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

I was disappointed this morning to read that crecmemes.com, the often-hilarious, always-dead on analysis of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC), the denomination created by Doug Wilson when it became clear that reputable, established ones weren’t eager to embrace him or his curious theology, is suspending publication.  While the 500 or so previous memes and the comments following them are still up and available, the site’s pseudonymous author, Jonathan Bitterness — a nod to Wilson’s tiresome assertion that every single person who’s ever confronted him is a veritable font of bitterness — says, in a final, poignant and potent essay, that it’s time to take a break.   As always, I wish he weren’t using a pseudonym, but he clearly knows the price paid by those who’ve left Wilsonland and dared to criticize him in public.  CRECmemes has provided a real service to its community of readers, and it’s been something I’ve looked forward to reading every day.

So I was saddened to read that, at least for the time being, the author isn’t planning to add any new memes.  You can read his explanation here:

Why there aren’t any memes recently

I’m glad he’s keeping the site up, comments included; in fact, my next post will be a response to a CRECmemes opponent, Seth B., who challenged me on the site to explain my take on several verses that could, he says, support some of Wilson’s more controversial teachings — like his (execrable) defense of slavery in the Antebellum South.  Although Seth’s comments were on the “memes” site, I don’t want to hijack someone else’s place on the ‘Net, and I’ve directed Seth and others to Prevailing Winds for my response.

In the meantime, though, I continue to recommend CRECmemes.com.  And, in its discontinuation, and only for those with an iron stomach, I’ll direct you to two websites that convincingly and exhaustively demonstrate Wilson’s sordid ministerial history.

One is “Dougsplotch.com;” the other is “FoederoSchism.com,” named after Wilson’s curious Federal Vision teaching, which has caused predictable turmoil in Reformed theological circles.  The comments in both sites are harsh, but supported by primary-source documents and first-person witness accounts.  That takes them out of the realm of gossip and secures their place as necessary testimonies of this terrible man’s actions in the Moscow community and in the larger Church.  I don’t know the authors — I am NOT the author of either — and, again, wish they weren’t anonymous.  The sad thing is that, after checking them out, you’ll find yourself understanding why they are.

You’ll also find yourself very likely in tears, or fighting nausea, or enraged beyond what you thought possible.  The sites are no longer being updated; indeed, most of Wilson’s critics have wound down their efforts.  That doesn’t make their contributions toward understanding him and his work any less important, however.  I appreciate their efforts, and I pledge to continue my own.  Because this is a vile, dangerous, and disturbing man for whom the flock is a convenient punching bag, a smorgasbord to devour, and a captive audience for his gleefully belligerent rants.

So read up, stay tuned, and above all pray for Wilson — and for me.  The stakes are very high, eternally so, and I contend that silence here is assent to a very great evil.

This gem from the unrepentant bigot Doug Wilson gives you an idea of his ecclesiastical sincerity, not to mention his openness to the call of the Holy Spirit received by his sisters in Christ Jesus.

But don’t get the idea that this observation, from the stink of Wilson’s Blog and Mablog today, reveals anything even remotely pastoral.  You’re as likely to get a pastoral, Spirit-filled response from Doug Wilson as you are from a bullying Miami Dolphins linebacker, although it’s possible that the jock might show some contrition when the heat’s on.  Not so with the Provost of Unnecessary Provocation.  In his criticism of evangelicalism, which manages to nonetheless embrace its worst elements while sneering at legitimate moves of the Spirit, he offers this:

“Like termites need wood, so also unbelief needs the structures of faith that a living faith once built. They can’t get at the wood when it is still alive and growing, but once the living truth has gone through the sawmill of accreditation and become a standardized two by four of truth — watch out. A brief review will make the point — just imagine Fuller sitting in on a few classes at Fuller Seminary, Carl Henry dropping in at CT (Christianity Today) after reading the three most recent issues, or Thomas Cranmer trying to make it through the homily of the most theologically-minded dyke in the diocese. The word “scene” comes to mind.”

(Doug Wilson, Blog and Mablog, Nov. 5, 2013)

I would submit that perhaps the problem in the evangelical church isn’t that there are women in the pulpit, or even lesbian women in the pulpit.  No, I think the problem with the evangelical church today is that, at least here in Moscow, we have a preeningly belligerent bully in the pulpit.  How he got there is interesting — and a couple of online sites I’ll mention later give you a picture of how this Sultan of Snottiness ascended his throne.  It ain’t a real pretty picture.

