[Vision2020] An Open Letter to Dave Johnson, the Daily News, and Lewiston Tribune

[Douglas Wilson]

Visionaries,

When people sin, other people suffer. Sin destroys. When people within 
the Christian community sin hypocrtically and with a high hand, their 
fellow Christians suffer. And whenever this happens, unbelievers are 
given free rein (by God Himself) to gloat about it. When King David 
sinned like this, he became the object of scorn in the songs of 
drunkards, and, it has to be said, he deserved every stanza. So we do 
not protest the chortling at our expense -- God is delivering no 
injustice to us. All His ways are good. If a Greyfriar student does 
something sexually grotesque, like Jamin did, or goes off on a 
pharisaical jag like Michael Metzler, it is certainly a personal 
embarrassment to me, as well as an embarrassment to the whole program. 
But ministerial training programs can survive embarrassments -- what 
they will not survive is a lack of integrity which refuses to discipline 
for such things.

But when we discipline for such things, we try (as much as possible) to 
keep the discipline surgical, and limited to the offender. We try to 
avoid the approach taken by Jackie and Joan, Tom and Michael, which is 
to dump Agent Orange on the whole jungle. "Remember, only you can 
prevent forests." You, Joan, because of these juicy morsels just 
delivered  to us all, are in a position to demand that we nuke the whole 
jungle, that we tell the whole story. Now, when we tell the whole story 
here, do you want us to tell the /whole /story? Do you care if anyone 
else gets hurt? If not, and I hope not, we might be able to come to an 
agreement. If your only purpose is to get me to agree that Jamin was a 
hypocritical Christian while in the Greyfriars program, I grant your 
point readily. You are quite right.

And for the sake of accuracy, if anybody still cares, Jamin left the 
Greyfriars program on his own before we discovered what he had been 
doing. But when he was discovered later, we placed a letter in his file 
noting that he would have been dismissed immediately had the information 
come out while he was still enrolled. Although he has repented, he has 
still disqualified himself from ministry. Now if he had only had the 
sense to have a sexual affair with another man, Joan might currently be 
agitating for his reinstatement. What a strange world we live in.

Joan, anything else you want?

Douglas Wilson



Bill London wrote:

>The following is from Joan Opyr, posted to V2020 with her approval:
>
>
>
>>>>Dear Dave,
>>>>
>>>>I've known about the Sitler story now for nearly two months.  I'm an 
>>>>opinion columnist, so I didn't feel that it was something I could or 
>>>>should break in New West Magazine.  I'd be interested to know, 
>>>>however, why the Daily News and the Lewiston Tribune either didn't 
>>>>know about it or chose not to report about it until now.  Also, why 
>>>>did yesterday's story focus on Internet rumors and Vision 2020 
>>>>nonsense?  What Sitler did is terrible, and it has grave consequences 
>>>>for the community.  He was a boarder in one of NSA's many illegal 
>>>>boarding houses, almost all of which are run by families with small 
>>>>children who rely on the NSA money to pay their enormous mortgages.  
>>>>That's interesting.  Here's something else: I have complete copies of 
>>>>both the Sitler and Jamin Wight court files, and I attended Wight's 
>>>>sentencing hearing.  Wight is the Greyfriars Seminary student who, at 
>>>>age 24, had a year and 1/2 long sexual relationship with a 14-year 
>>>>old girl in his illegal boarding house.  He got a 4-year sentence 
>>>>from the judge and is currently serving 4-6 months in Cottonwood.
>>>>
>>>>Two child sex scandals associated with Doug Wilson and Christ Church? 
>>>> I would not allege a cover-up; that's not what reasonable people are 
>>>>thinking.  I would note, however, that Doug warned the elders of CC 
>>>>about Sitler but he did not warn the greater Moscow community.  While 
>>>>the authorities dragged their feet, Steven Sitler was free as a bird, 
>>>>driving himself back and forth to counseling sessions with Pastor 
>>>>Wilson.  What counseling qualifications does Wilson have?  Is this 
>>>>the only counseling Sitler received before he was sentenced?  
>>>>Wilson's letter in Sitler's court file is a classic in 
>>>>Cover-Your-Ass.  The other letters in the file (bar one, from the 
>>>>parents of a two-year old Sitler molested) are unbelievable.  They 
>>>>all declare that Sitler is a "good Christian" and properly repentant. 
>>>> This isn't a criminal matter for most of the letter writers; it's a 
>>>>matter of sin and redemption.  One woman goes so far as to blame 
>>>>Sitler's actions on his exposure to the evil, secular world of 
>>>>Internet pornography.  Passing the buck?  You bet.
>>>>
>>>>There's a bigger story here than Doug Wilson and Roy Atwood spinning 
>>>>like a pair of tops.  There's a sad and sorry tale of pastoral 
>>>>negligence and, I think, newspaper negligence.  Why do we not read 
>>>>about these sorts of things in the Daily News before they reach the 
>>>>rumor mills on Vision 2020?  I can think of several important stories 
>>>>the Daily News has failed to cover, from Moscow's massage therapist 
>>>>molester to the prominent attorney who was a car stereo kleptomaniac. 
>>>> Will the Daily News or the Tribune be writing anything about Jamin 
>>>>Wight, who pled guilty to one count (pled down from three) of felony
>>>>injury to a child?  Surely Wight's story is just as interesting as 
>>>>that of Chris Morris, Wight's classmate at Greyfriars.
>>>>
>>>>By the way, you might have asked Morris why it took him four years to 
>>>>graduate from a three-year seminary program.  You might also speak 
>>>>with the management at Winger's.  It's my understanding that future 
>>>>Pastor Morris was fired from that restaurant with cause -- a cause 
>>>>that suggests Morris might model his religious career on the likes of 
>>>>Jim Bakker rather than Fred Rogers.
>>>>
>>>>Joan Opyr/Auntie Establishment
>>>>www.joanopyr.com
>>>>
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