BONUS SERIES: Our Town Chapter 3 | One Little Bacon-Wrapped Sausage

SPEAKER_1 (0:02)

Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio, News.

Meribah Knight (0:07)

Previously on Our Town.

Tucker Carlson (0:09)

I want to get back to the rage runner in the town that's being built, which I assume is a fascist Christian theocracy.

Andrew Isker (0:16)

That's what the TV news in Nashville said it.

Diana Naff (0:21)

This has been on my mind, it's on my mind every day.

Barry Naff (0:24)

She was determined to see what they were about.

Josh Abitoy (0:26)

The healthy, natural, human way of life, the Christian way of life.

Diana Naff (0:31)

The people backing these developments are very wealthy. If you follow new founding, and that takes you to Nate Fisher.

Nate Fisher (0:39)

I've put millions of dollars into it. And does your wife obey you?

Yes.

SPEAKER_9 (0:44)

And why are you a Christian?

Nate Fisher (0:46)

To fulfill that Genesis 1 dominion mandate, fill the earth and subdue it, take dominion.

Diana Naff (0:51)

Has Christian nationalism come to Jackson County?

Meribah Knight (1:04)

While Diana Naff, the Gainesboro local, was doing her deep dive to figure out who had come to her town and what they really wanted, she came across yet another podcast. It was an interview with Nate Fisher, the head of new founding, the venture capital firm helping build the far-right community near her home.

Diana Naff (1:24)

It was pretty early on, Nate Fisher. He was asked by an interviewer.

SPEAKER_10 (1:29)

Tell me about the Highland Rim Project.

Nate Fisher (1:33)

We own some land, we'll be buying more land and we're helping orchestrate moves of aligned people to the area, and then it will be a particular town where we'll actually have a lot.

Meribah Knight (1:42)

That town was of course Gainesboro, Diana's town.

Diana Naff (1:47)

Nate Fisher being asked by a reporter, what you're doing there in Gainesboro, Jackson County sounds a lot like what was done in Moscow.

SPEAKER_10 (1:55)

Like Moscow, Idaho in the East is kind of what it sounds like.

Diana Naff (2:00)

And he says, yes, there are parallels there.

Nate Fisher (2:03)

A lot of parallels to that.

Meribah Knight (2:07)

Moscow, Idaho, a town more than 2,000 miles away from Gainesboro. Did you know about Moscow before that?

Diana Naff (2:16)

No, it sent me researching and learning about Moscow.

Meribah Knight (2:22)

Moscow, Diana discovered, had been the start of an ambitious experiment, a prototype. And Gainesboro, it turned out, was meant to be the next iteration.

And if folks in Gainesboro wanted a glimpse into one possible future, if Ridge Runner, the developer, did plan its flag and gather its people, they could look to Moscow.

Diana Naff (2:45)

It certainly gives you a prescient vision of what this could become.

Meribah Knight (2:50)

Prescient, yes, and alarming. But from this portal into Moscow, Diana also saw another way to fight back.

From Bloomberg News, I'm Meribah Knight, reporting along with Susan Berfield. And you're listening to Our Town. This is Chapter 3, One Little Bacon Wrapped Sausage.

The town of Moscow sits among the pine forests of the Northwest. In the 1800s, the town went by Hog Heaven, then Paradise Valley. Now, it's Moscow, spelled like the Russian city, yet pronounced Mos-go. It's home to the University of Idaho, but the town is also known for something else. Division. In Moscow, a town of about 27,000, there are two kinds of people, those affiliated with Christchurch and those who are not. Christchurch is a deeply conservative, evangelical and patriarchal denomination that has roiled the university town.

Take a walk down Main Street, it's only six blocks, and you can see the divide with your own eyes. There are seemingly two of everything, coffee shops, restaurants, bookstores, one for Christchurch members, who call themselves kirkers, and one for everyone else. Sometimes you can tell this from flags or signs in the windows. All work, no woke, for kirkers. Black lives matter or a pride flag for everyone else. Kirkert comes from the Scottish word for church, kirk, and their goal, their church's goal, has always been to turn Moscow into a town of kirkers, a town under biblical law.

SPEAKER_11 (4:58)

Happy Fourth of July, Moscow!

SPEAKER_12 (5:01)

Celebrate your freedom! Freedom!

Susan Berfield (5:04)

God bless the weak!

Meribah Knight (5:06)

My reporting partner Susan and I went to Moscow in the summer of 2025 for July 4th.

For the fourth year in a row, kirkers put on their own parade right down Main Street. It was the only Fourth of July parade that day.

In years past, protesters had lined the route, but not this year. This year, it was the absence of the rest of Moscow that was noticeable. The only businesses that stayed open on Main Street were kirkr. The people who came to watch seemed mostly kirkr. Kirkrs have a strong entrepreneurial spirit. They've started lots of businesses and schools in Moscow. And while kirkrs remain a minority in the town, their presence, to some, can feel outsized and disruptive. To others, downright threatening. Christchurch and Moscow have been in a years-long battle over, well, almost everything, COVID requirements, taxes, zoning, even this parade. And standing along the route, smiling proudly, was the man who could take credit for cleaving Moscow in two, the head of Christchurch, Doug Wilson. Wilson is tall, with piercing blue eyes, a gray beard, a very grandfatherly presence. He was there alongside his wife, Nancy, the church's matriarch, watching the parade go by. Fifty years of hard work on display.