It’s interesting that just as I finished my second read of Kathryn Joyce’s remarkably insightful book, “Quiverfull,” an example of the Biblical patriarchy movement that I find repellant in its stark disregard for the Gospel of the New Testament, news of the resignation of one of Christiandom’s most powerful patriarchs rocked the Right Wing.

Doug Phillips, founder and president of Vision Forum Ministries and head of its commercial arm, Vision Forum, Inc., has stepped down from his ministerial, speaking, and leadership position after acknowledging a “lengthy and inappropriate” relationship with a woman.  The father of eight young patriarchalists and wife of a staunch anti-feminist has promised that he will devote this time apart from ministry to reestablishing trust with his family and followers and demonstrating true Biblical repentance and restoration.  As I have said elsewhere, I feel great sorrow for the Phillips family and I wish Doug Phillips the fullest measure of God’s restorative grace and healing.  This is not a time to rejoice.  While I believe that “Biblical Patriarchy” is a vicious oxymoron that promises a perverted Gospel of female subjugation and oppression, I can’t — and you can’t, either — rejoice in any person’s fall.  I don’t.

But I do believe it’s important to continue examining this movement — not just Vision Forum, although its beliefs and practices, not to mention its heavily sex-segregated toys, are repugnant to me in their arrogant embrace of hierarchy and control — but other groups, individuals, and movements who call for the dominion of the world through “full quivers” of children in submission to patriarchs.  The Quiverfull movement that Joyce so aptly describes is a horror, turning the Good News of the Gospel into a life of fetters and prison bars for the women redeemed by it.  This is a pernicious cancer in the Church, and my prayer for Doug Phillips is that he would emerge not just as a repentant, restored sinner and brother, but a man who recognizes that the fruit of Biblical Patriarchy is so rotten that it deserves to be buried in a theological, exegetical, doctrinal Gehenna.

The Huffington Post has an interesting take on Phillips’ resignation.  You can read it at:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/julie-ingersoll/doug-phillips-the-big-scandal_b_4195155.html

You’ve seen them — the Internet memes that show how a country like Sweden, for example, is 80 percent atheist and yet has lower rates of incarceration, or crime, or violence — whereas 78 percent of all Americans claim to be Christians, and we have massively higher rates of all three.

The point, of course, is to applaud the sensible atheism, as they see it, of those safe, profitable, egalitarian, and almost idealic places to live, as well as to shame the “Christianity” of a country like the United States, which is and has forever, pretty much, been awash in myriad social problems that reek of immorality, injustice, unrighteousness, and unconcern for the poor.  Predictably, these memes outrage Christians.  They should.

But not for the reasons they usually do.

If the economic, religious, social, and political climate of this  country is the result of more than three-quarters of its people sharing a profound devotion to Jesus Christ, something’s wrong.  In fact, something’s fatally wrong, because the society our “Christianity” has brought about is killing people directly and, also directly, causing them to scoff at and reject the message of Christ.  So there seems to be a bit of a conundrum here.

But wait. Could it be that these 78 percent of “Christian” Americans actually just share a profound devotion to American Christiandom instead of to Jesus Christ? Could it be that American Evangelical Christiandom, or Christiandumb, has become a sad, sick, impotent and irrelevant expression of Jesus’ message? Could it be that TV preachers and their almost uniformly silly and vapid or foul and perverted “gospel” has defined the faith for so long that we haven’t the faintest idea what lives of mature discipleship and solid theology even look like? And could it be that a huge chunk of this 78% presumes that they’re Christian simply because they once said a prayer, or said the Pledge, or were born not-something-else, and, for the purposes of the rich and powerful who shameless exploit them and still garner their support, that was good enough?

Could it be that a huge percentage of the huge percentage of Americans who call themselves Christians have no idea whatsoever “taking up your cross daily” and following the Messiah really means?  Because something’s not right here.  Either atheism is a preferred practice for individuals and communities, or Christian faith is.  So when the Christian faith that’s evinced leads to the horrific injustices here not found there, we probably ought to — need to — examine if what we’re calling “Christianity” has the slightest thing to do with the message and life of Jesus Christ.

