Our Town Chapter 3: One Little Bacon-Wrapped Sausage

24:13Meribah Knight:More from Moscow after the break. Amazon Health AI presents Painful Thoughts I, um, I can't stop scratching my downtown Yeah, but I'm not itching to go downtown and tell a receptionist I'm here to talk about my downtown Some things you'd rather type than say out loud There's no question too embarrassing for Amazon Health AI Chat your symptoms and get virtual care 24-7 Healthcare just got less painful Everyone's talking about how AI is transforming work, especially in sales. While the landscape shifts, one thing remains the same, the thrill of closing a deal. Whether it's a gong or a confetti machine, every team has its celebration rituals.

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26:11Meribah Knight:Good morning. Good to meet you. Nice to meet you. We met Doug Wilson this past April at the headquarters of his publishing company, a large, newly renovated space right on Main Street that was once Moscow's flagship department store. I was waiting to see if you might know where my name came from. Meribah. Yes, it is in Arabia, the waters of Meribah. Yes. You passed the pop quiz. Wilson talks to a lot of journalists. He's really adept at it. He's charismatic, always ready to spar, tries to amuse. Tucked into the back corner of the room was Wilson's flamethrower. He likes to make videos where he straps it on and lights stuff on fire.

27:00Do you have any questions for us before we get started? No. Okay. You've been briefed. I've been briefed. Yeah.

27:06Meribah Knight:We chatted with Wilson for the better part of two hours about Moscow. Jesus said a house divided cannot stand. Being perpetually at daggers drawn is not good for any society, any community, any town. About his rise. So what's changed? So I think that the fundamental thing that has changed is the country. About his feelings on things like feminism. I hate feminism, so I just hate feminism. Sorry to hear that. And we talked about that one critical area where the church has fallen short, local politics. Moscow remains a liberal town, primarily in terms of elections. Wilson says the church doesn't have a master plan for local politics.

27:51Meribah Knight:Because if it did, it would be failing. So political power isn't necessary for what you ultimately want? No, it's not necessary. Correct. It's the caboose. But Wilson says it's only a matter of time before Kirkers get there. The people who are freaked out about us sometimes talk as though they're afraid of a military takeover or some sort of hostile takeover. And that's not a legit worry at all. But as regards to the substance of what they're worried about, yeah, they have got every reason to be worried. You will be able to take over. Yeah, take over sounds militaristic. I would just say organic growth.

28:32I have three kids. I have 18 grandkids. In the meantime, the local liberal paleo hippie vibe is 1.7 children. It seems to me that we're past the point of no return. This is what's going to happen. It's once there's enough people who are sharing your beliefs. Yeah, yeah. And what would we call that when it happens? I'd call it democracy.

29:03So right down here on the right is a place called Roman Roads. So just on this stretch, one block, two publishing houses.

29:12Meribah Knight:After our interview, Wilson took us on a walk down Main Street. On our way out, we passed a massive photo of Wilson with Charlie Kirk. Across, in big letters, it read, Give Everything. Oh, yeah. All right, so let's walk just one block up this way. We come to a coffee shop with its pride in Black Lives Matter signs, one Wilson refers to as the enemy coffee shop, not a place he'd go into. I'd rather not go there. Like the coffee shop we're approaching? And they'd probably rather not have me come in. Uh-huh. Do you go into businesses that aren't Kirker-owned? Oh, yeah, yeah. There's a bagel shop that I've not gone to recently, but it's a really, really good one.

29:55Meribah Knight:The shops on Main Street are intermingled. Some Kirker, some not. But those who know, know which is which. Taphouse, kitchen, some of our people. Just beyond, there's a 30 ,000 square foot building. So that's the old Cadillac Jack's nightclub. Soon to be New St. Andrew's North Campus. In the three blocks that we've walked, what's the footprint of Christ Church and also just the parishioners, if you want to break it down? Maybe say 30 to 40 percent, something like that. Meanwhile, Kirker's account for only about 11 percent of Moscow's population. Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits.

30:38Meribah Knight:Then we approached New St. Andrew's main building, the Foothold, the building Doug Wilson is still proud to talk about more than 20 years later. Its purchase, he told us earlier, was meant to send a message. It was symbolic. It was strategic. It was on Friendship Square. When we bought that building, we were doing, here, let's touch your eyeball. It was a bit of a provocation. And the Friendship Square was, before that, pot smokers and hacky sack players. Wilson would like New St. Andrews to take over even more of downtown. But a few years ago, the city passed a new law that limits schools to only two buildings downtown.

