Do you smell something? I sure do.
From Blog and Mablog, June 18, 2013:
” … There was a massive ideological shift at this time, but it was seen in the demand for universal education, on a democratic foundation, for a burgeoning population. I used the qualifying phrase ‘on a democratic foundation’ to distinguish it from earlier efforts that sought to provide widespread literacy as an aspect of Christian discipleship. Luther in Germany and Knox in Scotland were examples of this. What we had going on in America at the time was completely different…”
In this rumination on the origins of age-segregated education — one of the burning issues of our day — Palouse Pedant Doug Wilson opines that 18th and 19th century efforts to promote “widespread literacy” in Christian-led communities were, as it was in Europe, a necessary feature of Christian discipleship.
Almost as an aside, however, he mentions that things were, as the Scots would say, a wee bit different in America. Indeed. And the irony should penetrtate even the hard heart of the blissfully blundering blowhard from the Boys’ Club that is Wilson, Inc.
See, in the slaveholding “Christian” states in the Antebellum South, from which was later amassed what Wilson blithely insists was the most Godly fighting force in history, slaveowning legislators passed laws forbidding anyone to teach slaves to read or write. The Confederacy that Wilson so nakedly admires, birthed in and nourished by chattel slavery, depended on the illiteracy of the slaves it held. A literate slave was a dangerous slave, both to Satan and to the slaveholder working to suit his purposes. These devout Christian patriarchs for whom Wilson feels such affinity weren’t concerned with “widespread literacy as an aspect of discipleship,” although that’s hardly surprising, as their attention was devoted to near-constant violence, abuse, degradation, rape, and maltreatment of their potential disciples. Rather, they “discipled” their slaves in the decidedly not-Christian discipline of gross inhumanity toward other human beings. Yes, things were different in America — but his defense of that difference doesn’t suit him in the argument he attempts to make.
It would seem that once you use the Bible to defend the kidnap-fed chattel slavery of the American South, evidence of your grotesque pastoral ineptitude threatens to pop up in the oddest places. Like dog shit on his wingtips, Wilson’s defense of an indefensible institution stinks even after he thinks it’s faded. The cleansing effect of heartfelt repentance is the only remedy; sadly, this sad little man hasn’t chosen to pursue it. Until he does, everything he writes is likely to smell to a high Heaven grieved at the filth in his heart