And guess what?  I’m pretty sure that I’m on solid logical, social, and, more important, Biblical ground in asserting that the injustice-indifferent, corruption-coddling, masculinist, materialistic, feel-good, market-driven, unbalanced, childish spectacle that tickles our ears and makes us willing to whore ourselves with every Gospel-countering political movement that soothes us even as it offends Christ isn’t Christianity at all.  It is, however, a potent portrait of patriarchy in practice, and I can’t think of much else that’s more antithetical to Jesus Christ than that.

If the religious, economic, social, and political climate of this country is the result of more than three-quarters of its people sharing a profound devotion to Jesus Christ, something’s wrong. Oh, wait. Could it be that they share a profound devotion to American Christiandom instead? Could it be that A.C. has become a sad, sick, impotent and irrelevant expression of Jesus’ message? And could it be that a huge chunk of this 78% presumes that they’re Christian simply because they once said a prayer, or said the Pledge, or were born not-something-else, and, for the purposes of the rich and powerful, that was good enough?

I hear this all the time — “You’re a feminist AND a Christian?” “You’re an evangelical AND you believe in evolution?” “You’re a woman AND you pastored?”  “You trust the Bible AND you believe that lesbian and gay couples have the rather obvious right to civil marriage?”  “You’re a Christian AND you like punk music/want marijuana legalized/hate today’s Republican Party/are opposed to capital punishment, period, in every case?” “You’re an American AND you have refused to recite the Pledge of Allegiance for 40 years? And you think it’s odd that other Jesus-followers do?” “You hate masculinity AND you cherish your husband of 29 years?”

“You’re a woman in her fifties AND you believe that high heels and dresses are tools of patriarchy that limit women’s mobility and compromise women’s safety, and you despise the gobbling up of these fetters and straightjackets by young women?”

The staff at the UPS store where I collect my mail probably has noticed a bit of an apparent contradiction:  On any given day, I get literature from the Democrats, because I subscribe to The Progressive and Mother Jones, as well as from the Republicans, because I order Bibles from Christian Book Distributors.  I get personal mail addressed to Keely Emerine-Mix, which is my name, and to Mrs. Jeff Mix, which is not. And that package I pick up is as likely to contain a nice blouse that caught my eye in the L.L. Bean catalog as it is a copy of some feminist book you’ve never heard of, and that they’ll never make a movie of.

Really, if you know me, you probably don’t know what to do with me.  And if you don’t, you’re likely just as confused, at best, or, at worse, you dismiss me as a confused nutcase.  Or, more likely, you don’t care enough to form an opinion.  Fair enough, and probably healthier.

But as I get back into the blogging groove, these things will become more obvious, and if you’re a Christian, you’ll perhaps be horrified.  Believe me, I hear from you, and I do listen.  But the things I believe, I believe because of my discipleship and allegiance to Jesus Christ.  I won’t go into all of them here — that’s what five-plus years of blog archives are for — but I am confident that the things I believe, the things that motivate me to write, the things I would demonstrate for, be arrested for, and even die for, are things that I believe to be consistent with my Christian faith.  The dissonance, I think, comes from people’s assumption that the Christian faith has anything at all to do with American evangelicalism in the 21st century.

That would be a really faulty assumption.

My faith has more to do with the Gospel than the gaudy, oppressive, masculinist parading on TV that passes for “Christianity” in the media, and in the minds of far too many Christians.  My faith seeks the Way of the Cross, the Third Way that isn’t left or right, but horizontal and vertical.  I practice it poorly — do I really even have to say that? — but it’s what I live for, or, more correctly, it’s why I live at all.  I seek wisdom from Therese of Lisieux and Julian of Norwich and Teresa d’Avila and St. Benedict; I couldn’t care less what John and Stacy Eldredge, Emerson Eggerichs, Focus on the Family, or Ron Luce have to say about anything.  In fact, I only pay attention to them when they say something that not just contradicts, but offends, the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  I won’t settle for anything less than the full equality and dignity of all that Jesus died for.  I don’t believe you should, either.

