# Theobros A 2020s online network of **young, mostly Reformed Protestant Christian men** building a self-conscious Christian-Nationalist movement through podcasts, Substacks, X.com discourse, conferences, and an emerging set of institutions. The label is partly self-adopted, partly journalistic shorthand. There is no membership list, no headquarters, no statement of faith — but there is a recognizable cohort with overlapping personnel, shared theological premises (broadly Reformed, postmillennial, theonomy-friendly, [[Antifeminism]], patriarchally framed), shared media outlets (Wilson-orbit Canon Press, *American Reformer*, *Crisis Magazine*-adjacent Catholics, NatCon and TPUSA Faith conferences, the Wolfe / Isker / Abbotoy podcast network), and shared political ambitions (substantive Christian governance over the United States, often framed as restoration of "Christendom"). The Theobros are the **contemporary online expression of [[Dominionism]]'s postmillennial wing**, fed by [[Christian Reconstructionism]]'s intellectual tradition and [[Christian Nationalism]]'s political project, and operating in functional alliance with the broader post-2016 Trump-era right via figures like [[JD Vance]], [[Russell Vought]], [[Mike Johnson]], [[Pete Hegseth]], and the [[National Conservatism]] coalition. Their cultural style — meme-heavy, online-pugilistic, deliberately abrasive on questions of sex and race, drawing on [[Manosphere]] aesthetics fused with hard-Reformed theology — is what most distinguishes them from older religious-right generations. This entry maps the network as it stands in 2025–26 and connects it to the doctrinal and institutional infrastructure documented elsewhere in the vault. ## Origin and Naming The Theobros emerged organically online in the late 2010s and early 2020s out of overlapping social-media networks in Reformed evangelical circles — particularly podcasts and Twitter/X accounts associated with **[[Douglas Wilson]]'s Moscow, Idaho** orbit (Christ Church, [[New Saint Andrews College]], Canon Press, Blog & Mablog), Reformed Baptist online discourse, and the new postmillennial-Christian-Nationalist intellectual current that produced **[[Stephen Wolfe]]'s *[[The Case for Christian Nationalism]]*** (Canon Press, 2022). The term itself was used internally before going mainstream — there is even a 2024 episode of *The American Reformer Podcast* titled "TheoBros (ft. Doug Wilson)." The mainstream press adoption arrived with **Kiera Butler's *Mother Jones* feature "To Understand JD Vance, You Need to Meet the TheoBros"** (September 2024), which definitively established the label in journalism. Subsequent coverage at *LGBTQ Nation* (September and December 2024), *Crooks and Liars*, *The Forward* (on the network's antisemitism problem), and elsewhere consolidated the Theobros as a recognizable category. The Mother Jones characterization, widely re-quoted: the Theobros are "extremely online young Christian men who want to end the [[Nineteenth Amendment]], restore public flogging, and make America white again." The cohort would mostly contest the third clause, partially contest the second, and largely embrace the first (or its functional equivalent — restricting voting and office-holding to "household heads" or "baptized men" along Wolfe / Reconstructionist lines). ## Who Counts There is no list, but a working census of the most prominent Theobro-aligned figures: ### The Patriarch and the Anchor **[[Douglas Wilson]]** (b. 1953, Moscow ID). The 71-year-old "patriarch figure" of the network — pastor of [[Christ Church Moscow]], founder of [[CREC]], New Saint Andrews College, and Canon Press; voluminous blogger (Blog & Mablog) and writer on marriage, manhood, theology, education, and politics. Wilson is generationally older than the Theobros proper, but he is the institutional and theological anchor of the network — Christ Church / NSA / Canon Press is the principal physical hub, and Wilson's pastoral and theological output is the substrate the younger Theobro figures build on. Wilson has explicitly disavowed the [[Christian Reconstructionism]] label while operating within a theonomy-friendly framework that academic observers find indistinguishable; the same pattern obtains for "Theobros." ### The Theological Anchor **[[Stephen Wolfe]]** (b. ~1983). Former Princeton postdoc, US Army veteran, PhD in political science. His ***The Case for Christian Nationalism*** (Canon Press, 2022) is the cohort's seminal text — a 480-page argument for a substantive Protestant-Christian-Nationalist political theology drawing on Reformed tradition (Calvin, Althusius, Junius), and arguing for an "ethnic" understanding of nationhood, restricted franchise, executive Christian magistrates, and (in the most-cited passages) the legitimacy of executing heretics in an ideal Christian nation. Wolfe has stated publicly that "Our separation from [J.D.] Vance is not that far," indicating both the alliance with the Vance vice-presidency and the sense that mainstream Republican politics is moving toward Theobro positions rather than the reverse. ### The Capital Allocator **[[Joshua Abbotoy]]**. Executive director of ***American Reformer*** (the network's flagship intellectual journal-and-podcast) and managing partner of ***[[New Founding]]***, a