<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span></span></div><div><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span></span></div><div><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span></span></div><div><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">Courtesy of Religion News Service at:</div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><a href="http://jonathanmerritt.religionnews.com/2013/10/30/douglas-wilson-says-pastors-who-voted-for-obama-should-resign/">http://jonathanmerritt.religionnews.com/2013/10/30/douglas-wilson-says-pastors-who-voted-for-obama-should-resign/</a></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">----------------------------------</div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><b>Pastor Douglas Wilson says ministers who voted for Obama should resign. Maybe he should go first.</b></span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Douglas Wilson, pastor of Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, says that pastors who voted for Barack Obama in the last election should resign.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“Any evangelical leader — by which I mean someone like a minister or an elder — who voted for Obama the second time, is not qualified for the office he holds, and should resign that office,” <a href="http://dougwils.com/s7-engaging-the-culture/rabbits-should-know-what-hawks-look-like.html" target="_blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Wilson wrote in a blog post dated October 14</a>. “Unless and until he repents of how he is thinking about the challenges confronting our nation, he should not be entrusted with the care of souls.”</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Voting for Barack Obama, Wilson <a href="http://dougwils.com/s7-engaging-the-culture/rabbits-should-know-what-hawks-look-like.html" target="_blank" style="text-decoration: none;">said</a>, “exhibits a fundamental condition of cluelessness” because the President is pro-choice.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Forty-two percent of Protestants and 50 percent of Catholics voted for Barack Obama in 2012, <a href="http://www.pewforum.org/2012/11/07/how-the-faithful-voted-2012-preliminary-exit-poll-analysis/" target="_blank" style="text-decoration: none;">according to Pew Research</a>. This includes 95 percent of black Protestants.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In <a href="http://dougwils.com/s7-engaging-the-culture/rabbits-should-know-what-hawks-look-like.html" target="_blank" style="text-decoration: none;">his post</a>, Wilson took special aim at African-American Christians:</span></p><blockquote style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; padding: 0px 0px 0px 15px; margin: 20px 0px; border-left-width: 3.289px; border-left-style: solid; border-left-color: rgb(176, 174, 167);"><p style="margin: 20px 0px 0px; border-left-width: 3.289px; border-left-color: rgb(176, 174, 167);"><i style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Not only must the dignity of human life be upheld by white and black Christian leaders alike, to the extent we may allow any differences, it should be to expect a greater vehemence in opposing abortion (in the person of its advocates and enablers) from black leaders. This is because it is their people who are being disproportionately targeted by the white Sangerites. And a black Christian leader who cannot identify a Sangerite is a rabbit leader who does not know what a hawk looks like.</i></p></blockquote><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">He later likened voting for Barack Obama to German leaders voting for Hitler.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">These comments are only the tip of the outrageous iceberg that is Douglas Wilson’s public record. But Wilson continues to gain a hearing, particularly among Reformed Christians. He’s written numerous articles for <a href="http://theresurgence.com/authors/douglas-wilson" target="_blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Mark Driscoll’s “Resurgence” blog</a>, has <a href="http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/a-conversation-with-doug-wilson-and-john-piper" target="_blank" style="text-decoration: none;">shared a stage with popular pastor John Piper</a>, and <a href="http://amzn.to/17rC3c3" target="_blank" style="text-decoration: none;">his book on fathering</a> was released by Christian publisher Thomas Nelson in 2012. He has more than 16,000 <a href="https://twitter.com/douglaswils" target="_blank" style="text-decoration: none;">twitter followers</a>.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">From the outset, let me say that I am unashamedly pro-life. I believe that the culture of abortion in our country will be judged as a blemish in our history by future generations. Abortion is one of the most significant moral issues of our time.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Yet, I would never argue that a pastor who voted for Barack Obama should resign his post. And I say this <i>because </i>of my allegiance to the Bible, not in spite of it. The Bible talks extensively about the qualifications for a pastor, most directly in the books of Titus and 1 Timothy. But even though it lists more than a dozen requirements from those who should hold that office, it does not list anything resembling a political requirement.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In fact, the Apostle Peter in his first epistle says that pastors should be examples to their flocks. He does this just three chapters after he tells the faithful to “honor the emperor.” This does not sound very extreme to modern readers, but a first century audience would know that the emperor was known for approving mass murder of the Jewish people.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">As I pointed out in my book, <a href="http://amzn.to/VrhIwq" target="_blank" style="text-decoration: none;"><em>A Faith of Our Own</em>,</a> just before Christ’s birth, Roman armies rolled through Galilee, burning down villages and killing innocents. Any who resisted their rule were tortured and often executed to deter mass rebellion. Sometime around or after Jesus’ birth, the Roman general Varus gathered the rebels in and around Jesus’ hometown and crucified about two thousand men.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Yet, Peter told believers to honor this emperor? Maybe Wilson thinks the surly apostle should have resigned his post too.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">By all accounts, Wilson jumped the shark a long time ago.