I’m preparing another of many blogposts regarding the hatefulness of Doug Wilson in responding to his Scripturally indefensible contention that the penetrative act of heterosexual intercourse confirms God’s intent that men always demonstrate power through initiation and conquest and that women always demonstrate their “power” via reception and submission, but first, an answer to a question I’ve gotten countless times since beginning Prevailing Winds four years ago:
“What’s up with your obsession with Doug Wilson?,” or the variants that suggest that I should be positive and not negative, that I should merely show a “better way,” or that I would be taken more seriously if I didn’t just “react” to what he says, does, and writes. I imagine you, valued reader, have asked yourself some of those questions about me as well during your wandering about the landscape of Prevailing Winds, and, with the assumption that you truly are concerned about the “direction” and “single-mindedness” demonstrated in this blog and in my thoughts, I’ll explain why.
I live at Ground Zero of the personal, not to mention theological, devastation brought by one man, Douglas Wilson, and the metastasizing network of his various business endeavors — “ministries” that purport to teach, represent, conform to and further the Word of God but which are, in reality, opportunities and arenas for a megalomaniac to ply and play out his vision of transforming Church, home, and society in the image he wrongly believes to be God’s. In lesser ways — endorsing his staff’s bogus University of Idaho “topless lectures,” producing magazine covers with romance-novel figures with battery cables clipped to his nipples, publishing fake reports that he and his have purchased “the hippies’ Food Co-Op, coining silly neologisms (“Intoleristas” is his most famous; “Evangellyfish” his most clever) to describe those he dislikes or who oppose him, playing “Sweet Home Alabama” in the middle of downtown during the uproar over his book defending slavery, and asserting that women who criticize him are “feminist bed-wetters” (when they’re not splayed out over their fainting sofas) — he behaves like an ass.
I have said that to his face. Believe me when I tell you that I wouldn’t say anything of Douglas Wilson — or anyone else connected to him — without being utterly willing, even eager, to say it to them first. While I believe public error allows for public rebuke, I have no hesitation whatsoever in saying to Wilson personally what I say about him publicly. It’s made for some interesting conversations, but honor and integrity require that I not hide behind my blog nor speak out anonymously. And if the limits of his effect on the Gospel, in our community, and throughout the Church were simply the effects of an ass, a buffoon, a jerk, or a doofus, I wouldn’t bother all that much to try to set him straight. Especially because he’s so damned thrilled that we “Intoleristas” see him that way. He sees our “slander” and our “feminist bed-wetting” as a badge of honor, and it’s become part of his stock in trade.
But while Wilson is a buffoon and a snake who gleefully sees himself as a puckish pundit and “skylarking Trinitarian,” he also fills, and publicly embraces, other roles. Wilson sees himself, and is seen as, a serious, Godly, discerning, reasonable, and mature pastor, teacher, innovator, and statesman of the faith — positions he embraces as a minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It would be nice if a man who holds the title of pastor, superintendent, academic senior fellow and influential Christian author and who, tragically, is tremendously influential in a great number of Reformed, “Christian” libertarian, homeschooling, and complementarian circles, behaved in a manner that reflects Jesus Christ, honors the Gospel, does it no harm, and models spiritual fruit for those he influences.
He does not.
The inflammatory and destructive effect that Wilson has on the Gospel is not solely in what he writes, says, does, and embraces, but also in how he treats his critics. This man cannot engage with women, egalitarians, progressives, unbelievers, or anyone else who has cause to dispute or rebuke him. While he’ll show a measure of respect to the very few men he considers his academic or spiritual equals, the rest of us, and the two or three of us in Moscow, who criticize him have experienced his torrent of targeted hatefulness and unending mockery. When called out, the first weapon he turns to is vitriol; after that, he pours out his arsenal of obfuscation, denial, and dissembling either to dance around or to defend things any sentient being would agree are offensive. Jesus taught us to love our enemies and pray for them; Wilson teaches that to demonstrate, like the Psalmist, that we “hate those who hate (Yahweh),” we can and should pray harm on them. A theology like that isn’t likely to result in positive, fruitful discussion with non-believers, and any believer who criticizes him is guaranteed a full measure of sarcasm, vitriol, and mockery — which, apparently, is too much for individuals, pastors and laypeople alike, who worship the Trinitarian God and who do so in Moscow, Idaho.
Put another way, Wilson has gotten a free ride from his fellow evangelical pastors. He won’t, never has, and most assuredly never will, get one from me.
I didn’t start this blog to offer tips on canning, RV travel, or embracing life as an empty-nester. I intended to write about my faith and how it’s transformed me, and that would have necessitated anywhere that I write about culture, feminism, justice, the social egalitarianism required in the Gospel as part of the outpouring of the Spirit promised in the Word. But I live in Moscow, Idaho, where Doug Wilson’s empire, church, and home are located. That doesn’t just make him relevant, either by a coincidence of geography or a collision of minds, to the things I’m passionate about. There are no coincidences; there is no “pass” I get to take to make my life more comfortable and less marked with grief or despair.
I write this blog in obedience to the Holy Spirit, who has given me a prophetic gift — forthtelling and truth-telling, not foretelling and future-predicting — that, as one of my pastors once told me, both gifts and burdens me to see in a broken world the things that others choose not to and to say the things others don’t want to say. Another pastor of mine (and these men were both ordained by denominations not of their own making) put it another way: That I say the hard stuff God wants the Body to hear. An elder of my once said the same thing, and added that when it comes to the spiritual gifts, there’s no “going back to the exchange counter.”
Every church body has someone like this, so let’s all recognize that I mean “prophesy” in the normative New Testament sense of the word. It doesn’t make me anyone more “in tune” with God, nor does it mean you have to do what I say. It does mean that I’m responsible for exercising the use of that gift — not to recklessly fan it into flame, but not to muffle and tamp it down, either — in the place my God has put me.
That’s here in Moscow, Idaho. And when a woman of God lives among the evil that flourishes here in Christ’s name, that woman is going to speak out about it. I’m not above your criticisms nor your correction — far from it — but it would be beneath the sacrifice the Lord requires of me in service to Him to turn my head, shut my mouth, and walk away because it gets ugly. My hand is made strong by the Hand of the Almighty, not the passion behind my keyboard, and ’til my dying breath or Wilson’s death or, better, repentance, I’ll continue to do what I do. The degree to which Wilson continues to behave badly will continue to prompt a corresponding response on Prevailing Winds.
It’s the righteousness of Christ that captures all of my attention, not Doug Wilson. Unlike some of his followers, I cannot confuse the two nor ignore the differences between them.