[Vision2020] Evangelical Christianity vs. Wilsonian Christianity

[Donovan Arnold]

Dr. Gier,

I have no way of verifying or not verifying the
information which you gave regarding Dr. Wilson. Some
of  your evidence is simply my trust in your position
and the word or someone else. But even if it is all
true, it seems your real disagreement is with Dr.
Wilson not NSA or Christ Church.

It really seems counterproductive to attack hundreds
of people in our community solely because you disagree
with the personal actions of one member of their
church.

The current Pope, Benedict XVI, covered up and
protected child molestation in the Church, was a
member of the Nazi Party, and was a German Solider in
WWII. Are you going to hold all members of the
Catholic Church accountable for his actions? Are you
going to assert that all members of the Catholic
Church are supporters of child abuse and the Nazi
Party? 

Members of a religious group, are not going to abandon
their faith in God and worship in another church
because of the questionable actions of one of their
members, or a leader in which they have no control
over.  


Not only does your and others blanket attacks against
Wilson seem unfair when levied against everyone, but
would actually work in the opposite direction of your
intentions, moving them toward Wilson, not away.

It is not that I disagree with you and agree with
Wilson, because I do not. It is that I disagree with
the tactics of prosecuting a whole group of people on
the basis of your disagreement with one of them. To me
that is prejudging a large group of people based on
very limited knowledge of just one aspect of their
life.

I agree with you challenging Wilson on his philosophy,
ideas, and teachings. I think his ideas are often
wrong, and he needs to be asked to rethink them.

However, I strongly disagree with you when you blow
something up beyond what it really is and you do
yourself discredit with these exaggerations.

For example, when you referred to Christ Church as the
Taliban. Christ Church is not setting their women on
fire for attending school nor are they blowing up US
soldiers. To indicate that they are just discredits
any points you have. Not to mention it sets you up to
personal attacks like Mr. Courtney has done with you
on his blog. Calling someone a member of Taliban is
VERY offensive Mr. Gier.

Another example is the plagiarism in the book,
"Slavery, As it Was". Yes, Doug Wilson did have his
name on a book that had plagiarism in it. However, he
was not the author of the plagiarism, it was another
author of the book. Mr. Wilson should have checked up
on the work of his fellow workers. He neglected that
responsibility and should be called on it. However, he
did not attempt to take credit for someone else's
work.

I do agree that if indeed he did, Dr. Atwood, should
not have borrowed money from the church to help his
son with his gambling debt. However, I cannot fault a
father for taking action to assist his son, even if it
was illegal. I know I would break laws to help my
family, even if I knew it was wrong and would be
willing to pay the price for my actions including
public ridicule and attacks. 

I do however, appreciate that your comments and
reasoning are based on more than just speculation and
conjecture, most of the time.

It is not my concern if Christ Church fails or is
highly successful, they do not hold my beliefs.
However, it becomes my business when a group or
members of a community attempt to enforce the law in a
manner which violates of the 1st Amendment. A weakness
in this amendment hurts us all.

Donovan J Arnold  








--- Nick Gier <ngier at uidaho.edu> wrote:

