“Forever Seventeen”

A former member of the Kult once told me that when she looks back at her tenure in Moscow, she sees that they put enormous pressure on her to conform her life to Nancy Wilson’s, and since she believed that Nancy Wilson was the perfect wife, she gladly complied. Now that she’s out, however, she sees the big picture much more clearly. In hindsight she says that conformity was really more like a straightjacket that she daily tailored to her body, so that she could not be herself anymore — she had to be Nancy. She said it got to the point that her straightjacket squeezed the life (and liberty) of Christ out of her — because Doug & Nancy are perfect. Thankfully, that family escaped Christ Church, Moscow, and they have rediscovered true freedom in Christ.

That true story segues to a post by the Iron Rose of Moscow. Once again we see that the Wilsons hopelessly conflict their mind-numbed disciples: Should a woman roll on her husband, as per this instruction, or should the helpmeet play dumb meat? And I wonder what the Wilsons would say about A Christ Church Wife? Actually, I know the answer to that question. Wilson set precedent a couple of years ago when he suspected that a wife was not loyal to the Kult — he executed the family in a high-profile termination.

Anyway, this woman knocks me out: read “Forever Seventeen” and picture in your mind’s eye a “pendulous-bellied, bearded, over-fifty-year-old man engaged in Trinitarian skylarking.” Maybe he’ll be so kind as to draw us a picture.

Thank you.

Post Script: in the last paragraph Rosemary mentions the “backyard turned into a bulldozed subdivision,” which is a highly public scandal that I have not broached yet. In short, Wilson has not limited his empire building to hijacking churches into the CREC or coveting all of downtown Moscow for his glory. He and a few investment partners (which I believe includes his in-laws) had the Wilson’s backyard re-platted to construct a gated community of cookie-cutter shacks on what is currently a bulldozed mess.

The End of the Trinity Fest Part 3: “calling the evangelical church out of her exile”

In our previous installment we considered some of the controversy that preceded the first annual Trinity Fest by comparing the image of Christ Church, Moscow, that Pastor Douglas Wilson projected for others to see with the actual state of his church that he desperately didn’t want anyone to see, i.e. his inner fantasy of him leading an almighty kirk as opposed to the external reality that a serial pedophile had just ravaged the little ones of his congregation who were under his (Wilson’s) care. Indeed, his inner fantasy militated so strongly against external reality that he never bothered to warn the parents of his congregation that predation may have occurred. Rather, he blustered, “We are formidable,” as he bragged that the infants of his congregation hit the hard stuff during the Lord’s Supper, calling this use of the Table “potent.”

And each day during the first annual Trinity Fest he used Blog and Mablog to give a blow-by-blow account of the festivities, as part of his self-promotion package. He pushed hard to impose his inner fantasy on the world, despite reality, and he really wanted people to believe that Christ Church, Moscow, was leading the reform of Christian culture at the community level. He wanted his followers to believe, with him, that the world dreaded his awe-inspiring kirk because they were the cutting edge of Christian culture. He certainly would not have anyone know that they were the essence of a disintegrating culture, at least by his own written standards. After all, he was the brilliant light who just a few years earlier wrote this Caiaphas-like prophecy for all the world to read:

Violent rape is a judgment of God upon a people. . . This does not justify the perpetrators; it is simply the recognition that when disaster befalls a city, sexual disaster for the women is part of this. This does not mean that a woman who is raped should assume any personal responsibility for it; she is innocent. . . Violent rape is God’s judgment on a culture, and individual women who are part of that culture are included in the judgment. But this does not mean that they as individuals “deserved” it. . . . We see the same judgment at work in disintegrating cultures: “Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil” (Eccl. 8:11). Here the rape is not being perpetrated by foreign soldiers, but is the result of citizens turning on one another. Every culture is a gathering of sinners, and so rape is always a possibility. But when God’s hand of judgment is heavy upon a people, women are in far greater danger of sexual assault than at other times. (Douglas Wilson, Fidelity: What It Means To Be a One-Woman Man [Moscow: Canon Press, 1999] 82, 83)

I don’t think it’s possible for a worse visitation to strike a church than a serial pedophile raping its most defenseless members, and I don’t think it’s possible for a so-called pastor to demonstrate nonfeasance any better than Pastor Douglas Wilson of Christ Church, Moscow, who hid this awful fact from the world so that he could pretend his formidable worship assembly was hosting a Trinitarian carnival. To be sure, his dereliction crossed the line from nonfeasance to malfeasance. By his standard God’s hand of judgment was heavy on the Kirk — two citizens of their own had turned on their babies, infants, and children, to rape them. These crimes took place for over two years, as the Fearless Leader led his formidable army from scandal to scandal — imprecatory prayers, Southern Slavery, property-tax conflicts, zoning wars, verbal threats against the Latah County Commissioners, etc., not to mention the national scandal in the Reformed church known as the Federal Vision. I’m sure that when he learned about Steven Sitler’s predations he justified it in his mind as some sort of inconsequential collateral damage. After all, everybody knows that serial pedophiles regularly wreak havoc on “formidable” churches. It’s part of St. Paul’s argument in 1 Corinthians 12. So on August 11, 2005, the last day of the first annual Trinity Fest, he finished his summary of the day’s events by writing,

Glitches here and there, but over all, we were extremely grateful to God for the success of the first annual Trinity Fest. (“Trinity Fest 2005, Day Five”; emphasis original)

Yes, he was “extremely grateful to God for the success of the first annual Trinity Fest.” But exactly eight days later, or Trinity Fest 2005, Day Thirteen, he had to leave his inner fantasy for a few moments to deal with reality so that he could express his gratitude for something else. Steven Sitler was still at his parent’s home in Colville, WA, waiting for Judge Stegner to sentence him for his crimes, and someone (we don’t know who) compelled the Fearless Leader to write a letter to the judge on behalf of the serial pedophile. He closed it with similar expressions of gratitude:

I am grateful Steven was caught, and am grateful he has been brought to account for these actions so early in his life. I am grateful that he will be sentenced for his behavior, and that there will be hard consequences for him in real time. At the same time, I would urge that the civil penalties applied would be measured and limited. I have a good hope that Steven has genuinely repented, and that he will continue to deal with this to become a productive and contributing member of society. (August 19, 2005)

Of course, he wrote and sent this letter in secret, without his flock’s knowledge or consent (I seriously doubt the Kult elders even knew about it). But God is not mocked because according to the Fearless Leader’s standards “Violent rape is God’s judgment on a culture,” despite Wilson’s gratitude for Sitler’s capture. And just because Wilson concealed, denied, and suppressed the truth about his disintegrating culture didn’t mean it wasn’t putrid — rotten to the core — it just meant that Wilson was ripe for another judgment. We know this because on August 17, 2005, two days before Wilson wrote his secret letter to Judge Stegner, a Latah County magistrate issued an arrest warrant for Jamin Wight. If you’re keeping track (and I know that swimming through this filth gets complicated), that’s Trinity Fest 2005, Day Eleven. The accusation against Wight stated:

SEXUAL ABUSE OF A CHILD, Idaho Code 18-1506 and LEWD CONDUCT WITH A MINOR UNDER SIXTEEN YEARS OF AGE, Idaho Code 18-1508, Idaho Code 18-6608, Felonies in THREE (3) COUNTS, have been committed. . . (Arrest Warrant for Jamin Wight, August 17, 2005)

We have no idea exactly when Wilson learned about Wight’s arrest, but we do know it was before September 1, 2005, which is the date that Pastor Wilson wrote a letter to the victim’s father threatening him with discipline. I suppose that would be Trinity Fest 2005, Day Twenty-Six. Regardless, the same lightning bolt struck the Fearless Leader twice in less than five months, and you would think that the discovery of two child molesters in less than five months would weigh heavily on a pastor. To be sure, you would think this would be sufficient cause of action for a man to examine himself, his ministry, and his calling. You know, some of that “morbid introspection” the Fearless Leader despises so much. After all, these rapes took place under his nose. In fact, they took place at the exact same time that he crossed hill and dale to obtain an apology for imaginary offenses that he believed the University of Idaho committed against him. Personally, I believe that if a man has time to demand an apology, he has time to guard the flock. Or something like that.

This brings us to one of Beelzeblog’s entries announcing the second annual Trinity Fest (2006). As you read this, please remember that by this time Wilson knew about both of his sex offenders. I republish it in entirety:

Extended Deadline
Topic: Shameless Appeals
The last time I did this, a discussion broke out over whether we ought to cancel Trinity Fest. With this shameless appeal, because I am running that risk yet again, let me begin by showing the consistency between repentance of sin and rejoicing before the Lord. The reason for Trinity Fest in the first place has not been to have just a [sic] another random party, but to do so in the context of calling the evangelical church out of her exile. Repentance and joy are not mutually exclusive, but rather go together like ham and eggs. But of course I am not talking about the grim joy of the pietist, or the macabre repentance of the self-absorbed. I am talking about the joy of those who have realized that individualistic autonomy is a death trap, the joy of those who have been brought out of darkness into the perfect law of liberty. The emphasis that follows is mine.

And Nehemiah, which is the Tirshatha, and Ezra the priest the scribe, and the Levites that taught the people, said unto all the people, This day is holy unto the LORD your God; mourn not, nor weep. For all the people wept, when they heard the words of the law. Then he said unto them, Go your way, eat the fat, and drink the sweet, and send portions unto them for whom nothing is prepared: for this day is holy unto our Lord: neither be ye sorry; for the joy of the LORD is your strength. So the Levites stilled all the people, saying, Hold your peace, for the day is holy; neither be ye grieved. And all the people went their way to eat, and to drink, and to send portions, and to make great mirth, because they had understood the words that were declared unto them (Neh. 8:9–12).

That said, we never for a second intended to cancel anything. But for various reasons, we have decided to extend the early registration deadline by one week to Friday, June 23rd. But also, because everything we do is in a highly charged, politicized atmosphere, we know that to do something as simple as this will cause some bad guys to chortle and say, “Aha! They are struggling. Registrations must be down. Look at them! Extending deadlines!” But actually, registrations are rocking right along, and we are on track to be a bigger and better celebration than last year. And so if you want to join us at the early registration prices, you have an additional week to do so. Just working with you all is all.

Posted by Douglas Wilson — 6/16/2006 12:46:36 PM | Link to this post

Before we consider the self-proclaimed “prophetic” aspect of this post, let me note the obvious in the interest of a good chortle: Instead of simply extending the deadline for whatever reason (and he had no obligation to give a reason), he had to wax defensive about the extension and stick it in his “enemies’” faces:

The last time I did this, a discussion broke out over whether we ought to cancel Trinity Fest. With this shameless appeal, because I am running that risk yet again. . . . That said, we never for a second intended to cancel anything. But for various reasons, we have decided to extend the early registration deadline by one week to Friday, June 23rd. But also, because everything we do is in a highly charged, politicized atmosphere, we know that to do something as simple as this will cause some bad guys to chortle and say, “Aha! They are struggling. Registrations must be down. Look at them! Extending deadlines!” But actually, registrations are rocking right along, and we are on track to be a bigger and better celebration than last year. And so if you want to join us at the early registration prices, you have an additional week to do so. Just working with you all is all.