I believe that patriarchy, which is most often expressed through violence, money, and power, is the root of all social evils, and I believe that the Church has fallen for Satan’s great lie in denying women full participation and exercise of their tremendous, God-given gifts.  God is not sexed — God is both male and female, and so God is not gendered — the Divine is free from gender, neither masculine nor feminine, but Spirit.  The fruit of the Holy Spirit isn’t masculine or feminine.  It’s the only full demonstration of Godly love, allegiance, and character.  Period.  So I despise Christian masculinism, Christian patriarchy, and Christian virility.  I think they’re oxymoronic, as well as most often simply moronic, and very, very often utterly despicable and violent.  I am a woman who was raped in 1980, and three-plus decades later, I refuse to “examine myself” to see if I “held any responsibility” for a man’s decision to pound himself into me.  I think you would be well-advised to not suggest that I do.  I have a bit of a temper, and more than a bit of a holy anger.

So I invite you to join me where the Prevailing Winds blow, and I always welcome your comments — remember, send them to me at siyocreo@live.com, not at the blogsite (I’ve been spammed).  I will always try to engage with as much love toward my critics as I do toward my friends, and I’ll also tell you the truth:  A prostituted political party that wrongly says that President Obama wants, for example, to “ban all guns,” deserves to be referred to as “dipwads.”  “Whitewashed sepulchres” doesn’t pack a punch anymore, so I’ll go with the more commonly understood term for liars, charlatans, and hard-hearted hedonists who claim Christ.  I try to link some of my Facebook comments to this blog, and vice-versa.  “Dipwads” came, unrepentantly, from a FB post yesterday.  I look forward to hearing from you all, and I truly appreciate your reading.

As I mentioned, I’ve been on the road . . . again . . . taking care of a difficult situation in my extended family, so I haven’t been writing much.  But that changes tomorrow.

Oh, yeah.

It’s gonna get verbal in here, and it’s about time.  So if you’ll give me a day to unpack, do the laundry, pay some bills, and catch up on correspondence, I’ll reward you with a fair amount of continuous Christian feminist anti-masculinism and social revolution.  Plus the occasional paean to a hero, and, who knows, maybe even something totally random.

Because “totally random” is good, and being away from my blog isn’t.

An unexpected family health situation has me on the road once again, so, Prevailing Winds-watchers, bear with me — I’ll be home at month’s end, and I have a lot to say about a lot of things.  First, though, I have to take care of this, and I would covet your prayers.

Well, here I’ve been on WordPress for less than a month and already I’ve got a ten-to-one ratio of Chinese-generated spam to legitimate comments.  Because any of these fake comments could carry a virus, and they all show up in my Inbox looking the same, I’m going to simply delete any WordPress-generated notice of comments, effective immediately.

But I still want to hear from you!  Just send your comment to my email address, siyocreo@live.com, and I’ll cut/paste it as is on the blog.  Just put “COMMENT” in the subject line and you’ll show up on Prevailing Winds — with my thanks.

Again:  If you want to comment publicly, send your remarks to me at siyocreo@live.com.

Crecmemes.com is proving to be the “Criminal Minds” of my Internet experience — no matter what else I have going on, I drift back over to it to see if there’s something new that I haven’t seen before, to the detriment of swept floors, folded laundry, and thawed chicken.

But I find crecmemes to be not only funnier than I would have first expected, but a fascinating place to witness, and participate in, the back-and-forth between critics of Doug Wilson (the Meemers) and supporters (in this case, Seth).  And while I understand why they don’t use their names, I will be consistent and mention that I really wish they would.

Could, that is.

Because I know full well why they can’t.

I know that being a CREC member or an employee of Wilson’s or a student at NSA — which, astonishingly enough, is all the same thing, which makes my point for me — disallows you to question or criticize him.  At all.  To anyone.  Ever. Your disbelief in what I say can easily be corrected — just do it.  Just go up to someone after worship and mention a concern that you have over Federal Vision doctrine, or this semester’s reading list, or even the curious inconsistency in embracing Chesterton and Tolkien when he has stated that Roman Catholics have missed the ol’ salvation train.  Then wait just a little while for a visit from the elders, or wait a bit longer for the cold shoulder from people you thought were friends.  You’ll find yourself as frozen out as an abstinence lecturer at a Rolling Stones rehearsal.