venture capital fund and real estate firm explicitly oriented toward building Christian-aligned communities, businesses, and territory. Abbotoy is the network's most consequential institutional and capital actor — the project of building Christian "polity" requires Christian capital, Christian land, and Christian businesses, and Abbotoy's New Founding is the principal vehicle for that. See [[Christian Network State]] for the broader framework. ### The Pastoral / Cultural Front **[[Andrew Isker]]**. Pastor of 4th Street Evangelical Church in Waseca, Minnesota; co-author with Andrew Torba of *Christian Nationalism* (2022) — the [[Andrew Torba]]-Isker book that popularized the explicit "Christian Nationalist" self-identification. Isker is also the founder of **Highland Rim Project** in middle Tennessee — an explicitly stated effort to build a geographic concentration of like-minded Christian families. Highland Rim is a small-scale practical instantiation of the broader [[Christian Network State]] project. Isker's online presence is among the most pugilistic in the cohort and has produced repeated antisemitism controversies. ### The Political Operatives and Politicians The Theobros' most consequential outside-the-tent figure is **[[JD Vance]]** — Vice President since January 2025, Catholic convert (2019) shaped by [[Patrick Deneen]] and the [[Catholic Post-Liberalism]] / [[Catholic Post-Liberalism]] currents that share substantial ground with the Protestant Theobros. Wolfe has said the separation between Vance and the Theobros "is not that far"; Vance has shared platforms with Wilson at NatCon. **[[Russell Vought]]** ([[Trump II]] OMB director, [[Project 2025]] architect) operates within the broader cohort's political orbit. **[[Mike Johnson]]** (Speaker of the House since 2023) shares the cohort's Reformed Baptist theology and substantial parts of its political program. **[[Pete Hegseth]]** (Secretary of Defense) has CREC-adjacent involvements that have brought the Theobros into Pentagon-relevance. **[[Josh Hawley]]** has appeared at NatCon alongside Wilson. ### The Extended Theobro Network Other figures regularly identified with the cohort: - **[[Nate Fischer]]** — co-founder of [[New Founding]] with Abbotoy - **[[William Wolfe]]** (no relation to Stephen) — Reformed Baptist seminary-trained Trump I State Department alumnus, founder of Center for Baptist Leadership - **[[Andrew Torba]]** — CEO of Gab; author with Isker of *Christian Nationalism* (2022); operates the Theobro-aligned social-media platform that hosts much of the cohort's online discourse - **[[Lance Wallnau]]** — bridges into NAR territory (postmillennial dominionist on the charismatic side); regularly platformed alongside Theobro figures - **[[Matt Walsh]]** — [[The Daily Wire]] commentator; not Reformed but operates in the broader cultural alliance; antifeminism, anti-LGBTQ, sympathetic to Christian-Nationalist framing - **[[David Goodwin]]** — Christian classical education leader (Association of Classical Christian Schools president); the educational infrastructure side of the project - **The "American Reformer" podcast circuit** — Tim Bayly, Doug Ponder, Andrew Sandlin, Eric Conn, Brian Sauvé, Joel Webbon, and many other young Reformed pastors and writers whose podcasts and Substacks form the cohort's distributed media infrastructure ## Theological Profile The Theobros are not theologically monolithic but cluster around a recognizable set of commitments: - **Reformed Protestant** — Presbyterian, Reformed Baptist, or CREC-evangelical. Strong commitment to the Reformed confessional tradition (Westminster, Three Forms of Unity, 1689 London Baptist Confession). - **Postmillennial** — Christ returns *after* a long period of Christian flourishing. The kingdom is built before His return. (See [[Christian Eschatology]].) - **[[Theonomy]]-friendly** — receptive to the application of Old Testament civil law to modern states, even when not always working out a strict Bahnsenian framework. - **[[Dominionism]]** — committed to comprehensive Christian governance over civil society, family, education, and economy. - **Patriarchal** — male headship in marriage, household, church, and (in some articulations) civil polity. Restriction or repeal of women's suffrage is openly discussed. - **[[Antifeminism]]** — feminism is read as the principal cultural pathology of the modern era and as the engine of broader civilizational decline. - **Christian Nationalist** — substantive Protestant-Christian establishment in civil order; rejection of post-1965 secular liberal pluralism. - **Cessationist or non-charismatic** — generally skeptical of contemporary charismatic gifts, distinguishing them from their NAR alliance partners on this point even while making operational common cause. - **Calvin-revivalist** — deep engagement with 16th-century Reformed political theology (Calvin, Althusius, Beza, Junius, Rutherford); often direct application of these sources to 21st-century US political questions. The cohort's relationship to **race** is more contested. The mainstream public position is officially anti-racist; the explicit positions in *The Case for Christian Nationalism* and adjacent literature defend "ethnic nation" framings that critics characterize as functionally