The son of pastor Douglas Wilson of the controversial Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, and a close associate have made significant inroads into mainstream culture in America with a successful streaming cartoon.
The Guardian has previously reported on how the church, which aims to create a theocracy in the US, has increased its power and influence in its home town, while also campaigning vociferously against efforts to curb the coronavirus pandemic. Those developments come amid a broader rise in the right wing across the US.
Prominent individuals within Christ Church are using television and book publishing to enter US popular culture and promote Christian messages.
Wilson’s son Nathan Wilson and his manager and close associate, Aaron Rench, have simultaneously been attempting to crowdfund a creationist nature documentary starring Douglas Wilson’s brother, Gordon, and have continued to market young adult fiction through a mainstream publisher.
The pair have in recent years taken control of two Christ Church-associated businesses through LLCs which have limited legal and financial reporting obligations.
The reporting has raised questions about the extent to which church-aligned businesses and crowdfunding campaigns may be advancing its agenda in the arena of popular culture.
Guardian investigations have shown how Christ Church has accumulated power, concentrated in the hands of Douglas Wilson’s family and a small number of other individuals.
The relationship between Nathan Wilson and Rench is evident across a sprawling and lucrative enterprise which incorporates publishing, media production and real estate.
Wilson, writing as ND Wilson, is the author of a number of bestselling young adult and children’s books. Some of these are published by Canon Press, a conservative Christian publisher that Wilson and Rench bought from the church in 2013.
But most are published with mainstream publishers, including two trilogies and two standalone books with Penguin Random House and one trilogy with Katherine Tegen Books, an imprint of Harper Collins.
Rench, who is a member of Christ Church along with his brother, Gabriel, serves as Nathan Wilson’s literary agent through his own Leaptide Literary group.
The pair have also branched out into media production.
This year saw the fourth season of an animated children’s program, Hello Ninja, screened on Netflix. The series is based on a picture book authored by Wilson, the original version of which was published by the children’s imprint of Canon Press.
The books, and the series, depict children who transform into ninjas and enter a magical kingdom.
Both Rench and ND Wilson are listed as executive producers of the first series of the program in 2019. Wilson remains credited as an executive producer and is credited as creator of the show. Netflix is listed as the production company, but the pair’s production company, Gorilla Poet Productions (GPP), has elsewhere been identified as a co-producer.
Previously, along with other adaptations of ND Wilson books, GPP has been involved with culture war documentaries centred on Douglas Wilson.
In 2008, GPP and Rench produced Collision, which chronicled a series of debates between Wilson and the late writer and celebrity atheist Christopher Hitchens.
Then, in 2015, GPP was associated with another film, The Free Speech Apocalypse, which chronicled events at Indiana University in 2012 when students and others protested against a Wilson speech on the grounds of what they saw as his homophobia.
More recently, Rench and Wilson have been seeking crowdfunding for a nature documentary series, The Riot and the Dance, which is set to showcase the creationist views of Gordon Wilson – Nathan’s uncle, Douglas’s brother and senior fellow of natural history at the Christ Church-aligned college New Saint Andrews.
Kristin Du Mez is professor of history at Calvin University and author of Jesus and John Wayne, a critical history of white evangelical Christianity in the United States, which includes scrutiny of Douglas Wilson’s leadership of Christ Church.
Asked about Wilson’s publishing and media enterprises, Du Mez said: “Conservative evangelicals have a long history of advancing their religious and political values through popular culture.”
She added that evangelicals produced media for other evangelicals seeking to shield themselves and their families from the “corrupting influences” in secular culture. As a result, Du Mez wrote that “it’s always good to follow the money”.
“Since there is a captive market that has been told to distrust ‘secular’ culture, there is a lot of money to be made in producing religious-themed products, particularly those aimed at conservative audiences,” Du Mez concluded.
In an SEC filing which describes the crowdfunding effort, the rationale for the series is laid out.
“For too long nature documentaries, a multi-billion-dollar sector in the entertainment industry, have been completely controlled by groups who do not believe in a divine creator,” the document says.
The documents show that while all of the production costs will be raised from crowdfunding patrons, who will receive equity and a share of profits in the case of a successful production, Wilson and Rench would retain over 90% of voting shares in the company after making no cash contribution. The pair say that they created the series and their contribution was not monetary but was instead their time and skill.
Nathan Wilson did not respond to a request for comment.
Netflix declined to comment on whether they were still in partnership with Wilson and Rench, or the nature of any partnership.
Footnote added 28 November 2022: An earlier version of the article stated that Aaron Rench and Nathan Wilson had entered into “complicated financial arrangements which appeared to divert money to a troubled charity and silently taken control of a number of Christ Church-associated businesses”. We did not intend to suggest any impropriety on their behalf and apologise to Mr Rench and Mr Wilson for any concern caused.
The article also states that Mr Wilson did not respond to a request for comment. He and Mr Rench have asked us to clarify that Mr Rench intended any response from him to be on behalf of them both.
This article was amended on 7 January 2022. An earlier version inaccurately suggested the books and films produced by Nathan Wilson and Aaron Rench came from Christ Church, while the sub-heading wrongly implied Rench was a church “leader”. The article was amended at the same time to clarify that Hello Ninja was published by an imprint of Canon Press after Wilson and Rench acquired that publishing venture from the church in 2013. A section relating to the pair’s business affairs was also re-edited, and their position regarding the share allocation of the company behind The Riot and the Dance was added. GPP is owned by both Wilson and Rench, and while it was involved with The Free Speech Apocalypse, it did not produce the film as an earlier version implied. Collision was released in 2009 but produced the previous year. The article was also amended on 29 November 2022 to further clarify, with regard to the documentary production company, that Wilson and Rench would “retain” (rather than “be allocated”) more than 90% of voting shares, and to make clear it was the “original version” of Hello Ninja that was published by Canon Press. The subheading was also revised to better reflect the article.