I’ve been engaging with “Seth” on crecmemes regarding all of this, and, begging the patience and permission of the Meemers, here’s my latest challenge to him, and to anyone who feels the need to plug their ears, squinch their eyes closed, and continually repeat “He can’t be wrong, he can’t be wrong …”:

From my comment on crecmemes.com, with thanks to the proprietors:

Seth, I’m going to respond to this as one of Wilson’s original, charter Intoleristas — and, perhaps, the only one still “nipping at his heels,” as another commenter wrote, other than Rose Huskey. I’m proud to be part of his leftist/radical/egalitarian axis, and the only Trinitarian Intolerista in the bunch. I’ve debated Wilson (KRFP, 2007); you can ask around for how the debate went for him. I think it went not very well, and that only by the grace given me by my God. I followed the Biblical admonition to confront him in person first before going all egalitarian-leftist on his ass, although I believe the Scriptures also teach that public error demands public rebuke. I have engaged with him numerous times in public events, I don’t EVER use a pseudonym in writing about him on my blog, http://www.keelyprevailingwinds.com, and I say nothing about him, anywhere, that I wouldn’t say TO him, anywhere. And I know my stuff. All of which is to say that you are grossly mistaken, profoundly mislead, embarrassingly beholden to a narrative that has proved false over and over and over again and, it seems to me, inordinately desperate to defend a man who would spit you out like rigatoni with a cat hair if you ever publicly disagreed with him. Instead of wrenching yourself into pretzel-like positions trying to avoid understanding the obvious — that is, your pastor/mentor/employer/master is a sorry excuse for a pastor, a scholar, and a human being — why not take a breath and ask yourself a simple question: WHY? Why, in a town of a dozen Trinitarian evangelical churches, is Doug Wilson singled out for criticism? (My question is why, in said town, a menopausal homemaker, me, would be virtually alone in doing what Moscow’s brave, complementarian, male pastors seemingly can’t bring themselves to do, but I digress …). Why is it easier for Wilson and his defenders to cry “religious bigotry” when his primary critics share his (putatively) Christian faith? Why is it that when the reformed community finds itself in turmoil, the quickest way to understanding is to follow the stench and look toward Wilson, the CREC, and the Federal Vision, which even this Arminian sees is an utter rejection of Reformed theology? A brave person asks questions and deals with the answers, Seth. Are you a brave person, or a beholden one? (I use “person,” not “man,” because unlike Wilson, I don’t ascribe character traits to one’s sex, which is enough to spin me into his little Axis of persecutors). If you want to engage off-list, find me at siyocreo@live.com, or call me at 509-336-4841. But please, for the sake of your Spiritual health if not your salvation, start using the brain God gave you to analyze the work of a man He most certainly . . . didn’t give you.

Seth, I’m going to respond to this as one of Wilson’s original, charter Intoleristas — and, perhaps, the only one still “nipping at his heels,” as another commenter wrote, other than Rose Huskey. I’m proud to be part of his leftist/radical/egalitarian axis, and the only Trinitarian Intolerista in the bunch. I’ve debated Wilson (KRFP, 2007); you can ask around for how the debate went for him. I think it went not very well, and that only by the grace given me by my God. I followed the Biblical admonition to confront him in person first before going all egalitarian-leftist on his ass, although I believe the Scriptures also teach that public error demands public rebuke. I have engaged with him numerous times in public events, I don’t EVER use a pseudonym in writing about him on my blog, http://www.keelyprevailingwinds.com, and I say nothing about him, anywhere, that I wouldn’t say TO him, anywhere. And I know my stuff. All of which is to say that you are grossly mistaken, profoundly mislead, embarrassingly beholden to a narrative that has proved false over and over and over again and, it seems to me, inordinately desperate to defend a man who would spit you out like rigatoni with a cat hair if you ever publicly disagreed with him. Instead of wrenching yourself into pretzel-like positions trying to avoid understanding the obvious — that is, your pastor/mentor/employer/master is a sorry excuse for a pastor, a scholar, and a human being — why not take a breath and ask yourself a simple question: WHY? Why, in a town of a dozen Trinitarian evangelical churches, is Doug Wilson singled out for criticism? (My question is why, in said town, a menopausal homemaker, me, would be virtually alone in doing what Moscow’s brave, complementarian, male pastors seemingly can’t bring themselves to do, but I digress …). Why is it easier for Wilson and his defenders to cry “religious bigotry” when his primary critics share his (putatively) Christian faith? Why is it that when the reformed community finds itself in turmoil, the quickest way to understanding is to follow the stench and look toward Wilson, the CREC, and the Federal Vision, which even this Arminian sees is an utter rejection of Reformed theology? A brave person asks questions and deals with the answers, Seth. Are you a brave person, or a beholden one? (I use “person,” not “man,” because unlike Wilson, I don’t ascribe character traits to one’s sex, which is enough to spin me into his little Axis of persecutors). If you want to engage off-list, find me at siyocreo@live.com, or call me at 509-336-4841. But please, for the sake of your Spiritual health if not your salvation, start using the brain God gave you to analyze the work of a man He most certainly . . . didn’t give you.