white-nationalist while the authors insist they are not racial. The actual practical politics — restricted franchise, restricted citizenship, restoration of "the historic American nation" — overlap substantially with white-nationalist policy goals even when the theological framing is different. The recurring antisemitism controversies (documented in *The Forward*, *LGBTQ Nation*, *Right Wing Watch*) suggest that the official anti-racist position is not always policed within the cohort. ## Institutional Infrastructure The Theobros are building an **institutional alternative ecosystem** rather than trying to capture mainstream evangelical institutions: **Theological education**: New Saint Andrews College (Wilson, Moscow ID); Davenant Institute; Westminster Theological Seminary (already exists; partial alignment). **Publishing**: Canon Press (Wilson); American Reformer; the *Center for Baptist Leadership*; an emerging set of Substack-and-podcast outlets that bypass legacy evangelical publishing infrastructure ([[Christianity Today]], Crossway, Baker, etc.). **Capital**: [[New Founding]] (Abbotoy and Fischer's VC + real estate firm); explicitly oriented toward building Christian-aligned businesses and territory. **Territory**: Highland Rim Project (Isker, middle Tennessee); the Christ Church / Moscow ID concentration; smaller emerging "intentional community" projects in TN, ID, FL, and elsewhere. See [[Christian Network State]] for the broader vision. **Education**: Association of Classical Christian Schools ([[David Goodwin]]); the rapidly growing classical Christian school movement is the educational pipeline feeding the next generation of Theobro-aligned families. **Conferences and platforms**: [[National Conservatism]] (NatCon — [[Yoram Hazony]] / [[Edmund Burke Foundation]]); TPUSA Faith ([[Charlie Kirk]]'s religious-political affiliate); CREC denominational gatherings; the *American Reformer* annual conference. **Political relationships**: Vance vice-presidency; Vought OMB; Hegseth Pentagon adjacency; Speaker Johnson; Senate alignment with Hawley, Lee, Schmitt, others. The combined effect: the Theobros are not asking permission of mainstream evangelicalism to operate. They are building **parallel infrastructure** at every level — education, publishing, capital, territory, political — and operating in functional alliance with elements of the Trump administration that share their broader project. ## What Distinguishes the Theobros A few features that make the Theobros distinctive within the broader US religious right: 1. **They are extremely online.** Their primary communication infrastructure is X.com, podcasts, Substack, and [[Telegram]] — not pulpits and televangelist networks (the older Religious Right's medium). This produces a different cultural register: meme-fluent, snark-heavy, internet-warrior style. 2. **They are unembarrassed by hard positions.** Earlier religious-right generations softened or hedged on questions like women's suffrage, theocratic governance, executing heretics, restoring patriarchy. The Theobros say these things openly. The bluntness is partly a generational reaction against perceived evangelical capitulation; partly a strategic bet that audiences will reward maximalist clarity. 3. **They are postmillennial in a generation that mostly isn't.** Most older evangelicals are dispensationalist; most younger evangelicals are sliding amillennial. The Theobros are reviving a postmillennial confessionalism that was minoritarian for most of the 20th century. 4. **They are building parallel institutions.** Not capturing existing institutions — building new ones (NSA, American Reformer, New Founding, Highland Rim). 5. **They have functional access to political power.** The Vance vice-presidency means the cohort has a sympathetic ear at the second-highest level of US executive government. This is unprecedented for a movement most Americans had never heard of before 2024. 6. **They span Protestant and Catholic.** Although primarily Reformed Protestant, the Theobros operate in functional alliance with the [[Catholic Post-Liberalism]] and Catholic-postliberal cohort (Vance, Vermeule, Deneen, Ahmari) — sharing political project even where theological premises differ. This trans-confessional [[New Right]] religious alliance is itself novel. ## Critiques ### From Mainstream and Center-Right Christianity [[Russell Moore]] (*Christianity Today*), [[David French]] (*The New York Times* / *The Dispatch*), [[Tim Keller]] (during his lifetime), Andy Stanley, and a substantial cohort of mainstream evangelical leaders have rejected the Theobros' project as theologically distorted and politically destructive to Christian witness. The critique typically focuses on the cohort's misreading of New Testament political theology, the rejection of pluralist constitutional democracy, and the recurring association with antisemitism and racial-ethnic exclusivism. ### From the Catholic Postliberal Right Even within the broader New Right religious cohort, there are tensions. The Catholic-postliberal wing (some Vermeule readers, the Josias contributors) have published critical-of-Wolfe responses arguing that *The Case for Christian Nationalism* is sectarian Protestant in a way incompatible with the broader Christian / Catholic