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">He expressed disturbing views on slavery in his pamphlet <a href="http://reformed-theology.org/html/books/slavery/southern_slavery_as_it_was.htm" target="_blank" style="text-decoration: none;">“Southern Slavery, As it Was.”</a> Speaking fondly of the “unexpected blessings” of slavery, Wilson <a href="http://reformed-theology.org/html/books/slavery/southern_slavery_as_it_was.htm" target="_blank" style="text-decoration: none;">said</a>, “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 War or since.”</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In 2005, Wilson insinuated that <a href="http://dougwils.com/s7-engaging-the-culture/one-of-those-circus-ponies.html" target="_blank" style="text-decoration: none;">gays and lesbians could be executed by law</a> in some circumstances:</span></p><blockquote style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; padding: 0px 0px 0px 15px; margin: 20px 0px; border-left-width: 3.289px; border-left-style: solid; border-left-color: rgb(176, 174, 167);"><p style="margin: 20px 0px 0px; border-left-width: 3.289px; border-left-color: rgb(176, 174, 167);"><i style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">This is what happens when people comb through my words without reading them. “Yes, they will say, but notice that even if you don’t believe in the death penalty for homosexual behavior in all circumstances, you have (by implication) said that there could be occasions when it is called for. Admit it!” Okay, I admit it.</i></p></blockquote><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">As support, he cited <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Leviticus+20%3A13&version=NIV" target="_blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Leviticus 20:13</a>, which states that those who commit sexual acts with someone of the same gender should be put to death.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“I also believe that the law of the Old Testament was the model for our common law system,” Wilson <a href="http://dougwils.com/s7-engaging-the-culture/one-of-those-circus-ponies.html" target="_blank" style="text-decoration: none;">commented</a>, “and our system should work in the same way.”</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">He <a href="http://dougwils.com/s7-engaging-the-culture/one-of-those-circus-ponies.html" target="_blank" style="text-decoration: none;">added</a> that “killing homosexuals is pretty much a non-priority for me” since AIDS is claiming so many lives in the LGBTQ community.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span class="tweetable"><a href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?original_referer=http://jonathanmerritt.religionnews.com/2013/10/30/douglas-wilson-says-pastors-who-voted-for-obama-should-resign/&source=tweetbutton&text=Douglas%20Wilson%20thinks%20Democratic%20ministers%20should%20step%20down%2C%20but%20maybe%20he%20should&url=http://jonathanmerritt.religionnews.com/2013/10/30/douglas-wilson-says-pastors-who-voted-for-obama-should-resign/" target="_blank" style="text-decoration: none; position: relative; padding: 5px;">Douglas Wilson thinks Democratic ministers should step down, but maybe <em>he</em> should <span class="icon-twitter" style="text-decoration: inherit; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; display: inline; width: auto; height: auto; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: none; margin-top: 0px; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat repeat;"></span> </a></span>. While there is not a political requirement for pastors in scripture, the Bible <em>does</em> say that they should <a href="http://biblehub.com/1_timothy/3-3.htm" target="_blank" style="text-decoration: none;">not be quarrelsome</a>, <a href="http://biblehub.com/titus/1-7.htm" target="_blank" style="text-decoration: none;">peacemakers</a>, <a href="http://biblehub.com/titus/1-8.htm" target="_blank" style="text-decoration: none;">self-controlled</a>, <a href="http://biblehub.com/1_timothy/3-3.htm" target="_blank" style="text-decoration: none;">gentle</a>, <a href="http://biblehub.com/titus/1-7.htm" target="_blank" style="text-decoration: none;">humble</a>, and <a href="http://biblehub.com/1_timothy/3-7.htm" target="_blank" style="text-decoration: none;">respectable</a>. Given these requirements and the comments above, who do you think should be penning a resignation letter right now?</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">--------------------</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Pastor Douglas Wilson says ministers who voted for Obama are unfit, but his comments raise questions about his own ministry.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><img src="cid:9EE72F33-ACCC-48D7-B7FD-80BD7AE88773" alt="image.jpeg" id="9EE72F33-ACCC-48D7-B7FD-80BD7AE88773" width="632" height="347"></p></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">----------------------------------</span><br><br><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">Seeya 'round town, Moscow, because . . .</div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">"Moscow Cares" (the most fun you can have with your pants on)</div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><a href="http://www.MoscowCares.com">http://www.MoscowCares.com</a></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"> </div><div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">Tom Hansen</div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">Moscow, Idaho</div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br></div><div><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0px; font-size: 12px; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">"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, hed be disciplined."</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0px; font-size: 12px; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br></span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0px; font-size: 12px; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">- Douglas Wilson (January 31, 2007) </span></p><p style="margin: 0px;"><font face="Helvetica"><span style="font-size: 16px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><a href="http://www.tomandrodna.com/protest/Doug_Wilson_Liers_013107.mp3">http://www.tomandrodna.com/protest/Doug_Wilson_Liers_013107.mp3</a></span></font></p><p style="margin: 0px;"><font face="Helvetica"><span style="font-size: 16px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"> </span></font></p></div></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><div> </div></div></div></div></div></div></body></html>