Well, perhaps my new laptop isn’t as disloyal as I earlier thought!  I came back from running some errands and lo and behold and God be praised — what I thought I had lost came right back up on my screen!  So . . . I reiterate my apology to Joshua, and I have some thoughts about the theology of the Credenda/Agenda article.

In response to a comment I received, posted at the end of the Prevailing Winds post including the article on the husband’s role in marriage, whose author insisted that as Jesus took responsibility for the sins of humans, the husband, per Ephesians 5, must take responsibility for the sins of the wife:

No.  That’s wrong.  Terribly, hopelessly, pitifully wrong.

First, you cannot derive a theology of marriage from a five-verse section of one book in the New Testament when that point would appear to contradict the plain teaching not only of the Gospel — that there is one mediator between God and human beings, the Human One, Christ Jesus — but larger sections of the Word that describe the mutuality that ought to be found in Christian marriage, like 1 Cor. 7.  Developing theology from proverbs, or Proverbs, is not a wise hermeneutic, even though it’s one that Wilson regularly employs.  It’s also not wise to generate a theology from metaphors in Scripture, which quite certainly is what the Lord gives us in Ephesians 5.

I find it amusing, but kind of not really, that complementarians insist on taking Ephesians 5: 23-30 in an absolutely literal sense, even though it uses the metaphor of Christ as the Source (kephale, Greek) of the Church as the husband is, in patriarchal societies like Ephesus in the first century, awash, as it was, in weird Aphrodite-worship and false teachings that elevated women above men, the (kephale) of his wife.  But they never take “literally” the earlier verses — like the “capstone” verse 21 that introduces the concrete and the metaphor — that not only prescribe mutual submission in marriage, but also make the assumption that in reading vv. 24 and 25, we all know that a woman must never MERELY submit to her husband but must love him deeply as well, and that a man must never MERELY love his wife but must, as v. 21 says, submit to her as well.  That part is clear, yet rarely preached on, however much it’s generally held as an unstated model of Christian marriage.

No, Wilson and his patriarchal pals build their marriage theology on the flimsiest type of Scriptural texts — metaphor — while ignoring that which is presented as straightforward. Neither do we hear much from the pulpit about the beauty of matrimonial mutuality found, again in the most straightforward manner, in 1  Corinthians 7, where half a dozen “he does as she does, she does as he does” examples pepper the text.  But Ephesians 5 and the 1 Corinthians passages prescribe what Wilson evidently cannot abide:  a Biblical egalitarianism that threatens  the position of individual patriarchs clinging to metaphor to bolster their case, but also a view of male-female relations that’s in tune with the worldview and promise, the hope and the vision, of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

That isn’t always the gospel of Doug Wilson and his CREC counterparts, unfortunately, and the fact that it reveals not only their desperate grasping for power-over relationships with those among them but a weak, unscholarly hermeneutic as well should give his followers at least a robust, hearty pintful of doubt.

Sadly, though, most of them are either too enamored of the Magisterium of Moscow or too afraid of repercussions if they object.  It may be lousy theology, but when you keep people afraid they might “despise their baptism” and not “persevere until the end,” or when you keep your disciples financially dependent on you, it’s one hell of a way to keep the sheep in line.  That women and men will suffer, in the family and out, appears insignificant in the building of an empire that hails Wilson and his tight circle of Beholden Toadies as the ones in the know when it comes to theology.

They prove over and over again that they aren’t.  More tragically, they exhibit fruit that calls into question whether they know the One of whom and for whom they’d have us believe they speak.  The stakes are high, and the error is profound.  Sadly, there’s no room for questioning, and the silence that looks like unanimity . . . isn’t.