As he indicates, he wrote this part of the post with an eye on his so-called “enemies” (that would be the “bad guys”) in Moscow who thought as much about the Trinity Fest as they did the History Conference. He calls them “intoleristas” (I don’t remember if it’s a proper noun). He knew locals followed his blog for these types of announcements because Blog and Mablog was his familiar medium to communicate with his disciples, and so he had to downplay the obvious meaning of the extension. He had to huff and puff. He had to act as though the situation wasn’t what it appeared, i.e. the Trinity Fest was not the rip-roaring success that he expected. This is a critical point because one of his stated goals for the Trinity Fest was for it to be so big that people would like him even less. I realize that’s not a particularly ambitious objective and most Christians would find it difficult to reconcile with the evangel, but that’s how he advertised it (we shall consider this remarkable aim in an upcoming post). He hoped his carnival would canvass so much of the city that its very presence would offend everyone who didn’t share his imperious vision of taking over Moscow, or roughly 96% of the population.

Consequently, when registrations for the Trinity Fest didn’t add up as he expected, he had to stick his chest out and pretend otherwise. And “pretend” is the operative term because according to “Trinity Fest 2005, Day Three,” they served “about 850” souls for St. Brigid’s Feast, whereas in 2006 (the year of the post in question), “Trinity Fest Day One/Pictures” states that they served 760 at St. Brigid’s Feast. By my count, they were down pert near 100 people or roughly 9%. That’s worth a harrumph and chortle in my book because, “Aha! They WERE struggling and registrations WERE down!” They were not “rocking right along” and they were not “on track to be a bigger and better celebration than last year.” And once again we see his inner fantasy resisting against external reality. He could not distinguish between them. Self-deception became public deception. Harrumph, chortle, and roll on the floor laughing. Two years later the annual Trinity Fest went the way of all flesh. They canceled it.

Please notice, however, as I stop to chortle once more, that he’s the one who put such a high premium on head count. I could care less. In fact, I’m just evangelical enough to believe that where two or three are gathered together in Christ’s name, He is there in the midst. But, nooooooo, they had to have a million-man march. They had to make a pronounced statement of their greatness, their formidability, and their dominance. And their church of 900 souls (that’s the number he publishes) couldn’t even break a thousand for its annual celebration, which is worth a least one more chortle.

Now to point: The blog post under consideration (“Extended Deadline”) explained the reason for the Trinity Fest:

Let me begin by showing the consistency between repentance of sin and rejoicing before the Lord. The reason for Trinity Fest in the first place has not been to have just a [sic] another random party, but to do so in the context of calling the evangelical church out of her exile. Repentance and joy are not mutually exclusive, but rather go together like ham and eggs. But of course I am not talking about the grim joy of the pietist, or the macabre repentance of the self-absorbed. I am talking about the joy of those who have realized that individualistic autonomy is a death trap, the joy of those who have been brought out of darkness into the perfect law of liberty.

Let me remind you of the context of this post in case you forgot it with all the chortling. God sent two child molesters to Christ Church, Moscow, as judgment for their sins — to accelerate the disintegration of their culture, at least according to Wilson’s written standards, yet this dark fact notwithstanding he donned the prophet’s mantle to “call the evangelical church out of her exile.” He couldn’t even shepherd a church through two child molesters, let alone warn his congregation, but he thought he could call the Church to repentance, and by an act of self-willed individualistic autonomy he declared the evangelical church in “exile.” I would chortle if it wasn’t so nuts. And please don’t miss this: He then called the evangelical church to come to Moscow (read him) in order to repent. This is not ham and eggs, it’s ham and crazy. He thinks he’s the prophet Daniel when he’s actually Belshazzar defiling the holy things of God and just like Belshazzar he cannot read the writing on the wall, though unlike the Chaldaean king he wrote the writing with his own fingers. Again, he cannot distinguish between his inner fantasy and real life.

Finally, we have one more consideration, which closes the deal. In his book Fidelity Pastor Douglas Wilson of Christ Church, Moscow, cited Ecclesiastes 8:11 as his proof text to establish the principle of “disintegrating cultures”: “Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.” Elsewhere in Fidelity he affirmed the death penalty for pedophiles and rapists. But when he had a chance to stand by his written standards, he caved. And this is not about the appropriate punishment for these offenders; it’s about the Fearless Leader’s hypocrisy. Neither Steven Sitler nor Jamin Wight received the punishment due their evil works, at least according to Wilson’s theonomic standards. Both men skated due in large part to his advocacy. He pled for leniency on behalf of both before he ever warned his congregation of the danger they posed. In one instance he even threatened the victim’s father with punishment. In other words, sentence against their evil work was not executed speedily and when compared to death it wasn’t executed at all. And that’s because Wilson’s heart was fully set in him to do evil.



Thank you.

Eyewitness Testimony

I received this comment this morning. It’s the testimony of an eyewitness who watched the judge sentence Jamin Wight, and this much is true — when Rosemary Huskey bears witness, you can take it to the bank that every word is true.

Rosemary Huskey said . . .

I was in the courtroom the day that Jamin Wight was sentenced. The judge emphasized Jamin’s remarkable immaturity; he was at least 23-years old when he began molesting a 14-year-old girl under the guise of “courting.” What 23 year old in his right mind wants to foster a romantic/sexual relationship with a 14 year old? The correct answer is, of course, a pedophile. Doug Wilson was also in the courtroom that day. We even exchanged a few words following the sentencing. Mine were strong and to the point, Doug’s were, well, let’s just say he floundered for a response and I didn’t buy it.

