[Vision2020] Christ Church and freedom of religion

Sat Jun 24 08:40:05 PDT 2006

Paul,

Thanks for the questions.  I don't have time at the moment to answer
thoroughly, but a few quick points for now:

1.     Christ Church is a very elitist and arrogant expression of
conservative Christianity that preaches dominance and pays lip service to
love and silent grace; however, the pastor, Doug Wilson, thrives on national
popularity within a splinter denomination and conflict-not local peace and
sociologically healthy integration.  There are many good people still left
in Christ Church, but the primary interface with the local community is a
brash, vocal, Wilson defending group - what some call the "insiders."  

2.     Many former members of Christ Church consider Wilson a deceptive
oppressor who continually lies and spins in order to control his group -
many of them call Christ Church an outright "cult." Wilson is also very well
known for turning on old friends and laymen as soon as they criticize on the
wrong issues or publicly challenge him; he is known as a master at what we
call "character assassination" and he has been very successful at it. Wilson
boasts a "Presbyterian" government of checks and balances, but there really
are not checks and balances within the non-Presbyterian CREC denomination
that he started; and the elders surrounding him offer no accountability at
all.  

3.     There are many views and practices that are very offensive to the
outside Christian and secular community, such as a form of theonomy, a
defense of the pre-civil war South, the belief in much legal regress over
the last 100 years in America, and the practice of imprecatory prayers,
where the Christ Church community calls down literal harm against local real
people who happen to oppose Christ Church.  

4.     There is a strange, non-Christian theology and defense strategy that
I call "enemy theology," wherein any concern or criticism from the outside,
no matter what it is and from where it comes from, is interpreted as
"persecution" and evidence that not only are the things they are criticized
for not wrong but that they are actually very holy and right. The Princess
notes that this is not a simple deductive mechanism - not always is this a
sign of being right - but in practice this is precisely what it is:
criticism functions a priori as evidence for being right and holy, a
prophetic persecuted group.  Wilson has developed a "Serrated Edge" model to
justify his insulting and arrogant approach to many different kinds of
people ranging from local neighbors, Thomas Kincaid, a Grayfriar student,
evangelicals, local professors, Bill London, etc.  This is where the "cult"
concern extends from the sociological to the theological: this is a clear
defensive, and ad hoc twisting of scripture; the "serrated edge" in the New
Testament was never to dehumanize and merely insult the opponent as an act
of "war" but was rather dignified pronouncements of judgment against those
who sat in Moses' seat, those in places of religious authority and power
that used that power to belittle "outsiders" and oppress insiders.  Wilson
is really the only person on the Palouse, according to standards of
scripture, that currently deserves something like the serrated edge.

5.     I was a loyal Wilson defender and Christ church member for 10 years,
a Greyfriar student, and contributor to Credenda Agenda.  After the above
realizations become firm enough in my mind, I began questioning and
challenging.  The response I received from Wilson, Jones, Nate, and others
caused me to move into a more public setting: character assassination had
already set in against me in mild forms and the message was clear that I
either shut up or prepare for a nasty fight.  I started a web site to track
this experience, which you can find here:  www.poohsthink.com
<http://www.poohsthink.com/>  .  I have been kicked out of Christ Church,
shunned by many (e.g. my daughter is not allowed to play with two of her
best friends), and the elders are currently making me out to be an insane,
bitter, evil man who is as perverse as a child molester in order to steer
kirkers away from my website and the evidence and arguments contained
therein.  As with all the other kirkers who have left and received this kind
of treatment, I must say that I am glad to be out - although this has been a
very gruesome and hurtful exercise.

6.     Much criticism that comes against Christ Church is not just,
rational, or fair.  But much of it is.  All of it should be expected, since
any religious group that acts so exclusive and arrogant would get a strong
lashing back from a small liberal community anywhere in the US currently.  

Yours,

Michael Metzler 

There are several reasons. To start with one of the less important reasons

--

The people in Christ Church are sinners like everyone else, and it shows. 

Judgment starts at the house of God precisely because God loves His people
and wants to purge us of dross. I think many of the problems we've seen
around Christ Church have this dimension.

A more important reason is probably the fact that Christ Church is doing a
lot of things right. History is the history of spiritual warfare, and there
is always conflict wherever and whenever the church is doing its job right. 

That doesn't mean we should be spoiling for a fight (we are called, as much
as possible, to be at peace with all men) and it certainly doesn't mean that
the presence of opposition from outside the church is a 100% reliable sign
that the church is "right on target." But it is a fact that Jesus says to us
in John 15, "If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated
you. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye
are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the
world hateth you. Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not
greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute
you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also. But all these
things will they do unto you for my name's sake, because they know not him
that sent me."

Believe me, if Christ Church was not succeeding in the truest sense of the
word, it would not be meeting with even a tiny fraction of the opposition it
receives now.

Amid this, Christ Church has to do what it has always had to do: remain
focused on Christ and fulfill the church's prophetic duty to share the truth
of Christ's gospel. Everything else can be committed to Him. Moscows
intoleristas don't have anything to fear from Christ Church, but they do
have good reason to fear God. Since the intoleristas arms are too short to
box with God, they try to take it out on Christ Church instead. They're
shooting the messenger.

-- Princess Sushitushi

Paul Rumelhart wrote:

>That falls in line with what I've always understood about their views.  

>I respect that.  So why all the fighting?

> 

>Paul

> 

>Taro Tanaka wrote:

> 

>>The short answer is that nobody connected with Christ Church believes 

>>that faith is something that can be coerced, and any attempt to coerce 

>>faith is futile. At the same time, obviously every Christian wants to 

>>see the entire earth converted to Jesus Messiah. We call on people to 

>>submit voluntarily to Jesus Messiah.

>> 

>>-- Princess Sushitushi

>> 

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