OPINION: Stop supporting Christ Church 

Recently Christ Church has been in the local news quite a bit. Members of the church have been buying buildings around town and telling the residing businesses their leases will not be renewed. I haven’t lived in Moscow for too long, but I have already seen the effects of this.

The consistent growth of Christ Church is very dangerous to the culture and livelihood of everyone living in Moscow, and if we want to stop it, we have to hit them where they will notice, their wallets. 

Christ Church’s goal is to take over Moscow. This isn’t some conspiracy theory, it’s right on their website. Their mission statement says, “our desire is to make Moscow a Christian town through faithful and robust covenant renewal worship on the Lord’s Day.” 

They aren’t even hiding the fact that they want to take over this town, and right now they are succeeding at it. While they don’t have much leverage in local government, their members own a lot of businesses around town.  

Whenever I see a story about a building being sold to Christ Church, I always see the comment section filled with people annoyed with members of the church for buying up buildings and getting rid of beloved businesses.

Clearly, there’s a strong opposition to the church doing this, but I haven’t seen much dialogue about how we should be stopping this. We have to go after their money, and the best way to do this is to stop supporting businesses owned by members of Christ Church 

This is easier said than done, however. It’s a whole lot easier to just go to whatever business you need to and not do research about who owns it. It’s also really hard to find a place that shows what business are Christ Church owned.

It can also just be easier to shop at these businesses sometimes. Kind of like with Amazon, while it may not be as morally correct, it can just be easier to shop at these places. I don’t like buying things from Amazon, but a lot of time it’s either easier or cheaper. If there is a store or restaurant you frequent only to discover it’s owned by a Christ Church member or affiliate, it can be easier to continue going there.  

However, when you do support these businesses, you wouldn’t be just supporting their attempt to take over Moscow. You would be supporting the church who is led by Douglas Wilson, a terrible person who pushes his outdated and horrendous views. 

Wilson has said and done some truly terrible things in his time leading Christ Church. Wilson and Christ Church have been vehemently against any sort of restrictions when it comes to COVID-19. They have been against masks and vaccines, alongside any governmental restrictions.  

In an August 2021 blog post titled “A Biblical Defense of Fake Vaccine IDs,” Wilson defended the use of fake vaccine cards. First, this is illegal. Forging a government document is a federal offense. It is also just fully lying at the risk of the entire community. If you are so strongly against the vaccine you are willing to commit a federal crime, you should just own it. You shouldn’t try to hide it. 

It won’t be easy to stop supporting the businesses or going to restaurants that are owned by members of the church, but if people want a real way to do something to the church, they have to give it try. If people can stop giving them money, they will start to notice.

Mark Warren can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @MarkWarren1832   

This column has been updated for accuracy.