Pastor at Doug Wilson's church plant says married women give up their right to vote
An Idaho pastor linked to self-identified Christian nationalist Douglas Wilson has argued that women forfeit their right to vote when they get married.
Pastor Toby Sumpter of King’s Cross Church in Moscow made the argument during an episode of his "CrossPolitic" podcast in which he argued in support of repealing the 19th Amendment, which gave American women the right to vote in 1920.
Sumpter said despite the outrage over such positions, women’s right to vote in the U.S. is still limited when it comes to governmental affairs. “The irony, of course, is that there's all kinds of things that women can't vote for,” he said. “Women are not allowed to vote for any bill in Congress. Female citizens can't vote for any of those bills; only elected representatives and senators can vote, as far as I know, unless you are talking about a pure democracy where every last thing is voted on by all the people.”
Offering an example of his point about a woman voting through the selection of her husband, Sumpter added that, under a constitutional republic, voters “elect a representative and that representative then votes for you.”
“So when you get married, what you are saying is, 'I’m choosing this man to be my representative,'” he added.
In an Aug. 11 post, Sumpter elaborated a bit on his views, in which he pointed to the nation's historic high view of women prior to the suffrage movement in the early 20th century. “First, let us recall that our country functioned for almost 150 years before the 19th Amendment,” he wrote. “And while there were no doubt sins and evils needing correction during that time, the reputation of America, particularly with regard to how it viewed and treated women, was incredibly high.”
He also highlighted God’s design for the family and the foundational role it plays in shaping culture and society at large. “The old Christian notion is that God made the world in such a way that it flourishes when we run along those grooves,” he wrote. “One of those grooves is the goodness and blessing of family, and when that family is flourishing, it is a great blessing when a man can say, ‘As for me and my house … ’”
In an Aug. 15 X post, Sumpter argued that precedent for his position can be found in the New Testament, where widowers and other women were the head of their household. He pointed to Lydia, a prominent figure in early Christianity whose conversion to the faith was memorialized in the book of Acts. “We vote by household in our churches, and there are often single women, widows, or divorced women who are the heads of their households,” Sumpter wrote. “Lydia was apparently the head of her household in Acts 16. The issue isn't male vs. female; it's household vs. societal fragmentation.”
The Christian Post reached out to Sumpter for comment Monday. This story will be updated if a response is received.
Sumpter is listed as the senior pastor at King’s Cross Church, which was planted by Wilson’s Christ Church in 2022 and is also a member church of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC).
His podcast appearance comes just days after an Aug. 7 interview with CNN, in which Wilson said he supports a repeal of the 19th Amendment. "Women are the kind of people that people come out of," Wilson said. "No, it doesn't take any talent to simply reproduce. Biologically, the wife and mother, who is the chief executive of the home, is entrusted with three or four or five eternal souls."
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who recently attended Wilson’s church plant in Washington, D.C., later highlighted Wilson’s CNN segment with an X post that read, “All of Christ for All of Life.”