31:21Meribah Knight:This posed a roadblock for New St. Andrews expansion. But remember that hustle Wilson talked about? So over here on the left on the corner... Wilson pointed to a building across the street. We leased it. And to get around the law... So we created another business, Moscow Business Services, Moscow BS, and we farm our work out to them. That signature hustle. It found a loophole. The city was just yanking us around, so we were creative. Then, Wilson lights up. And then, have you seen the church hall? There's 30 acres there. Even more land on the eastern edge of Moscow. 30 acres on Dominion Road. They've just broken ground on the Tolkien Building.

32:14Meribah Knight:Wilson is a big Lord of the Rings fan. The resources to acquire this much land and the buildings downtown come from a few different revenue streams. There's the congregation itself. Our people are giving, tithing people. Kirkers are asked to give 10 % of their income. Then there's what comes from the publishing company, which Wilson says has an annual revenue in the single-digit millions. Christchurch's expansion is something locals have tracked for years now. They know it well at this point. They're very dedicated, they're very well-funded, and they definitely have their eyes on the prize. But then, the pandemic came, and Moscow suddenly saw Christchurch as an immediate threat, not a distant one.

33:02Meribah Knight:The town had been quick to implement mask mandates, bans on public gatherings, and Wilson openly defied both. He held church services, let a psalm sing outside City Hall with dozens of people, and a huge wooden cross. One local business owner said this behavior struck a nerve with locals, many of whom hadn't paid much mind to the church. Many of those people were like, now I do see this as a threat, you know, not seeing them as so harmless anymore. That they were making a statement like, we've got our own rulebook. We're not looking out for the rest of you. And so, in the wake of the pandemic, locals got more assertive.

33:44Meribah Knight:And after years of Kirker scooping up real estate, residents decided they could too. There's a couple of different groups. Locals began pooling their money, forming investment groups, so they're ready to buy the buildings themselves. The idea of it just being ready to go. And then there's one large one, it's like a co-op that's been set up. They ask for$1 ,000 from each investor, and I think it's really important. And as much as you can, buy real estate before they do. Yeah, put your money where your mouth is kind of a deal. Like, if you really do care about this, you can't just sit back and bitch about it.

34:25Complain about it.

34:27Meribah Knight:The investors are just getting started. So far, they haven't actually bought any real estate. They say they haven't been able to find the right building, one worth their money. But they're ready. Nonetheless, to some, it's hope enough that these groups are even forming. Their town is still progressive, still weird, still largely Moscow. They have not taken over the spirit of the town. You know, we are a pretty tight-knit community. It's been 26 years since Julia Parker, the former city council member, moved to Moscow. And she's learned a few things about herself and protecting her town. I think it's hard, but I think being vocal about it when you push back, you know, publicly, I think it's valuable because you know that they're going to keep pushing this narrative that they've already taken over.

35:18You know, that it's a done deal and that now your town is Wilsonville. It's been funny, you know, Moscow, Idaho seems like we're 30 years behind. in terms of fashion and, you know, like we're not on the cutting edge. But one thing we have done for the last 50 years is fought against Christian nationalism. And so, you know, here we are on the cutting edge.

35:47Meribah Knight:Yes, they were. Moscow, it turns out, is the place that others elsewhere could look to as a warning or as a beacon. People are asking, can that be replicated in other places? Can this be done elsewhere? My answer is yes. This is Wilson talking on the New Founding podcast about it. New Founding is that venture firm behind the Gainsborough Project. And I think that's the whole design. What we're trying to do here is a little hors d 'oeuvre. It's one little bacon-wrapped sausage. That's all it is. that is an indicator, a foretaste, that this is actually doable on planet Earth. I am now convinced that places like Moscow are the future, something that may go nationwide, Josh Abitoy wrote on social media in November 2022.

36:46Meribah Knight:Abitoy, the CEO of Ridge Runner, had just taken a trip to Moscow. He'd been invited to speak to the board of New St. Andrews College. While he was there, he met with Doug Wilson and spent time at Kirker Businesses. In one tweet, Abitoy described the vital joie de vivre of downtown Moscow. There's like a dynamism and an upward mobility in a community like that. Less than two years later, Abitoy began talking about a plan for his own Moscow. So we just got back from an undisclosed location in the mountains of Appalachia, scouting land and looking at doing a pretty big real estate deal up there. This would become the Highland Rim Project, the partnership between Ridge Runner and New Founding, Nate Fisher's venture capital firm.