The arrested adolescence and huge gaps in emotional development that were obvious to the judge apparently escaped the notice of Doug Wilson and other Kirk luminaries. In addition to being a Greyfriars student, Jamin Wight was a teacher at the Logos-clone all-boy school, Atlas Academy. (At the time the school was operated without a Conditional Use Permit, and without safety inspections, from Jim Wilson’s storefront ministry, in the Nuart Theater. Using the example of Doug Wilson and Nuisance Andrews, the operators of Atlas School simply blew off city ordinances which specifically banned the operation of schools in downtown Moscow. They have subsequently moved into the county where they can operate without interference from local officials and Jamin is no longer a faculty member.)

It’s all about the squeaky-clean covenant image with Doug. His track record of trying to keep the lid on scandal in order to spare himself and the Kirk public embarrassment is sinful as well as useless. What an odious piece of work he is.

Rose Huskey

I neglected to note the glaring age difference between Wight and his victim, which is an extremely aggravating circumstance to his crime. Maybe Beelzeblog could draw us a picture.

Thank you.

The Sunday Funnies

As long as we’re on it, and we will be on it in our next TF post, here is what the Fearless Leader wrote vis-à-vis rape, disintegrating cultures, and the judgment of God:





Notice how he writes with such authority and unction, as though he really holds these convictions. Notice how he leaves the impression that he is committed to biblical standards and that he fears God.

Now notice this blog post that Pastor Douglas Wilson of Christ Church, Moscow, uploaded to Blog and Mablog exactly one week after Jamin Wight’s conviction. I republish it in entirety:

Yes, I Know There Are Many Godly Youth Ministers
Topic: Cartoon



Posted by Douglas Wilson - 5/19/2006 11:27:27 AM | Link to this post

Here’s the real punch line to the cartoon. Wilson concealed Jamin Wight’s crimes from the membership of Christ Church, Moscow, just as he hid Steven Sitler’s predations. Consequently, when he published this clever piece of art (which, by the way, he drew with his own hand; you can confirm this fact in the combox), all of his rabid disciples would have thought he was ridiculing the modern church, as usual, and implying that the Kult was immune from such carnal hustlers.

Again, notice how he leaves the false impression that his cult is above it all. Notice how he doesn’t acknowledge that his highly esteemed pupil who was studying for the ministry just dodged the mother of all bullets for rape, which was the major point of the plea bargain. (The other point was getting tagged as a “Sex Offender” in the State of Idaho; Wight had one of the best criminal attorneys in Moscow. In fact, I’m close with Moscow’s lone capital attorney who tells me that if he ever had to beat a rap, he would retain Wight’s attorney: “He’s a pit bull in court!”)

Back to point: Do you think that Wilson’s cartoon is funny? If the victim saw it, do you think she laughed? If the father whom Wilson threatened with discipline saw it, do you think he got a kick out of it? What kind of message do you think it sent to the victim family? What kind of message did it send to Wight, whom they never disciplined? What kind of message did it send to Wight’s classmates at Greyfriars Hall? Seriously, what happened to all that posturing about “God’s hand of judgment” being “heavy upon a people”? How does this tasteless image comport with Wilson’s written standards? Is there anything funny about “The Sunday Funnies”? You tell me.

Thank you.

Greyfriars Hallmark

As I write the next post in our “End of the Trinity Fest” series, here is an important website for you to examine. It contains most of the court documents for convicted criminal Jamin Wight, who was one of Wilson’s prized students at Greyfriars Hall when he committed his crimes. Jamin Wight was a member in good standing at Christ Church, Moscow, and Trinity Reformed Church, Moscow (pastored by Dr. Peter Leithart), during his spree and neither church ever put him under discipline.

To be fair, however, I’m not sure why they didn’t graduate him from Greyfriars with honors. He committed no sin that he didn’t learn at the Fearless Leader’s feet. As our Lord says, “A servant is not greater than his master,” and in this case Wight did not exceed his teacher’s example — he matched it. Wilson knows exactly what that means and I’ll leave it there for now. We still have lots more blogging ahead of us.

Wight lived in one of the Kult’s many illegal boarding houses (I don’t believe I’ve gotten near that scandal), which they rely on to house large portions of the student body at New Saint Andrews College (NSA), and he capitalized on his squeaky-clean image as a prospective minister to take advantage of his host family. The most shocking thing about this scandal, however, is not that the Kult did not discipline Wight for his sins — it’s that THEY THREATENED THE FATHER OF THE VICTIM WITH DISCIPLINE. In this interview, the father 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.”

One other thing, Jamin Wight spent a summer doing an internship at a now-dissolved CREC church in Southern California. The elders of the church cut his stay short, however, because of improper behavior with a married woman in the church. Apparently the intern made a few late-night visits to her home while the husband was out of town. When the elders discovered this they sent Jamin packing. Again, no discipline. After all, they didn’t want the student to get the wrong impression about sin. Greyfriars Hall is not a ministerial school; it’s a breeding ground for wolves. What else could it be when an alpha wolf leads it?

And the moral of this story is not Jamin Wight’s bankrupt character; it’s that Douglas Wilson corrupts everyone in his sphere of influence; sometimes it’s overt and other times it’s osmosis, but the end result is always the same — a complete loss of moral sensibility in his disciples. They become brute beasts made to be taken and destroyed. They act on impulse, taking whatever they want whenever they want, lacking all sense of right and wrong. In other words, they act just like Wilson.

Read the documents on Greyfriars Hallmark. “Go in, and behold the wicked abominations that they do here.” And add its documents to the mountain of evidence we have been compiling to demonstrate that Christ Church, Moscow, is one big massive sewer of corruption.

Thank you.

