Prevailing Winds "For the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom . . ." 2 Cor. 3:17, TNIV

Once again, a reader has objected to my public question earlier about Doug Wilson and interracial marriage. It’s as if I’ve decided, says my correspondent, that he’s guilty as a racist, and that I’ve ambushed him to try to prove it. Well, no. There’s no ambush — public figure, public history, public ministry and all — and if I could take a guess at his answer, I would be one happy blogger chick to find out from him that I was wrong. And trust me: When I’m happy, I’ll let you all know.

It’s not up to me to determine if someone is a racist; I like to let their words speak for themselves, and those words usually lead to a conclusion that seems reasonable. However, identifying words that I think are racist is still a bit away from calling someone a racist, and so I won’t here. I think the non-lunatics among us could conclude that he is, and he seems more than a little comfortable with saying things that lead to that conclusion, but my intention is to analyze his words and not his heart. I will say that I think there’s something even worse than being a racist, and that is to care so little — so little about the sufferings of other people, the sins of one’s own people, or the effect of such nonchalance on the Gospel — that there’s no attempt at all to run from the appearance of evil. I do believe Wilson is guilty of that.

I’m always disturbed by assertions that people have heard Wilson speak of institutionalized racism as a sin of thinking oneself to be better than another solely on the basis of race, and so — they insist — he cannot be a racist. Context aside (slavery defense, paleo-Confederacy, R.L. Dabney, etc.), that tepid definition and subsequent condemnation of racism falls way short. “Thinking oneself to be better than . . . ” is a sin, a violation of the Spirit of the Gospel captured nicely in, say, Philippians. But to suggest that THAT’S racism is akin to suggesting that — and here I regretfully use an example of which we are all sadly familiar — serial pedophilia is simply a violation of the commandment against adultery. Well, it is that — but it’s so very much more, and narrowing and neutering the definition of sin misses the mark completely here.

Racism isn’t simply preferring one’s own kind, vaingloriously embracing one’s own culture, or even thinking those of another race/culture/ethnicity are “less than.” To be blunt, racism finds its expression in this country’s history of cutting off a Black man’s testicles and lynching him in a public ceremony (perhaps after Sunday service?), or in denying access to education to little Black children, or “hunting” undocumented Mexican “aliens” for sport, or barring Black people from voting, buying homes, or working. It’s preaching from the Southern pulpit the deficiencies of African-Americans while referring to those who work for equality as “godless atheists,” enacting harsher criminal penalties on Black drug users, beating Chinese railroad workers to death, and excusing Anglo crimes against racial minorities. Racism is far, far uglier than simply thinking of oneself as better than anyone else, and the stain of racism is deeply imbedded in the fabric of our country. “American racism” is the hideous legacy of those Christians who greedily presumed God’s blessings while pretending to comb over Scripture for ways to justify their engagement in obviously sinful behavior.

My outrage over Wilson’s booklet “Southern Slavery As It Was” was multi-faceted: It was bad history, poorly researched, culturally clueless in its simplistic analyses, and, under the guise of a defense of Scripture, an evil and dishonest way to bless manstealing, rape, destruction of cultures and families, economic exploitation, and pure, unadulterated hate. Southern Slavery was different from slavery in the Bible in virtually every way, and a sensible, redemptive, forward-looking theology in keeping with the Spirit’s movement from Old to New Testament and beyond would never suggest a parallel, nor attempt to sanitize one that doesn’t exist.

So there’s a more complete picture of what racism is. Now, do I think Wilson would string up a Black man and call it fun? No. No, and huh-uh. That he would joke about “lynching homos” is beyond disgraceful, but I have no evidence that he himself would tie the rope and neither does anyone else. But — within and apart from the context above — a man who would reduce racism to a sin of pride, arrogance, and selfishness is a man who doesn’t get it. Worse, Wilson is a man who doesn’t want to get it — he’s got his, and he knows his, and his own are just fine, thanks, without having to ever parse through the horror of what racism means and has done to this country. And so his fast-and-loose playing with the history of American slavery and its effect (“multi-cultural harmony” and a benign Christian patriarchy at its best), coupled with his embrace of the very defenders of America’s worst racialist heritage, strikes me as an indictment against any real concern for racial harmony, racial equality, repentance of racism, and its eradication, particularly among Christians.

Wilson has trumpeted his defense and reaffirmed his beliefs. That’s why I asked the question, directly and publicly. Now, I don’t expect Wilson to answer me. I doubt that Doug Wilson considers me worthy of interaction, and even if he did, I doubt that he would want to make public his answer. And, again, if I’m wrong on what I presume to be his answer, I would be thrilled, and I would gladly trumpet it in my blog, acknowledge that his answer surprises me, admit that I had used the evidence he himself has provided us all to come to a wrong conclusion, and thank him for taking the time to respond. Believe me, whatever other myriad disagreements I have with him, I’d love to see that we at least agree on this one — not to bolster my views, but because I’d rather see someone not in sin than in sin. And yeah — I think it would be a sin to oppose interracial marriage, and I unhesitatingly say so.

But doesn’t Christ Church have a number of families with Black children? It does, and he is undoubtedly genuine in his kindness toward them. And yet he continues to defend a system that would have allowed the enslavement of Black children in 18th- and 19th-century Southern States under circumstances that involve not their loving adoption, but their violent kidnapping or their introduction to “Christian” homes as mere property. He says he condemns “manstealing,” but holds that since slaveholders in the South weren’t themselves slave traders, they could guiltlessly benefit from the work of the slaves they purchased — a curious and frankly irrelevant distinction that conveniently overlooks the “brokering” of individual slaves on the auction block. He insists that episodes of slaveholder-slave sexual activity — and in what possible context would anyone be able to call that “consensual”? — were minimal, an astonishingly blind conclusion that I suppose he wishes were true, perhaps in defense of the seventh commandment under idealized Christian patriarchy. The history of slaveholder rape is there, and it’s irrefutable. He calls slavery “pro-family,” choosing, as he must, to ignore the buying and selling of children, mothers, and fathers the way a litter of Australian Shepherd puppies are sold to puppy-loving buyers today — as personal property with which he can do as he pleases, with no real moral concern about separating parents, children, and siblings.

Moreover, he seems unable to grasp that race-based slavery is an indefensible evil, period, and that any slavery after the coming of Christ, after the announcement of a Gospel of full equality for all in Christ (Gal. 3:28), was wrong. Even the Old Testament slavery in Leviticus and Deuteronomy was entirely unlike Southern Slavery, and the coming of Christ showed the world and especially the Church a more redemptive way to relate to the poor. As slavery in the OT represented a vast improvement over that of pagan nations, the Gospel provided a way to go yet further toward light, and the Church historically has represented greater movement toward the dignity of all persons, with a hermeneutic that demonstrates that. But Wilson is entirely sure of his own worldview, and I lament that he chose to weigh in on something whose analysis, using a redemptive Biblical hermeneutic, should never conclude with its defense. What possible benefit to the Gospel would there have been in defending the practice of owning another human being for a lifetime and on the basis of race, after the kidnapping of said human being? My God. What kind of Gospel presentation would Satan devise for a 21st-century audience in a college town? I’m certain that Screwtape would have applauded, but those of us who love Jesus wept.

So. Wilson may or may not answer my question, and I’ll even presume that he answers it in not answering it. Silence speaks volumes here, and I long for an honest answer from him. I know the answer I’d prefer, and I’d love to be surprised. Please, Lord, let him affirm that he could officiate at and rejoice in a marriage between a Black and an Anglo Christian, and let me be wrong. I don’t want him to be in sin this way, and I’d take no joy at all in being proved right.