[Vision2020] Historical Revisionism and the Trinity Festival

[Nick Gier]

Hail to the Vision!

This column has appeared in the on-line magazine New West and will appear 
in the Sandpoint Reader very soon.  My interaction with Pastor Lillback has 
been a model of civil interchange.  Perhaps the good pastor can teach 
Pastor Wilson a few manners during his stay in Moscow.  Since the eloquent 
dressing down that he received from an anonymous Christian, I've noticed 
that Wilson has reduced his name calling dramatically. (I'm now just an 
enemy rather than a banshee.)  But he has a long way to go to meet the 
challenge of his kind Christian critic.

Historical Revisionism at Moscow’s Trinity Festival
by Nick Gier

The Trinity Festival (August 8-10) sponsored by Moscow’s Christ Church is 
bringing conservative Christians from all over the country.
I studied theology with Christian Trinitarians in graduate school, and I’ve 
taught with many of them as well. My Lutheran colleagues in the theological 
faculties at Heidelberg, Århus, and Copenhagen were fervent Trinitarians, 
and I respected their belief in divine threeness as much as they respected 
my affirmation of divine unity.
None of these fine Christians used the Trinity as a club to hit me over the 
head and to tell me that I, as a Unitarian, could be nothing but a 
conformist or a power hungry, humorless rapist.  But this is exactly what 
these Moscow Trinitarians are saying about both religious and secular 
people who do not follow their narrow version of Christianity.  They claim 
that their theology will bring beautiful to the world, but so far what I've 
seen is pretty ugly.
Moscow’s Trinity Festival continues the annual “history” conference that 
Douglas Wilson’s church has held in Moscow since 1994.  I set off “history” 
with quotation marks because the conference speakers have made a mockery of 
the academic study of history.
Wilson’s 1994 “history” conference led to the publication of the now 
infamous Southern Slavery As It Was, which has been roundly condemned by 
real historians, including a civil war expert in Wilson’s mission church in 
Seattle. In addition, 20 percent of the text was copied from another 
controversial book on slavery.
This year’s topic is the American Revolution, and Wilson, Steven Wilkins 
(Wilson’s co-author on the slavery booklet), and Peter A. Lillback, all 
conservative Presbyterian pastors, will present papers.
In 1994 Wilson and Wilkins told their audience that the antebellum South 
was the most harmonious multiracial society in human history, and now 
Pastor Lillback is prepared to claim that George Washington, the least 
religious of the early presidents, was in fact an orthodox Christian.
Lillback has been generous enough to share some of his views with me, and I 
do hope that professional historians have a chance to review his methods 
and evidence before he publishes his book.
To his credit Lillback has conceded that there is no historical evidence 
for Washington praying in Valley Forge (the subject of a famous painting 
that hangs in the nation’s capitol), and there was no evidence that an 
alleged prayer diary comes from Washington’s hand. The text is perfectly 
spelled (Washington was a horrible speller) and reads very much like the 
Common Book of Prayer.  The Smithsonian Institution has rejected it as a 
forgery.
Lillback claims to have evidence from several pastors who attested to 
Washington’s Christian devotion, but many more Christian ministers claimed 
just the opposite.
Here are some items that count heavily against Lillback’s thesis:
·       At least three ministers testified that they never saw Washington 
kneeling in prayer or taking Communion, an absolute necessity for being an 
Anglican Christian.  After being criticized for not taking this sacrament, 
Washington stopped attending church on Communion Sunday.  After his 
retirement he did not go to church at all, preferring to collect his land 
rent instead.

         · The day he left the presidency he was happy to answer many 
questions, but he refused to answer        the question “Are you a 
Christian?”  If Lillback’s thesis is correct, this issue would have been 
long   settled in people’s minds.

         · It was James Madison's opinion that Washington never "attended 
to the arguments for   Christianity, and for the different systems of 
religion, [n]or in fact ... [had he] formed definite     opinions on the 
subject."

         · In 1831 Episcopal priest Bird Wilson proclaimed that “among all 
our presidents from   Washington downward, not one was a professor of 
religion, at least not of more than     Unitarianism.”

         · Article Eleven of Treaty of Tripoli states that “the government 
of the United States is not in any    sense founded on the Christian 
religion."  Washington introduced this treaty to the Senate, 
the         Senate ratified it without recorded debate, and it was signed 
by President John Adams, a person         with much stronger Christian 
credentials than Washington.

         · At Washington’s death no pastor was called, no scriptures were 
read, no prayers were said, and        no rituals were performed.
I asked Lillback if he really wanted to share the stage with speakers who 
have been so thoroughly discredited.  His response was that Christian 
charity compelled him not to judge them until he personally appraises their 
performance in Moscow.
I reminded him that the evidence of plagiarism and response of critics are 
already well documented at www.tomandrodna.com/notonthepalouse, but he 
appears determined to join the swelling ranks of Christian revisionist 
“historians.”
Nick Gier taught religion and philosophy at the University of Idaho for 31 
years.  His essay “Religious Liberalism and the Founding Fathers” can be 
found at www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/foundfathers.htm.  His full response to 
vicious Trinitarianism can be found at www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/trinity.htm.


"The god you worship is the god you deserve."
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