The End of the Trinity Fest Part 2: “We are formidable”

In Part 1 of this miniseries we contemplated the role of fanciful — indeed, truly bizarre — story telling in the first annual Credenda Agenda History Conference, which was the forerunner to the now-defunct annual Trinity Fest. More specifically, we considered the Fearless Leader’s arbitrary and non-objective methodology that licenses him to fabricate stories while ignoring factual history in order to spin a mile-long yarn under the guise of “faithful story telling.” Today we shall consider some of the stories he spun prior to the first annual Trinity Fest and how they reflect the inner workings of his mind.

So when Christ Church, Moscow, announced its agenda for the first annual Trinity Fest (2005), two local activists performed a public-records search and discovered that the Kult had rented the UI’s indoor arena, the Kibbie Dome (seating capacity of 16,000), to host their Sunday worship service and that they intended to serve alcohol for communion to children, including infants. Of course, a venue that seats 16,000 was incredibly ambitious since they only needed to seat 1200 at the most (probably less, but Beelzeblog has never disclosed hard numbers). I’m sure that in Wilson’s mind this was the ecclesiastical equivalent of “build and they will come,” though it was more like “rent and watch yourself get tossed.” Regardless, the Kult’s plan of serving alcohol to minors raised a conflict with state law. Subsections 603 & 604 of Idaho Code Title 23 prohibit anyone from dispensing wine to any person under the age of 21, which includes children and infants. So while state law prohibits minors from drinking alcohol, the Kult planned to violate state law on state-owned property during their Trinity Fest worship service. One of the activists, Rosemary Huskey, notes this fact in one of her Vision 20/20 posts here, and here is one of several posts written by Beelzeblog that responded to these two women’s concern:

Jesus Gives Alcohol to Minors
Topic: The Lord’s Table
As many of You [sic] are aware, some of our local adversaries have officially complained about the worship service we will be having at the Kibbie Dome just before the Trinity Festival. Their complaint centers on the fact that we will be serving alcohol to minors.

For some years, we have been teaching you that our observance of this Supper is potent. We have been saying that the gospel is like wine, and not like grape juice. Grape juice is a fitting element for the modern and moribund church to use — an inert element for an inert sacrament in an insert church. But when God moves to stir His people up, what happens? We return to a biblical observance of this Supper which can be nothing other than a potent declaration.

But there is another issue as well. We have seen that if we were serving grape juice in our communion service, our adversaries would not care — a tame sacrament for a domesticated church.

The second issue is this: if we excluded you, our children, from the service, they would not care either. But because we eat and drink a potent gospel, and because we insist on including our children and grandchildren in this, their glorious inheritance, the whole thing becomes quite formidable.

When was the last time you heard about outsiders caring what was done inside a worship service like this? The whole affair should be greatly encouraging. God has prepared a table for us in the presence of our enemies, and as we sit down to eat and drink, we may know by faith that God is moving in our community in wonderful ways.

We have assumed the center, and we now see our adversaries beginning to recognize that it is what is being done in faithful Christian worship that will determine the future of our town, our state, our nation, and our world. It is here we are formidable — and nowhere else.

Posted by Douglas Wilson — 7/24/2005 10:00:48 AM |

Putting it gently, this is a psychotic interpretation of events. Here is the distilled argument:

1. The Kult’s observance of the Lord’s Supper is potent because it is biblical.


2. The Kult’s adversaries care a great deal about the Kult’s observance of the Supper.


3. Therefore, the Kult’s observance of the Supper “will determine the future of our town, our state, our nation, and our world.”

Obviously it loses its punch when stripped of its rhetorical flair. Nevertheless, let me note a few of Beelzeblog’s misrepresentations and then proceed to my main point.

First, no one “officially complained about the worship service” as Wilson claimed; you may confirm this fact by the Daily News article appended below. In fact, no one “officially complained” about anything. Two women sent an email to the president of the University of Idaho informing him that the Kult planned to violate state law in the Kibbie Dome. In order for them to have filed an “official complaint,” they would have had to notify the State of Idaho Office of Attorney General, the Latah County Prosecutor, or the Moscow Police Department, just as Wilson did when he filed an official complaint because he “wanted to have it documented” with the MPD. In this case, however, two women (one of them a grandmother, I believe) alerted the UI president to Wilson’s illegal plans and the UI president upheld state law by prohibiting Wilson from serving alcohol to minors. But by predicating his argument on a fabricated premise, Wilson gave himself the requisite wiggle-room he needed to arrive at his fantastic conclusion. And it is fantastic.

Second, notice that Beelzeblog accentuated his false premise by asking, “When was the last time you heard about outsiders caring what was done inside a worship service like this?” (emphasis original). Of course, this question makes the Kult’s worship service appear great and mighty, as though “outsiders” actually cared about something other than the issue they raised — i.e., serving alcohol to children on state-owned property — which happened to be the same issue that Wilson completely ignored in his post. Neither woman gave a rip about what the Kult did inside its worship service. They communicated one concern to President White: Douglas Wilson and his band of loyal followers must obey state law on state-owned property because, as usual, Wilson defied the law and acted as though he was above it (“Think Al Capone”).

Third, notice how the Fearless Leader’s imaginary interpretation of events grew with each succeeding paragraph so that he concluded: “we now see our adversaries beginning to recognize that it is what is being done in faithful Christian worship that will determine the future of our town, our state, our nation, and our world.” This is quite a leap. To be sure, it’s not a leap of epic proportions; it’s a leap of Fearless Leader proportions. If you follow the argument, he jumps from two citizens elevating their concern about the Kult’s illegal plans to the Kult determining the future of our world.

But the most important misrepresentation in this post is in these sentences:

The second issue is this: if we excluded you, our children, from the service, they would not care either. But because we eat and drink a potent gospel, and because we insist on including our children and grandchildren in this, their glorious inheritance, the whole thing becomes quite formidable.