political tradition. ### From Secular Critics Sara Diamond's framework of [[Dominionism]] (1989), Frederick Clarkson's PRA work, Katherine Stewart's *The Power Worshippers* (2019) and *The Money Behind the Madness* (2025), and the broader religion-journalism cohort (Sarah Posner, Diana Butler Bass, Anthea Butler, Julie Ingersoll) place the Theobros in continuity with the older Reconstructionist project and treat them as the contemporary expression of the theocratic religious right that PRA has been documenting for thirty years. ### From the Theobros About Themselves There is also a certain amount of internal Theobro-on-Theobro critique — Wolfe vs. Wilson on specific theological points, Reformed Baptist vs. Presbyterian vs. CREC tensions, "we should focus on building" vs. "we should focus on theology" disagreements. The cohort is not internally homogeneous; the operational alliance is real but the doctrinal and tactical disagreements are also real. ## Why the Theobros Matter A few hundred extremely-online Reformed pastors, podcasters, and intellectuals would not normally warrant a vault entry. The Theobros do for several reasons: 1. **They have institutionalized political access.** Through Vance, Vought, Johnson, Hegseth, and the broader Project 2025 / NatCon network, the cohort's ideas are being operationalized at the senior level of US executive government in 2025-26. 2. **They are the religious-right's intellectual pipeline.** Mainstream evangelical institutions (Baker Books, Christianity Today, the SBC seminaries) are not producing the religious-right's next generation of intellectual leaders. The Theobros are. 3. **They have working capital.** [[New Founding]], CREC institutional growth, the rapidly expanding classical Christian school movement, and adjacent capital sources mean the cohort has sustainable independent resources rather than dependence on legacy donor networks. 4. **They are building territory.** Highland Rim, the Moscow ID concentration, and adjacent projects represent the first serious *geographic* religious-right project since the historic [[Christian Identity]] / Patriot movement settlements — but operating with money, institutional respectability, and Senate-level political alliance the older Identity projects never had. (See [[Christian Network State]].) 5. **They are publicly arguing for things older religious-right figures were too cautious to say.** Restricting women's suffrage, executing heretics, restoring patriarchy as civil order, "ethnic nationhood" — these are mainstream topics in Theobro discourse in a way they have not been in mainstream evangelicalism since at least the early 20th century. The Theobros are, in short, **the contemporary face of the [[Dominionism]] / [[Christian Reconstructionism]] tradition in its most politically effective form to date**. ## See Also - [[Christian Nationalism]] — the political project the Theobros articulate - [[Christian Reconstructionism]] — the theological tradition the Theobros descend from - [[Christian Network State]] — the territorial-political project Abbotoy / Fischer / Isker are building - [[Dominionism]] — umbrella concept; postmillennial dominionism is the Theobros' political theology - [[Theonomy]] — the legal-application framework most Theobros operate within - [[Christian Eschatology]] — comparative analysis of postmillennialism vs. dispensationalism - [[Quiverfull]] — the demographic mechanism most Theobro-aligned families operate - [[Antifeminism]] — the cultural-political stance shared across the cohort - [[National Conservatism]] — the conference / institutional network where Theobros meet broader New Right figures - [[Catholic Post-Liberalism]] / [[Integralism]] — Catholic counterparts; functional political alliance partners - [[Douglas Wilson]] — patriarch figure; CREC and Canon Press - [[Stephen Wolfe]] — *The Case for Christian Nationalism* author; theological anchor - [[Joshua Abbotoy]] — *American Reformer* / [[New Founding]]; capital allocator - [[Andrew Isker]] — Highland Rim founder; pastoral / cultural front - [[Nate Fischer]] — [[New Founding]] co-founder - [[Andrew Torba]] — Gab CEO; co-author of *Christian Nationalism* with Isker - [[JD Vance]] — Vice President; the network's most consequential political ally - [[Russell Vought]], [[Pete Hegseth]], [[Mike Johnson]], [[Josh Hawley]] — administration / Capitol Hill alliance - [[CREC]] — institutional anchor denomination - [[New Founding]] — capital and territory infrastructure ## TODO / Stub Candidates - **People**: Stephen Wolfe (theological anchor), William Wolfe (no relation; Reformed Baptist political organizer), Eric Conn, Brian Sauvé, Joel Webbon, Doug Ponder, Tim Bayly, Andrew Sandlin (Center for Cultural Leadership), Kiera Butler (Mother Jones reporter who popularized "Theobros" externally) - **Organizations**: New Founding (Abbotoy + Fischer), Highland Rim Project (Isker, middle TN), American Reformer (publication and podcast), Center for Baptist Leadership (William Wolfe), Davenant Institute, Association of Classical Christian Schools - **Works**: Stephen Wolfe, *The Case for Christian Nationalism* (Canon Press, 2022); Torba & Isker, *Christian Nationalism* (2022); ongoing American Reformer essay corpus; *The Mother Jones* feature (Butler, September 2024)