Friday, June 13, 2008

A Labor of Love

Summer’s here and in my off time I’ve been helping my neighbor build a retaining wall in his backyard, which has cut into my designated time for fully documented anonymous attack blogging. The wall is slow going because we’re using fairly large stones (roughly 75 to 150 pounds each) and it takes about three hours before my dogs start barking, but it looks good. All of this is to say that I missed documenting the anniversary of this important date (June 9, 2005) when an unidentified person sent A Labor of Love to the Internet.

A Labor of Love was written by a Christian who wrote with the assumption that Douglas Wilson is regenerate, which assumption I do not grant. Moreover, I am not aware of anyone who has attempted to produce evidence to support the claim. Nevertheless, it’s a good read for several reasons, let me name just one: A Labor of Love represents the testimony of one more witness in a long line of witnesses who testified to the extreme polarizing affect of Douglas Wilson on the local community. As usual Beelzeblog blamed Emmanuel Goldstein for writing A Labor of Love (he did not), which was his way of saying that since Emmanuel Goldstein is a non-human who deserves to die (according to the Fearless Leader’s unwritten but well-established decree), everyone must ignore everything he says. But I digress.

As you read this, please keep one fact in mind: This letter was published about three months after Douglas Wilson learned that a serial pedophile had raped several lambs from his flock for the last 18 months. In other words, this letter was published 3 months after Wilson learned that God’s judgment had fallen on the depraved culture of Christ Church, Moscow, at least according to Douglas Wilson’s standard, and members of the Kult still did not know about Sitler’s abominations. Furthermore, this letter was published while Wilson was in the middle of his zoning controversy. City Council had just ruled that the Zoning Code prohibited New Saint Andrews College from using downtown Moscow, which put Wilson’s takeover plans at serious risk (Council eventually amended the code to allow NSA by Conditional Use Permit). Lastly, as you read this please note that Wilson was in the middle of an extremely strong PR push to market his first annual but now-defunct Trinity Fest as the zenith of Christian culture, which marketing did not mention his serial pedophile or his convicted child molester, Jamin Wight, whose predations took place at the same time as Steven Sitler’s. Perhaps he should have named it the Trinity Fester.

Take a few minutes to read A Labor of Love.

Thank you.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hello, Mark T. First time commenter here. I'm anonymous because I'm yet another victim of the CREC and its serrated edge theology--I and my family and some of my friends. I'm no longer afraid for myself, but I have to think of others I love who are still in the CREC (and trying to get out).

I'm just wondering if you know of any web sites where CREC victims get together and talk. I've found Cultists in Hats and all the places you link to, but I'm wondering if there is more of a "support group" place. Something akin to Sovereign Grace Ministries Survivors.

Thanks for what you do here. It's important.

Mark T. said...

Anon,

Thanks for your comment and I’m sorry to hear about you and your friends.

We’ve had a few inquiries along these lines and my and my answer is always the same. First, no, I am not aware of any kind “support group” network for survivors of the CREC; and, second, while the concept in theory is a great idea, I believe it would be very difficult to implement for a number of reasons. Here are a few:

1. CREC refugees are generally isolated from others before they escape for a healthier environment. That isolation tends to foster enormous fear and distrust to the point that any help they receive must be hands on — in person.

2. In Moscow, fear still grips many refugees to the point that they won’t get online to comment on a site such as this for fear that Wilson and his IP goons will trace their IP in order to harass them (this is a legitimate fear, but not because they can trace the IPs of commenters).

3. In Moscow, these poor souls are so brainwashed and abused that they don’t even trust their fellow refugees. This is a terrible phenomenon that I have seen too many times, but these sheep are so jumbled in their heads that oftentimes they still see former members of the Kult as “enemies.” Consequently they want nothing to do with some of the persons most qualified to help them.

4. In many instances, Wilson holds family members hostage to silence refugees when they leave. For example, a certain grandfather left the Kult a couple of years ago, and Wilson repaid him by instructing his children (who are members) to prohibit their children from visiting their grandfather. Evil, I know, and God will nail him, I am certain; but until then it’s a highly effective device to maintain silence.

In short, it has been my experience that Wilson and his thugs know the benefits of keeping their victims fragmented and they know how to keep the others quiet. I’m all for a centralized network to provide help for these poor souls, I’m just not sure how to implement it, which is one reason for this blog. Each post is designed to inform the leaders of the Reformed church as well as warn people who may consider moving to Moscow. I hope that eventually the leaders will construct a plan to isolate Wilson and the CREC as poisonous lepers and that the general public will begin to realize that for all his popular “how to” books, he really doesn’t have a clue because he’s one big fake.

And I am open to suggestions, if you have any.

Thanks.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for your response! I figured you would answer as you did; I'm pretty handy with Google, and I haven't been able to find anything. Still, I hoped maybe there was something I'd missed.

I totally understand what you're saying. I know all about the fear. I no longer trust any of my friends and acquaintances within the CREC. Even though I know some of them are genuinely kind people who might be horrified if they knew what I know, I can't trust them because they are essentially brainwashed and may think it is their duty to be a tattle tale.

It's definitely not just Moscow, as I'm sure you're aware, although that is the central location. I've literally heard people come back from a visit to Moscow and speak as if they just made a pilgrimage to Mecca or the Holy Land. It makes me shudder. And it's everywhere. I ache for all the people in all those little, obscure CREC congregations across the country.

Again, thank you for what you do here.

Mark T. said...

Thanks for stopping in, and stay in touch.

May God keep you.