[Vision2020] Hypocrisy

[News of Christ Cult]

        Neo-Confederates
Idaho Pastor a Hard-Liner, With an Exception or Two

           Doug Wilson, pastor of a radical church in Moscow, Idaho, and
co-author of an infamous booklet describing antebellum slavery as an
easygoing "life of plenty," has always seemed to project a persona of smug
and self-satisfied arrogance.

When hundreds of students, history professors, town officials and others
decried the racism and sorry scholarship of his *Southern Slavery, As It Was
*, Wilson mocked them all publicly, scoffing at what he called the
"intoleristas." He continued with a tit-for-tat attack on the "racism" of
Abraham Lincoln and Ted Kennedy.

When a local professor revealed later in 2004 that Wilson's booklet
contained 22 passages plagiarized from a discredited 1974 academic treatise,
Wilson scoffed again, deriding the "local Banshees" who criticized him over
what he portrayed as a mere citation problem. Wilson went on to say that his
Moscow-based Canon Press was issuing a corrected version of the booklet --
correct in its citations, that is, but maintaining unchanged its portrayal
of happy and well-fed slaves whose relationship with their masters was
described as one of "mutual confidence and affection."

Now, Wilson is back in the news. This summer, the *Moscow-Pullman Daily News
* published a story on "rumors" that Wilson, who controls an extreme-right
religious empire in Moscow, and his New Saint Andrews College had tried to
"cover up" serial sexual molestations by a college student -- molestations
of very young boys and girls carried out over several years. Although the
newspaper quoted none of them, many people were angry that Wilson had failed
to notify families in his Christ Church for eight months after Steven Sitler
confessed to him in March 2005. One church family with young children had
boarded Sitler, and others welcomed him as a visitor in their homes (Sitler
molested one 2-year-old girl in a similar visiting situation in Colville,
Wash.). Critics complained that Wilson's lack of action had eliminated the
possibility of identifying other victims in the community.

Wilson and college officials told the newspaper that they had immediately
kicked Sitler out of school and notified police of his crimes, but decided
not to inform members of the public because of concerns for victims'
privacy.

Five months after Sitler's confession, another man who had been boarded by a
Christ Church family while he studied to become a minister there was
arrested and ultimately pleaded guilty to lewd conduct with an underage
girl. When details of the matter came up on a local blog run by a
disgruntled Wilson follower, part of the pastor's response was to liken the
blogger to "a sucking chest wound."

The father of the girl in the second incident told the *Intelligence
Report*that church officials tried to keep that quiet as well. At one
point, he
said, they threatened to bring him under church discipline for failing to
protect his daughter. "It would be like me getting robbed and the police
coming over and arresting me because I didn't have five locks on the door,
only one," he said. "It was just bizarre."

What may have been most remarkable about the entire affair was Wilson's role
in the case of Sitler, who he ministered to after Sitler was caught. Wilson
wrote the sentencing judge in Sitler's case, describing him as "most
responsive" and "completely honest" and asking that criminal penalties be
"measured and limited."

That might seem like an understandable request coming from a man's pastor.
But Doug Wilson is no normal pastor. He is a biblical hard-liner, a man who
in numerous books and speeches is quick to advocate the most draconian
punishments of the Old Testament for all kinds of offenses, some quite
minor. *And that applies to the Sitler case directly, judging from what
Wilson wrote in his 1999 book Fidelity: "When we are dealing with young
children who are abused by adults (pederasty, child porn, etc.), the penalty
for those guilty of the crime should be death."*
Except, apparently, when Pastor Wilson decides otherwise.


*Intelligence Report*
Fall 2006


-- 


Juanita Flores
Advocate for the Truth from Jesus
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