[Vision2020] In Christian vs. Atheist Documentary, a Bizarre Advocate for Christianity

[Tom Hansen]

Courtesy of the Southern Poverty Law Center's website at:

http://tinyurl.com/BizarreAdvocate

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In Christian vs. Atheist Documentary, a Bizarre Advocate for Christianity
Posted By Sonia Scherr On October 27, 2009

In a new documentary pitting atheism against faith, contrarian critic
Christopher Hitchens debates evangelical pastor Douglas Wilson on the
merits of Christianity. “Collision,” released today, has already generated
buzz: Hitchens and Wilson have appeared on National Public Radio’s “All
Things Considered,” CNN’s “The Joy Behar Show” and Fox News Channel’s “Fox
and Friends,” among other programs. Newsweek Religion Editor Lisa Miller
devoted a column to the 90-minute film, which she thoroughly panned: “So
uncinemetic is this picture — two middle-aged white men talking — that my
attention insistently wandered toward anything humanizing and finally
dwelled, for too long perhaps, on a fleck of something on Hitchens’s
eyelash.” Hitchens responded in a column for this week’s Slate, writing
that “the subject of religion is back where it always ought to be — at the
very center of any argument about the clash of world views.”

What’s missing from the media hubbub are a few salient details [1] about
Wilson. The 56-year-old pastor from Idaho seems an odd booster for
Christianity, considering that some of his views sound downright
un-Christian. Wilson co-wrote a booklet called Southern Slavery, As it
Was, which describes the institution in almost reverent terms. “Slavery
produced in the South a genuine affection between the races that we
believe we can say has never existed in any nation before the [Civil] War
or since,” Wilson wrote with co-author Stephen Wilkins, a founding member
of the racist League of the South. “Slave life was to [slaves] a life of
plenty, of simple pleasures, of food, clothes, and good medical care.”

The booklet ignited a controversy six years ago that roiled the community
around Moscow, Idaho, where Wilson had established a religious empire that
included a private Christian academy, an accrediting agency for Christian
schools, an evangelical college, and a church with over 1,000 members.
Hundreds of University of Idaho students demonstrated against Wilson, two
local university presidents issued anti-racist statements, and two
academic historians wrote a damning essay disputing the booklet’s
portrayal of slavery.

In 2004, a retired philosophy professor at the University of Idaho
uncovered another problem with Wilson’s book: At least 22 passages had
been plagiarized from a discredited 1974 academic treatise. Canon Press
issued an updated version of the book that corrected what Wilson termed a
“citation problem” but continued to promote myths about slavery.

Wilson’s extreme views extend beyond race. He asserted that if a woman is
raped, the rapist should pay the father a bride price and then, if the
father approves, marry his victim. He told Christianity Today that exile
(as opposed to death) might be an appropriate punishment for certain
homosexuals. However, he’d support execution for cursing one’s parents
and, in some cases, for adultery. He wrote in one of his books that the
children of parents who don’t believe in Jesus Christ are “foul” and
“unclean.”

Wilson doesn’t always practice what he preaches. Although he wrote in his
1999 book Fidelity that the penalty for child abuse should be death, he
urged a sentencing judge to be lenient on a college student who had
molested young children. The Moscow-Pullman Daily News reported in 2006
that people were upset because Wilson had failed to promptly notify
families in his church about the student, who had spent time in their
homes.

Wilson increasingly has found favor in mainstream Christian circles. The
senior pastor of a 6,000-member Baptist church in Minneapolis recently [2]
invited Wilson to speak at a national conference marking the 500th
anniversary of John Calvin’s birth. In June, the prominent Christian right
leader and Watergate ex-convict Charles Colson was on the program of [3] a
conference hosted by Wilson.

“Collision” had its genesis in a written debate between Hitchens and
Wilson that was published on the website of Christianity Today. The
exchange grew into a book called Is Christianity Good for the World?,
which they promoted in several East Coast cities last fall. Filmmaker
Darren Doane tagged along to shoot the footage for “Collision,” which
premiers tomorrow and Thursday in New York and Los Angeles.

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Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

“I’ll just speak for our church, in Christ Church. If I found out that a
member of our church or a church officer was lying to non-believers in the
community, as a way to get by or protect themself or protect his
reputation, yes, he’d be disciplined.”

- Doug Wilson (January 31, 2007)
http://www.tomandrodna.com/protest/Doug_Wilson_Liers_013107.mp3

PS - This is just a short advance notice on the upcoming (April/May)
Second Annual Intolerista Wingding (with Roy Zimmerman).  However, unlike
last year's Intolerista Wingding, this one is going to be FREE!

Stay tuned . . .