> In a recent post Donovan Arnold could not find any
> differences between 
> conservative evangelical Christians (CECs) and Doug
> Wilson, so he wonders 
> why we single out Wilson and not the others.  In
> response I have listed 14 
> ways that they differ.
> 
> Note: I draw the following from my evangelical
> friends and acquaintances as 
> well as my in depth study of them in my book God,
> Reason, and the 
> Evangelicals (www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/gre.htm.)
> 
> 1.  No CEC minister I know has declared that he
> heads up a "New 
> Reformation."  Read for yourself the arrogant and
> self-aggrandizing 
> statements at
> http://www.credenda.org/issues/15-4presbyterion.php
> and 
>
http://www.dougwils.com/index.asp?Action=Anchor&CategoryID
> =1&BlogID=910
> 
> 2.  No CEC pastor I know would sanction an April
> Fool's stunt, complete 
> with stealing UI letterhead and using some else's
> FAX line, to announce an 
> alleged UI sponsored lecture entitled "Topless and
> Proud."  He tells us how 
> proud he was of his son-in-law's actions:
> 
> "By the time you receive this, our local police will
> probably have 
> forgotten all about it, so a little bragging is now
> safe, and perhaps it is 
> even in order. But first some background. Our local
> city council, through a 
> series of ridiculous circumstances, decided to quit
> restricting female 
> toplessness. The noble senior editor of this journal
> [Wilson's son-in-law], 
> encouraged by some winks and nudges from me, not
> that he needed any, made 
> up a flyer which announced a topless and proud
> lecture series by topless 
> feminist scholars."  See the full text at 
> http://www.credenda.org/issues/11-3meander.php and
> the police report at 
> http://dougsplotch.com/looter.htm at the bottom of
> the page.
> 
> 3.  While most CEC ministers believe that
> homosexuality is a sin, very few 
> join Wilson & Co. in calling for their execution. 
> The Daily News caught 
> Wilson in a generous moment when he admitted that
> the Bible would also 
> sanction exile rather than death. Two articles in
> Wilson's Credenda Agenda 
> (vol. 3: nos. 9, 11) supported capital punishment
> for "kidnapping, sorcery, 
> bestiality, adultery, homosexuality, and cursing
> one's parents."
> 
> 4.  Very few CEC pastors lead their congregations in
> imprecatory prayers 
> against their enemies.  According to a former church
> member, Wilson's 
> favorite seems to be "Break their teeth, O God, in
> their mouths" (Ps. 58.6).
> 
> 5.  Most CEC theologians, such as Stephen Davis,
> consistently reinterpret 
> biblical passages that impugn Yahweh's moral
> integrity, but Wilson revels 
> in pronouncing that every immoral act seemingly
> committed by Yahweh was 
> indeed committed by him.  Commenting on the stories
> of Abraham and Job, 
> Douglas Jones, Wilson's right hand man, actually
> admits that God is 
> "morally insane" and "dangerous and
> unpredictable"("Playing with Knives: 
> God the Dangerous," Credenda Agenda 16:3).  In his
> book Debate about the 
> Bible, Davis wisely argues that it was sinful
> Israelites, not God, who 
> carried out the genocide of the Canaanite peoples.
> 
> 6. No CEC minister that I know has paid the gambling
> debts of errant 
> college students out of church funds.  Even though
> the IRS requires that a 
> 1099 be filed for any payment over $600, no such
> document exists for this 
> $1,000 transaction.  For the entire story, as yet to
> be covered by the 
> local press and complete with letters, e-mails,
> affidavits, tape 
> recordings, see http://dougsplotch.com/index.html.
> 
> 7. Very few CEC ministers who run their own schools
> would openly deny that 
> they have these schools, but Wilson, who accredits
> 157 schools, regularly 
> speaks at their commencements, and requires that
> they read his textbook on 
> Christian schools and buy his books, said the
> following:
> "Do your schools support neo-Confederate and
> Christian nationalist views? 
> Yes or No? MY SCHOOLS? I DON'T HAVE ANY SCHOOLS . .
> . . OKAY, OKAY. WE 
> REPUDIATE ALL ICKY VIEWS. NEVER HEARD OF 'EM." 
> Wilson's full caps in his 
> reply to my questions, posted on Vision2020 on
> December 9, 2003 at 
>
http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/2003-December/005891.html.
> One of Wilson's Moscow graduates is principal of
> Carey (NC) Christian 
> School and he was forced to withdraw Wilson's
> booklet Southern Slavery as 
> it Was, whose co-author is a founding director of
> the neo-Confederate 
> League of the South.  For more see
> www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/slavepage.htm.
> 
> 8.  Not many CEC churches, even in the South,
> support neo-Confederate 
> views, but one of Wilson's best friends Steve
> Wilkins is a founding 
> director of the neo-Confederate League of the South
> (LOS).  The LOS has 
> been declared a hate group by the Southern Poverty
> Law Center and the LOS 
> is taking more control of the Sons of Confederate
> Veterans, who just 
> elected Kirk Lyons to its national executive board. 
> An outspoken racist, 
> Lyons was married by neo-Nazi Richard Butler in
> 1990, when Butler still had 
> his compound in Hayden Lake.
> 
> 9. Most CEC ministers would support the
> international genocide treaty, but 
> not Wilson. "Do you support the international
> conventions against genocide? 
> Yes or No? THIS ISN'T A PRO-LIFE TRICK QUESTION, IS
> IT? IT IS? THEN NO" 
>
(http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/2003-December/005891.html).
> 
> Notice Wilson's flip style in this exchange: This is
> typical of the way he 
> debates.  As I liked to say: those who live by the
> flip will die by the flip.
> 
> 10.  All but a few CEC pastors would defer to CEC
> scholars in their 
> congregations, but not Wilson. When Tracie McKenzie,
> a University of 
> Washington civil war expert and a member of the
> Seattle Christ Church, 
> dared to object to the errors in the slavery
> booklet, Wilson rejected his 
> advice to withdraw the booklet.
> 
> 11. Very few CECs would support Wilson's practice of
> infant baptism, an act 
> that makes them, according to Wilson, Christians in
> more than just a 
> nominal way. How much more nominal this state of
> grace is, is hard to 
> determine in Wilson's writings. Personally, I
> believe Wilson has switched 
> from adult baptism so that he has more control over
> these children and 
> their parents.
> 
> 12.  Not very many CEC ministers start their own
> denomination when their 
> current sect criticizes them.  Conservative
> Presbyterian denominations are 
> notorious for their strict discipline, but it
> appears as if rules are 
> broken left and right in Wilson's Confederation of
> Reformed Evangelical 
> Churches.  See http://dougsplotch.com/index.html.
> 
> 13.  Most CEC pastors would respect other CEC
> colleges, but Wilson believes 
> that very few of them meet his standards of true
> Christianity.  Wilson 
> states that "evangelical establishment, particularly
> the evangelical 
> establishment as now represented by its flagship
> colleges and publications, 
> is completely adrift" (Credenda Agenda 17:1).  See
> also his "Classical 
> Learning and the Christian College" at
> http://www.canonpress.org/pages/ 
> 
=== message truncated ===>
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