37:41Meribah Knight:Back in Gainsborough, Diana Naff was connecting the dots. You know, well, there are definitely parallels. There are similarities that it all kind of gelled. Moscow had always been an experiment meant to be scaled. And now that experiment was in Tennessee, in Gainsborough, right outside Diana's door. I mean, we are a little test tube in a very wide-ranging experiment. But Nate Fisher and Josh Abitoy had a different timeline than Wilson. to build the America they want to live in, not in generations. They want to build it now. And one reason they think they can really troubled Diana. Moscow remains, they remain a political minority there.

38:29Moscow continued to be troublesome to Doug Wilson. So they remain in many ways at war with the town council and things. You know, the difference is that the community that we're building in, our values aligned. Our goal is something where we actually have the concentration where we can control the town.

38:50Meribah Knight:And we can control them. With a population that was mostly white, conservative, Christian, and no university in town to muck things up, Fisher and Abattoi assumed they'd found the perfect spot in Gainesboro. The warning I took from that was that, looking at Doug Wilson, When someone feels that they can control your community because they are convinced that you believe exactly the way they believe, that tells you that they've got big plans for your little piece of the world. Big plans for Gainsborough and beyond. What Moscow is, is an example of the kind of things that we should be building, right?

39:35Build Moscow is all over the place, right? It shouldn't be the only one.

39:39Meribah Knight:Andrew Isker, the Christian nationalist podcaster who is planning to build a church at the heart of the Ridge Runner community, also looked to Wilson for inspiration. Why is there no one else? Why is there no one else in evangelicalism that speaks that way, that says, we're not giving up. We're not going to surrender. Why is there no one else willing to fight? That's the reason why people are attracted to Moscow. Isker actually knew Doug Wilson well. He'd been his intern. He'd studied under Wilson in one of his munitions factories. At Greyfriars Hall, we know that the word of God is living and active.

40:17Meribah Knight:Greyfriars Hall, Wilson's seminary, was established a few years after New St. Andrews College. We live in times of turmoil and division. Times that require holy and faithful churches, led by mature pastors who preach God's word with courage and clarity. But many seminaries are in the business of training soft men in loser theology, teaching their students to unhitch from the Old Testament, drift with the cultural current, and live beneath the progressive gaze. Not to mention the progressive gaze. Gross. And now, Isker had brought all he'd learned, and then some, to Gainsborough. Light the fire.

40:59Sharpen the sword. Use the hammer. Our enemies have power here, and we know that they are willing to destroy us.

41:10Meribah Knight:He was there to carry on Wilson's mission. It's a spiritual war. I mean, we're doing war with demons here. To gather people to his new church, to the town. But even though Isker was trained by Wilson, it's not clear if his church would be welcome in Wilson's denomination. Wilson says it might not. He's very affable, very, I like him a lot. I had a good relationship with him while he was here. Now, Wilson says he's got some differences with Isker, and with other men of Isker's generation. From his perch, Wilson says he sees This explosion of white boy angst is all over the country. They're impatient for change, which he says is a problem.

42:02Meribah Knight:And while he and Isker didn't agree on everything while Isker was at Greyfriars Hall, in recent years... Something happened where he really flipped on that, abandoned libertarianism, and adopted the sort of conservatism that he embraces now. He, along with a number of alt-right or radical right younger guys, part of this is a generational thing, part of it is an ideological thing. I have differences with Andrew on the Jews and World War II and issues like that. And I believe that that emphasis is going to be something of a spoiler in any attempt to build a Ridge Runner thing. because Winston Churchill once said that a fanatic, I'm not calling Andrew this, but a fanatic is someone who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.

43:01And what's going to happen is you're going to get the kind of fish that you're baiting for. You're going to attract a lot of weirdos.

43:11Meribah Knight:Wilson says he's not anti-Semitic. Still, in his vision of a Christian America, a nation under biblical law, everyone who isn't Christian would be banned from public office. Christ or chaos, he says. As for Ridge Runner's broader venture... I wish them well. It's a great idea. Okay, good luck. I'll just say this, and this is going to sound like I'm slamming them. I'm not slamming them. I'm just saying, watch out for this. You don't want to come across like you're delivering Rivendell in an Ikea box. some of it is more organic and it's really easy to have a shiny for sure and prospectus great ideas but I think you really need an established worshipping community first airlifting the whole thing in is harder than establishing a beachhead and building it up slowly More after the break.

