[Vision2020] Trinity Fest Protest.

[Andreas Schou]

> That just about sums up what God haters like Andreas and Nick really
> fear.
>
> It's the freedom.

Doug --

Actually, spent some time ruminating today, and produced exactly that
answer. In your theology, one of the things I find objectionable (and
I find many things about it objectionable), is, in fact, the freedom.
Or, at the very least, it is the juxtaposition of absolute liberty
with absolute privation.

The thing that strikes me most, when reading Wilson in particular, is
that he does not particularly fit the model of a theocrat; that is, he
is not grim, humorless, and dour (or, at least, he is not generally
so; I'll discuss that later). He's a quick read, and once you've
mastered the somewhat specialized vocabulary he uses, and not an
unpleasant. He actively promotes drinking, humor, the arts -- things
which other Christians, especially other *Calvinists*, explicitly
reject. You also won't find pious, whitebread "Christianized" versions
of secular entertainments: last year, I was treated to a passable
cover of "Sweet Home Alabama" sung by the man himself.

He is not an ascetic, and explicitly denounces asceticism (of any
sort) as being "Gnostic." You will find no flagellants in his
congregation, and no teetotalers. I spent some time wandering around
Trinity Fest this year. It looked fun, especially when one compares it
to Gary North's economic apocalypse seminars or Joe Morecraft's fusty,
legalistic lecturing (you will find nothing more interesting on his
church calendar than a "World History Class," and sermons on "History
of the Reformation").

You may want to stop reading here, as it is the last positive thing I
will be saying about DW for some time.

Those freedoms are reserved only for the elect, and then only from the
upper classes of the elect. Some pretense is made at there being
reciprocal responsibilities between a man and his wife; a master and
his slave; a pastor and his church. Those responsibilities boil down,
effectively, to these two tenets: do not make their burden of your
lessers harder than it must be; keep them firmly in their place. Women
are responsible for cleaning, obedience, sex on demand; men, as their
reciprocal responsibility, must give orders and compliments. A slave
must work as hard as he can for his master; his master must merely
refrain from whipping him.

There are differences in opinion over egalitarianism, both here and
elsewhere. My position is clear: I am an egalitarian, sexual and
otherwise. I don't mean to start that argument here. However, even by
the standard that people of different station should have different
rights and responsibilities, his failure to promote standards that are
even remotely reciprocal is truly remarkable. In ethical anarchy
Wilson proposes for those whose ordination is to lead, those who are
subject have absolute duties to other mortals, and those that are
ordained to be leaders are answerable only to God, who is expected,
one suspects, to manage the affairs of the Church by directly smiting
those leaders who stray.

I'm reminded of something Chris Witmer posted some time ago:

"If it was me, I probably wouldn't give them the time of day. If you
ask me (sorry, I know nobody asked me), it sounds like someone has
trouble distinguishing between presbyterianism (where the congregation
chooses their elders and then submits to them) and modern American
baptistic congregationalism (where the leaders have to keep on
answering to the electorate)."

To me, some of the charges coming from the Reformed side of Doug's
critics -- hyperconservatives even amongst evangelical Christians --
sound esoteric. Sacerdotalism. Papism. Pastoral tyranny. Covering over
the criminal mistakes of other pastors (like R.C. Sproul's tax fraud.)
I haven't mentioned them because I'm only distantly interested in
issues of church governance. But they are merely the flip side of my
objections to his theology, from the liberal side: he believes that
the powerful -- men, slaveholders, whites -- are utterly
unaccountable, that they are ordained to be unaccountable, and that
the Enlightenment (and Civil War) somehow forced Satanic
accountability into places, like the marital home, the government, and
the Church, where it should never have gone.

Well, Doug, we in the West had 1200 years of misery, death, ignorance
and tyranny under unaccountable leaders, unaccountable husbands, and
unaccountable white men with beards. We're sick of it now, thanks.

-- ACS