Notice the tremendous significance Wilson places on the role of children in the worship service, to the point that they could not be excluded from any ritual. Also notice how he postulates an “us vs. them” mentality, casting himself as the Great Protector of children: “if we excluded you, our children, from the service, they would not care either.” This statement is false and beside the point, but the implication is that he — the Fearless Leader — really cared about the children, as proven by his insistence that they partake of wine during the service. Indeed, the principle that children must participate in the alcoholic rite was as important to him as the fermented juice itself. To be sure, his inordinate emphasis on these points appears almost idolatrous. The Lord Jesus asked, “Ye fools and blind: for whether is greater, the gold, or the temple that sanctifieth the gold?” In this case you could ask, “Which is greater, fermented wine in the cup or the God who sanctifies the element in the cup?” Wilson’s answer to this question is “fermented wine.”

But this question raises an even more important question: “Which is greater, serving wine to children in violation of state law, or insuring the health and safety of every child in the church?” I frame it this way because at the time Wilson proudly paraded Kult children before the community as prized objects who would receive the “glorious inheritance,” he had known about Steven Sitler’s horrifying predations for four months yet he still had not informed the parents in his congregation — i.e. the current possessors of the “glorious inheritance” — that a serial pedophile may have defiled the very children he pretended to defend. Put another way: He deliberately withheld from Kult and community the one vital piece of information that everyone desperately needed to know if they had any chance of discovering if Sitler had preyed upon their child, while he simultaneously insisted that children must drink alcohol during the worship service. Serving alcoholic wine to Kult children was a non-negotiable priority; protecting them from the long-term damage caused by childhood rape was not. It wasn’t even on the radar. (Please remember that apart from divine omniscience or perfect and complete honesty from a psychopath, he had no way of knowing who Sitler raped.)

This fact becomes more poignant when you note the timeline: Just two weeks before Wilson “insist[ed] on including our children and grandchildren in this,” Steven Sitler pled guilty to one count of Lewd Conduct With a Minor Under Sixteen Years of Age (don’t let the one count mislead you; Sitler leveraged the state by agreeing to privately identify his victims in exchange for owning only one count in public). And less than one month after Wilson “insist[ed] on including our children and grandchildren in this,” he wrote a letter to Judge John Stegner, pleading,

I would urge that the civil penalties applied would be measured and limited. I have a good hope that Steven has genuinely repented, and that he will continue to deal with this to become a productive and contributing member of society.

Wilson implored Judge Stegner to allow the serial pedophile to return to the Christ Church covenant community. Wilson wrote this letter exactly one week after the first annual Trinity Fest ended its festivities and both of these events — Sitler pleading guilty and Wilson pleading with Stegner — took place unbeknownst to his congregation and the community.

Let’s be clear: The man who championed the role of children in his worship assembly concealed the awful fact of a serial pedophile’s predations from the parents of the very children he championed. He even went so far as to ask the judge to show leniency on the pedophile so that he could return to the assembly where he committed his abominations. Wilson did these things in capacity of his office as pastor of Christ Church, Moscow, and HE DID THEM IN SECRET, just as Steven Sitler committed his crimes in secret, which brings us to the heart of Wilson’s psychosis.

Pastor Douglas Wilson completely ignored (denied) the horrifying reality that a ferocious predator (a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” according to his home church in Colville, WA) had laid waste to the lambs in his charge so that he could advance publicly an imaginary fiction that his church was not only not ravaged but “quite formidable.” In other words, he failed to distinguish between his inner fantasy of him leading an almighty kirk and the outside reality that the assembly of souls in his care was a smitten house of lost sheep without a shepherd. It was more important to his ego that the general public saw him flexing his biceps than that he actually use his biceps to protect the little ones in his care, which is one more reason he’s not a pastor. As always, the Fearless Leader was more concerned about his appearance than his substance. And in this respect Wilson treated the victims (and their parents) of serial pedophile Steven Sitler no differently than Sitler himself. Both men used those harmless children as mere objects to gratify their sick perversions. Sitler took pleasure in physically abusing the children and Wilson took pleasure in assembling the children so that he could declare his “potent” formidability to the world: “Look at the size of MY kingdom.” But neither man cared one whit for those poor souls, which brings us to Wilson’s breathtaking conclusion:

We have assumed the center, and we now see our adversaries beginning to recognize that it is what is being done in faithful Christian worship that will determine the future of our town, our state, our nation, and our world. It is here we are formidable — and nowhere else. (emphasis original)

Pay close attention to the last sentence: “It is here we are formidable — and nowhere else.” Despite the missing punctuation between the first two clauses, I’m not sure there’s any way to misinterpret the sentence. When he writes, “It is here,” the antecedent to the word “It” is “faithful Christian worship that will determine the future of our town, our state, our nation, and our world.” In the least these words affirm his conviction that the worship at Christ Church, Moscow, would determine the future of the world.

The next clause, “we are formidable,” alludes to his previous statement that their formidability was due to his insistence “on including our children and grandchildren in this,” and since he repeated his use of the word “formidable” we should assume he meant it literally:

1. causing fear, dread, or apprehension formidable prospect
2. having qualities that discourage approach or attack
3. tending to inspire awe or wonder (Merriam Webster Online)

“We are formidable.” Even if it was true (and it’s not), I cannot explain why a professing minister of the gospel would make such a ridiculous boast unless he perceived his congregation as an army of soldiers beneath his command, prepared to conquer all “adversaries” in its path. “We are formidable.” Whatever else is true, these are not the words of a peacemaker (i.e. a “son of God,” Matt. 5:9); they are the blustering taunt of an angry, insecure bully: “WE ARE FORMIDABLE.”

