Z tend to see that as giving one particular group special treatment, in a world where so many are persecuted. That is before you even get into the Christian Zionist vs. Supersessionism debate on faith,” he wrote.

The Rev. Douglas Wilson, who serves as senior pastor at Christ Church (CREC) in Moscow, Idaho, rebuked conservative podcaster Candace Owens during Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest in Phoenix, Arizona, last week, and explained the various Christian schools of thought regarding modern Israel.

Speaking during a half-hour panel with TheBlaze host Steve Deace that was moderated by Dr. James Orr, a British theologian, Wilson also condemned antisemitism among Christians, which he defined as “Jew hate” and an example of sinful “backsliding.”

But he also noted that being critical of the Israeli government is not necessarily antisemitic, nor is urging Jews to believe in Jesus Christ.

“I don’t like using the term ‘antisemitism’ when I can help it, because like the term ‘racism,’ it has been greatly devalued through numerous misapplications,” Wilson said. “It is not antisemitism to disagree with [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu. It is not antisemitism for Christians to want Jews to believe in Christ. It is not antisemitism to differ with Israeli policies in the West Bank.”

Wilson said that antisemitism instead often emerges “in the way in which such things are held and argued.”

“Actual antisemitism, or what I prefer to call ‘Jew hate,’ is what happens in my Twitter feed anytime I mention Israel. Jew hate is October 7 [2023 terror attack]. Jew hate is Bondi Beach. It is the belief that Jews are a uniquely malevolent force for evil in the world, and that this fact justifies a one-size-fits-all negative response to anything related to them,” he said.

Professing Christians who are “backsliding into Jew hate” out of anger toward Jews for rejecting the Gospel, Wilson argued, are themselves disobeying Jesus and likely serving only to further harden hearts.

“Jews are the enemy, it is thought, but Jesus commanded His followers to love their enemies, which you are manifestly not doing,” he said of such Christians. “So why should Jews listen to Jesus if you don’t?”

In a hypothetical argument he later claimed was intended as a “reductio [ad absurdum]” to illustrate how Owens draws conclusions, Wilson floated the theory that the Israeli Defense Forces conducted its famous two-hour attack against the USS Liberty in 1967 because the CIA under former President Lyndon B. Johnson was playing both sides in the Six-Day War.

Wilson contrasted legitimate debate about Israel as it relates to foreign policy with unsubstantiated conspiracy theories such as those floated by Owens, who has suggested Charlie Kirk’s assassination could have involved the Israeli government or an internal TPUSA plot, among other possibilities.

“Debates about whether the organizers of this conference were complicit in the murder of Charlie are in another category entirely, a category best described as demented or unhinged,” Wilson said to applause.

“If passive aggressive gaslighting insolence had a basketball team, it is long since time to retire Candace’s jersey. Those assertions are not in the same universe at all, and so the latter one must never be allowed to hide under the former.”

Wilson, who is Reformed in his theology and adheres to a postmillennial eschatology, also took time “to lay out some basic definitions” regarding different historical Christian views regarding Israel.

Noting that Zionism as a Jewish movement largely emerged during the 19th century among both observant and non-observant Jews who wished to return to their ancestral homeland, Wilson went on to define “Christian Zionists” as “Christians, usually dispensationalists, who believe that the reestablishment of Israel in 1948 was the fulfillment of prophecy, and that Jews have a divine mandate to hold the land.”

“De facto Zionists,” Wilson explained, “are those who don’t believe that the promise to Abraham in Genesis 12 has anything to do with it, but who recognize that almost 8 million Jews are there now with the same right to defend their territory that any other country would have.”

He likened such a practical view to his own situation of living in Idaho, despite not believing in the doctrine of Manifest Destiny that drove American westward expansion and made his state possible.

Wilson also delineated the differences between various subsets of “replacement theology” or “supersessionism,” which the Encyclopedia Britannica defines as the belief that “Christians have replaced the Jewish people as the chosen people of God or as the heirs of the divine-human covenant described in the Hebrew Bible.”

Wilson defined it as “the view that the Church is Israel now, and it’s the lawful heir of all the covenant blessings promised in the Old Testament. This is the view that in Romans 11, the Apostle Paul described the one olive tree as straddling both eras: Old Testament and New.”

“This is the view of most Reformed or covenantal theologians, and it is the view that I hold,” he said.

Wilson noted a distinction between “hard supersessionism” — which believes “today’s ethnic Jews are now entirely outside God’s covenantal dealings, and are just one more tribe living alongside the Japanese, the Swedes and the Navajo” — and “soft supersessionism,” which he said “is the idea that although unbelieving Jews were cut out of the olive tree because of their unbelief, Paul prophesied that they would be grafted back in again, which would be a great spiritual blessing to the entire world.”

The pastor said he is among the latter group of supersessionists.

Last summer, Wilson weighed in on a viral clash between political commentator Tucker Carlson and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, about the Christian duty toward modern Israel.

Describing both of their views on the issue as “problematic,” he affirmed the historical Reformed position that the Jewish people have a future role to play in the redemptive story, but also noted the complexity of delineating between the Jewish people and the modern political entity of Israel.

“The Bible, taken as a whole, does indicate that there is a role to play for the Jewish people yet to come in Israel,” Wilson said at the time.

Calvin Robinson, a British-born Catholic cleric who attended AmFest, noted that the panel with Wilson and Deace was the only debate about Israel to feature at the conference, which was marked by fierce infighting over the issue among prominent conservative voices such as Carlson, Ben Shapiro, Megyn Kelly, Steve Bannon and others.

Robinson suggested in an X post that the fractures within TPUSA and among conservatives generally indicate simmering generational tensions over the post-WWII consensus regarding Israel.

“Where the old hats can see Jews as especially persecuted because of WWII, Gen Z tend to see that as giving one particular group special treatment, in a world where so many are persecuted. That is before you even get into the Christian Zionist vs. Supersessionism debate on faith,” he wrote.