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45:19Meribah Knight:This episode sponsored by Homebase. Homebase is built for small businesses trying to do it all. The neighborhood coffee shop, the local gym, the family-run restaurant. With Homebase, you can schedule your team, track time, run payroll, and manage hiring from one easy app. So you can spend less time chasing timesheets and more time running the business your customers love. More than 150 ,000 small businesses already use Homebase to keep their teams on track. Start free at joinhomebase.com. Homebase, built for small businesses that do it all. Diana, having studied Moscow, was now reviewing what had happened in her hometown and regretting what she may have missed.

46:02Golly, one of the tracts of land that's been bought across from the high school, they're calling it Jennings Creek Colony.

46:09Meribah Knight:Ridge Runner is, that land belonged to his great-granddaddy. Her husband, Barry, his great-grandfather. And so the land that Abitoy first bought the 100 acres across from the high school, was that part of that land? I'm afraid to say it is. Those 99 acres, the farmland Brian Allen, the metal detectorist, so badly wanted to explore. Seeing it go toward that purpose is hard for him. Barry was kicking himself. And now, every time he drives by, which is just about every day, he has to look away. I have to look over to the school when I pass it now. I just can't, I cannot believe that I let, you know, I let that get by without getting it, you know, to keep them from, I wish I'd just known to talk to him.

47:07I thought it was quite heartbreaking, you know, to imagine they... Yeah, that's a tough one.

47:17Meribah Knight:Diana didn't want more heartbreak, not for Barry or anyone else in Gainesboro. If Moscow had taught her anything, it was that buying that building on the square, the one with the coffee shop that she'd heard Josh Apatoy had been interested in, That purchase had been a smart move. If we can send a clear message that, unlike what Nate Fisher said, this community cannot be controlled, if we can send that message, they won't try to move on to our town square and all the things that Doug Wilson did so long ago in Moscow. So Barry and Diana anxiously watched for other property to go on the market. They snatched up one house just off the town square on Murray Street, where Nancy Pruitt, the retired art teacher, lives, and where the podcasters live too.

48:11Meribah Knight:Then they bought a second house on Murray Street. Murray Street's very important. There's a lot of families that live on there that have lived there a long time. There's a great sense of community there. You know, it's just, it needs to be protected, that street. Diana and Barry have stayed ready, ready to strike again if needed. We do keep an ear to the ground. To prevent Ridge Runner from expanding its footprint downtown. Were we going to end up in that Moscow situation? I mean, Clash of the Titans, no. No, we're not, no. Doesn't mean that we'll be able to buy every building. Yeah, we can't buy them all, but, you know, we've saved one.

48:52Yeah. Yeah. And hopefully if it's not us, it'll be somebody else who actually really wants to start a business and benefit the community, not create more division because we just don't need it.

49:04Meribah Knight:But division was coming to Gainsborough by way of things far beyond the town or its control. In the fall of 2025, something happened that would change everyone's calculations. Next time on the final chapter of Our Town. They would like to see me die. They would like for my children to grow up fatherless. They would like that. They'd like my children to be harmed. He led people to believe that his neighbor, which was me, wanted harm to come to him. Have you always slept with a shotgun next year, Rob? I'm very grateful to the Secretary of War, Pete Hexeth, both for starting this meeting and for inviting me to be here with you today.

49:45At Christchurch in Moscow, we understand that worship is warfare. We mean that. I would never in a million years have expected that my hometown would be a place where this conflict is happening.

49:59Meribah Knight:To call it shocking is probably mild. I'm in my bedroom, sound asleep, and I hear something banging on the door. And I got up, and I hear, Ms. Pruitt, Ms. Pruitt, call 911. One.

50:41Meribah Knight:Laura Newcomb. Special thanks to Bloomberg's Alana Susnow, Bob Blau, Kristen Powers, Anthony Mancini, the Big Take podcast team, and Will Pearson at iHeart Podcasts. Additional thanks to Kristen Kobaz-Dume for her helpful insight as we researched and reported this episode. Our executive producer is Nicole Beamster-Boer.

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51:58Adio is designed for that moment. It's the agentic CRM that turns customer signals into actionable insights, helping you close deals faster with revenue agents and automations working around the clock. You'll have everything you need to scale your go-to market efforts. Elevate your wins with Adio. Start your free trial at adio.com slash iHeart.

52:17Meribah Knight:If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse. Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions. Yeah, I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed. Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.