Finally, the clause “and nowhere else” modifies the first clause, “It is here” (emphasis original), to exclude everywhere else in the world. In other words, the Fearless Leader singled out Christ Church, Moscow, as the ONLY place where the “It” was taking place, and he defined the “It” as “faithful Christian worship that will determine the future of our town, our state, our nation, and our world.”

Behold the madness. “And the light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.” His inner fantasy could not recognize the external reality. The Fearless Leader sold (and his blog post was a sales pitch) his liturgy as a world-changing event while he concealed from the world the truth about his church. He refused to acknowledge the true state of his congregation, which was directly connected to his sacerdotalism, at least according to his theology, so that he could insist that the Kult’s form of worship — led by him — would “determine the future of our town, our state, our nation, and our world.” To say that he had high expectations for the Trinity Fest is an understatement. But the only noteworthy event in Moscow during the summer of 2005 was the Fearless Leader’s desperate attempts to keep his two child molesters hidden from the public eye.

The Trinity Fest did not die because of economic pressures. It died the slow, reluctant death of a man suffocated underneath a mountain of lies packaged as history and an unspeakable millstone named Steven Sitler. It died because one man confused the bishopric with the battlefield and could not discern the difference between children and soldiers. The Trinity Fest died because God is not mocked and men reap what they sow. If you’re going to sell your carnival as THE event for the kingdom of heaven, you better be sure you understand the basics, such as not offending the little ones, because it doesn’t matter if you serve them the most potent wine ever fermented when their physical bodies are in harm’s way. And this doesn’t make you “formidable”; it makes you sick.




Thank you.

A P P E N D I X
The following article is republished from the July 28, 2005, edition of the Moscow–Pullman Daily News:

Church will serve communal wine at UI
By Megan Doyle, Daily News staff writer

Christ Church in Moscow has been given approval to serve communal wine at a Sunday worship at the University of Idaho Kibbie Dome. The service will be in conjunction with the church’s history conference and Trinity Festival that begins Aug. 7. UI President Tim White signed the permit Wednesday. It includes an addendum that grape juice instead of wine will be available for minors.

Sodexho, the food service provider at the Kibbie Dome, will monitor the service of alcohol “in a manner that assures minors do not have access to alcohol,” it states in the permit. Christ Church is responsible for meeting insurance requirements.

Two Moscow women have raised concerns with the university that Christ Church should not be allowed to give alcohol to minors on state property. Though Moscow residents Saundra Lund and Rosemary Huskey did not file an official complaint regarding the serving of alcohol for the event, they have sent correspondence to the university expressing their views on allowing the permit. “Quantity doesn’t matter,” Lund said. On private property during the regular Sunday worship, alcohol requirements are different, they said. “The prohibition of alcohol consumption by minors is a method that least burdens religious practices while protecting the state’s compelling interest,” the women wrote in a June 10 e-mail to the university.

Mike Lawyer, administrative assistant to Christ Church Pastor Douglas Wilson, said he was unaware of the requirement that Sodexho monitor the event and did not want to comment on it. “It’s purely worship, it has nothing to do with recreation or selling,” Lawyer said. “The whole thing is about whether we can worship or not,” he said. UI just happened to get stuck in the middle of the debate. The wine used has an alcohol content of 13.5 percent. “We put the wine in little tiny cups. They hold 1.5 teaspoons,” Lawyer said. “We always have grape juice available. Every Sunday we have a ring of cups on the trays with grape juice,” he said, adding that children are not limited to grape juice.

Huskey said she and Lund are not trying to deny children the opportunity to participate in communion, but grape juice would serve the same purpose. “For me it’s a significant issue because — what does the research show?” Lund said, citing negative impacts of alcohol.

About 1,500 people are expected to attend the worship service at the Kibbie Dome. The regular Sunday service for Christ Church’s 700 members is at Logos School.

“(Doug Wilson’s) hoping that some publicity of him being persecuted will be a rallying point,” Lund said.

The featured speakers at the event are J. Steven Wilkins, Doug Wilson and Peter Lillback. Wilson is the pastor of Christ Church in Moscow and co-author of a controversial pamphlet with Wilkins titled Southern Slavery, As It Was, which discusses pre-Civil War slave life. Wilkins has attended previous Christ Church conferences. Lillback is an author of theology and history books and is the executive director of the Providence Forum, an organization dedicated to educating Americans on faith and values of the nation’s founding fathers.

The deadline to register for the conference is Monday. For more information on the Trinity Festival, visit the Christ Church Web site at www.christkirk.com.

Dave Glasebrook

Dear Mr. Glasebrook,

At least once, perhaps twice, I offered you front-page attention if you can correct or disprove any of my posts. You, however, ignored my invitations and chose to harass other men for reasons I cannot explain. Therefore, I sincerely ask you to leave them alone. Please keep the toxic waste in Moscow.

If you want to engage me I will be more than happy to answer your concerns as long as you respect the conditions I delineated to you, which appears to be a stumbling block. And in light of your 2090-word treatise (of which I read about 200 words), I now add another condition to the terms. You are only allowed to address one point at a time. This will keep the distinctions cleaner.

If you can produce evidence that demonstrates a factual error on my part, I will be glad to correct the error and apologize for it, which is much more than your leadership has ever done. If, however, you cannot produce evidence that contradicts me, then I echo the words of the Managing Editor for the Spokesman Review, “We are not going to engage any further in this conversation.”



Thank you.

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.

CANCELLED

I received this comment yesterday:

David Gadbois said. . .

