CNN tried to smear this pastor — but exposes the truth about the left instead

The media’s newest attempt to villainize Christianity proves why such attacks rarely — if ever — succeed. And in this case, the attempted smear revealed more about the attacker than the attacked.

Enter CNN and Idaho pastor Doug Wilson.

It’s an uncomfortable truth for the gatekeepers of power. In this battle, conviction, honesty, and truth win.

CNN recently profiled Wilson and spotlighted his views on gender roles, sexual morality, and politics, cherry-picking his most provocative answers and stripping them of nuance.

But how CNN framed Wilson’s ideas revealed the true motive for the profile: He’s a “Christian nationalist” with “controversial views,” and —gasp! — his influence is growing, therefore we must tar and feather him. The profile even went to great lengths to connect Wilson to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who praises Wilson and attended a Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches in Tennessee. Wilson co-founded the CREC, which recently planted a new church in Washington, D.C.

Reaction to the profile was dramatic and predictable.

But in trying to portray Wilson — and, by extension, conservative Christians — as dangerous, CNN accidentally exposed something far more telling: the fragility of the progressive worldview.

Moral amnesia

CNN didn’t profile Wilson by accident.

The network specifically targeted him because he represents so much of what it opposes. And he is perfect for the role: the unapologetic patriarch who stands against the sexual revolution, envisions a Christian world, and refuses to bend his knee to the latest secular creed. The point of the profile wasn’t to better understand Wilson or his theology, but to sound a warning that his worldview is a threat to the anti-God secularism that progressivism serves.

Here’s the irony: The framing and subsequent outrage assumes that Wilson’s views are some bizarre novelty. But they’re not.

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For most of history, Wilson’s views would be considered unremarkable.

A Christian who desires the entire world to know Christ and to follow Him? Of course. A Christian who preaches biblical sexual ethics? Wouldn’t expect anything less. A Christian who affirms a traditional view of the family? It’s exactly what you expect.

Whether or not you agree with Wilson, his views are hardly alien to America or Christianity.

This interview demonstrates the collision between the moral memory of the past and the progressive sensibilities of the present. Progressivism has moved the goal posts so far in such a short amount of time that views our recent ancestors held are now treated as existential threats.

Clarity wins

But why Wilson? And why now?

You don’t need to agree with him to see what’s happening here: The elite view Wilson and other Christians like him as a threat, so they give him a spotlight to “expose” him.

The implied question underneath the interview is: How can someone possibly believe this stuff?!

And that’s why this interview is fascinating.

On one hand, progressives, the legacy media, and those entrenched in power look down upon Wilson for having “backward” and “outdated” views, which they would describe as a “threat to democracy.” But there sits CNN reporter Pamela Brown across from Wilson asking her loaded questions — precisely because Americans are no longer buying what the left is selling.

You know this is true not because of what Wilson said but how he said it.

Wilson spoke with clarity — no flinching, PR-friendly slogans, or euphemisms. He didn’t try to hide his views but spoke plainly. It’s proof that progressivism is lacking answers, running out of influence, and grasping at villains because it can’t defend its own failing moral vision.

Utopia’s lies

The progressive project isn’t collapsing because Christians like Wilson are attacking it (though he is). It’s collapsing because people are seeing it for what it is.

For decades, the left promised liberation, enlightenment, and progress. People were told that if they abandoned the “oppression” of Christianity, rejected the “old” moral codes, and embraced the “right side of history,” life would be utopia.

RELATED: The left’s new anti-Christian smear backfires

DOMINIC GWINN/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images

But the fruit of the progressive project speaks for itself. Instead of flourishing, Americans were handed confusion, division, and despair.

The evidence is everywhere.

The loneliness epidemic. The crises of mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual health. The breakdown of community. The sense that all of the “freedom” that progress promised has only left us less happy, less rooted, and less sure of who we are.

This is why Christianity is a threat to the progressive project. Christians speak with conviction about God, family, and moral order. It offers an alternative to the chaos of “progress,” and the left cannot tolerate a rival vision for the good life.

Except, this one actually works — because it is true.

Progress on trial

CNN thought it was shining a spotlight on a fringe figure with alleged influence over the government. It was an attempt to fearmonger about “Christian nationalism.”

But what is actually illuminated is the abject failure of the leftist worldview. The progressive narrative that dominated our culture for generations hasn’t delivered on any of its promises. Instead, it has made our culture sick and eroded what is true and good. The progressive utopia, it turns out, is hell.

That’s why this interview matters in a way CNN doesn’t understand.

You don’t have to agree with Wilson’s theology, tone, or methods. But he and other Christians have something the left doesn’t: a coherent moral vision that doesn’t shift with the cultural winds, one that doesn’t seek to uproot good in service of evil.

It’s an uncomfortable truth for the gatekeepers of power. In this battle, conviction, honesty, and truth win. And in this case, it’s why the attacker ends up attacked. The more they smear faithful Christians as extremists, the more obvious it becomes that progressivism has nothing good to offer — no map, no anchor, and no hope.

CNN tried to put Wilson on trial, but the real defendant was secular progressivism. And the verdict isn’t just “guilty” — it’s “failed beyond repair.”