[Vision2020] Challenge to Kirkers

[Nicholas Gier]

Dear Kirkers,

A chill goes down my spine everytime I see the word "kirk," because it reminds me of the South Afrikan Kirkers who beat down their blacks for centuries.

But on to my challenge.  Because of travel I was unable to attend Wilson's forum, so I e-mailed my questions to him directly.  All subscribers to Vision2020 were able to read his flip and dishonest answers to my questions. All my e-mails to him since then have not been answered.  So much for a desire to debate and an exchange of ideas.

I'm out of the country again and won't be back until Feb. 9.  I also sent in my questions for the radio forum and I'm not sure any of them got asked.  I was unable the download the MP3 file that was posted.

So now I have some questions for Wilkins that I would have asked personally if I were in town.  My challenge to the Kirkers is that they should ask them for me.  If not on Wendesday, then some other time during his stay. Or if Wilkins is staying until Feb. 10, I would like for Wilson to arrange a meeting with Wilkins and myself, so I can ask my questions directly.

If any of you have been reading any of recent writings on this issue, you will know that I agree with Jones and Wilkins that the Bible is the literature of a multiracial society and that institutionalized racism based on skin color is only about 500 years old.  

So I'm not very interested in Wilkins' topic, but I'm very interested in his defense of Southern Slavery that was based on this vicious racism.

Some of these questions will look familiar because I have not got any answers from Wilson, at least honest ones, so I apologize for the repetition.

1. Mr. Wilkins, can you tell us which of R. L. Dabney's positions you reject and those that you affirm?  In particular, I'm thinking of his positions on the education of African Americans, interracial marriage, women's suffrage, slavery, and his view that some white people are superior to others.

2. Mr. Wilkins, Greg Dickison has a regular column in Wilson's journal Credenda Agenda.  At least two of these columns state that there ought to be biblical punishments for all crime, and he uses the Bible to call for the execution of homosexuals.  He states that the Bible supports slavery, but does not make the relativistic claims that you do with regard to its abolition.  Do you agree with Dickison? 

3. Mr. Wilkins, would you be willing to take the Confederate flag that was once displayed Wilson's office and ask him, Doug Jones, George Grant, and any other of your willing conference goers and burn it in front of the SUB during your "history" conference? You will recall that Doug Jones wrote that repentant neo-Confederates should do this.

4. Mr. Wilkins, Roy Atwood now states that "Southern Slavery, As it Was" is not a scholarly work. What is your position on this work that you co-authored?

5. Mr. Wilkins, your position on slavery is equivocal.  As a moral absolutist you must say that it is always wrong, but your support for biblical slavery and Southern slavery implies that it depends on culture and therefore is relative.  

6. Mr. Wilkins, you must know Dabney’s position slavery: namely, the righteous Anglo-Saxon Christian has a duty to enslave people that cannot govern themselves.  The “evil is not slavery, but the ignorance and vice in the laboring classes, of which slavery is the useful and righteous remedy. . . . ("A Defense of Virginia," page  207). Do agree with Dabney on this?

7. Mr. Wilkins, are you still a member of the League of the South, and if so what are your opinions about its basic positions?

8. Mr. Wilkins, you and George Grant and Steve Wilkins support the novel “Heiland,” which has been compared to the “Turner Diaries,” the book that inspired the bombing of the Oklahoma Federal Building. Do you believe in the violent overthrow of the U. S. government? Do you repudiate the ideas contained in the novel “Heiland”?  

9. Mr. Wilkins, in your slavery booklet you condemn slave owners who had sex with their slaves as “ungodly.”  But Abraham had sex with his servant Hagar and was convinced by his wife Sarah to abandon Hagar and his son in the desert. Do you repudiate Abraham and Sarah as ungodly?  

10. Mr. Wilkins, you have said that your main goal is to defend the Bible in all that it says.  Yahweh declared genocide against all the inhabitants of Canaan and he made sure that it was carried out by the Israelite armies.  Most people believe that slaughter of any group of people, regardless of their reputed sins, is always wrong. Do you repudiate Yahweh for commanding genocide?  Do you support the international conventions against genocide?

11. Mr. Wilkins,in your slavery booklet you claim that since the Bible condones slavery but condemns kidnapping, it was not sinful for people to own Africans that they themselves did not ship from Africa.  I believe that is as absurd as Buddhists who rationalize meat eating because they claim they were not involved in the slaughter of the animal itself. Do you repudiate the owning of another person, any time, any place?  

12. Mr. Wilkins,in 1995 the Southern Baptist Convention passed a Racial Reconciliation Resolution requesting that members repent for the evils of racism and Southern Slavery. If you were able, you have voted for this resolution? 

Thanks for your time and consideration.

Nick Gier