Mark,

I just received an e-mail from Christ Church indicating that Trinity Fest has been cancelled, since the low registrations indicated that it would not be “financially viable.”

The e-mail speculates that this is because of the economic downturn. While this is no doubt a factor, they seem blind to the fact that they have marginalized themselves because of their promotion of Federal Vision theology.

I had attended Trinity Fest a few years back. It was a genuinely fun thing to do. I can’t say anything bad about it.

But I, and I suspect many others, would not attend it now because they show no sign of backing off of the FV kookiness. I’m sure it wasn’t part of the plan, but Wilson has gone from having broad appeal in the Reformed world (articles in Tabletalk) and even the broader evangelical world (the Family Series books). But by now he has whittled down his audience to theonomic, post-mill Federal Visionists. A very small market indeed.

I don’t know which TF DG attended, but I know that locally, the TF was no less controversial than its predecessor, the History Conference, and the vast majority of locals did not receive it as well as DG. It was an unmitigated disaster for the downtown businesses and it’s clear that the Kult leaders went out of their way to personally offend the downtown businesses that they hurt financially, so as to rub the loss in their faces. I can’t say how pleased I am to hear this and if you’re out there Dave G., I would love to see and post the whole email (including the “To” and “From,” I can remove your name).

And as long as we’re on the Kult’s financial woes, I welcome an insider’s explanation for why so many Kult members have suddenly began taking seconds on their mortgages. We’ve calculated a couple of million dollars in loans spread out among roughly 15 different families in a one-year window (the average note is $250,000). It could be a coincidence, but my instincts tell me that Beelzeblog has discovered another way to fleece the flock. We protect our sources and the way we see it, if you share inside information with us, you’re well on your way to escaping and we will help you as much as possible. Think of our services as an underground railroad.

Thank you.

Characteristics of a cult: Monkey boy see, monkey boy do.

Two weeks ago the local listserv, Vision 20/20, heard about monkey boy Mike Lawyer’s apology to Bob Mattes. Most of the locals took it as I did, which is to say they didn’t believe a word of it. One guy wrote, “And the real bonus to all of this is that the dupes on the other side are actually buying it.” Like me, they’ve witnessed too much of Wilson’s abusive antics to ever grant him the judgment of charity. But I want to remind you of something that Lawyer wrote in his so-called apology:

Fourth, there has been some discussion about whether I said anything about going after you with the Air Force or the Pentagon. I don’t remember saying or writing anything about that. I don’t think that ever entered my mind. If, I did say anything like that you need to know that I had and have no intention of doing anything with regard to your job. That would be worse than reprehensible. (December 7, 2007, emphasis added)

I call this to your attention because of something that happened on the listserv just two days after Lawyer apologized, and you have to remember that Wilson and his monkey boys police the dialogue on Vision 20/20 no less than they police it elsewhere.

On December 10, someone generated a thread on 20/20 discussing Christ Church’s reputation for abusing former members of the Kult, as well as certain members of the community. A gentleman named Robert Dickow contributed to the thread and it’s important to note that, to my knowledge, Mr. (Dr.?) Dickow has never been a critic of the Kult. I do know that for the most part, he has stayed away from those threads. Nevertheless, he posted the following email to the listserv (if you don’t read the whole list, please jump to the end of the list):

[Vision2020] Characteristics of a cult
Robert Dickow dickow at uidaho.edu
Mon Dec 10 08:49:15 PST 2007

Hi all, A minister friend of mine in England provided me with this rather comprehensive list of characteristics of a cult (or “destructive group” — defined more generally). Does this stuff remind you of anything?

Bob Dickow, troublemaker

Characteristics of A Destructive Group

While not all groups exhibit all these traits, destructive groups will have many of these characteristics and attitudes:

• Authoritarian hierarchal control;
• Black and white thinking: either or, we they, us them;
• Centralized power structure;
• Child abuse and neglect;
• Competition with other members or with outsiders;
• Conflicting opinions viewed as moral assaults and disloyalty;
• Control of information within group environment;
• Criticism of group, system or leaders is discouraged;
• Different beliefs or ideas are perceived as threatening;
• Discrimination (economic, emotional and psychological): race, gender, age, religion, politics;
• Effusive praise and flattery for leaders;
• Enemy making, a common enemy outside the group: other business groups, other religions, other countries, other life styles, other races;
• Fear (or feelings of guilt) about the prospect of leaving the group;
• Feelings of superiority and exclusiveness;
• Gender-based abuse in any form;
• Group becomes like a family and is more important than individual’s family and outside friends;
• Group has the “truth” (the answers) others don’t;
• Group (system) mission is more important than the individual;
• Group’s doctrine repeated over and over, lots of repetitious lectures and meetings;
• Group leader(s) are looked to for answers involving personal choices in life;
• Labeling: Dissenting members, other groups, and different belief systems are given negative labels/names;
• Large pay and power gaps between members and leaders;
• Loaded language: the group has its own clichés, jargon and slogans that become simplistic explanations for complex situations;
• Missionary consciousness: converting others to group ideology, product, beliefs, trying to persuade others to be like “us”;
• Need leader(s) permission for everything;
• Overuse of plural pronouns: we, us, they, them;
• Peer pressure: non group ideas receive icy silence, ridicule, or condemnation;
• Propaganda used to persuade members and internalize group ideas;
• Public humiliation or embarrassment in any form;
• Public sharings, testimonials, confession, witnessing;
• Scapegoating within or outside the group;
• Secrecy between members or between different levels of a group’s structure;
• Selfishness is putting yourself above the group;
• Strict dress codes, everyone looks alike;
• Suppressing legitimate feelings when they do not fit the group’s mind set;
• The need to be like leaders or like others in the group;
• There is always something to do, excessive business;
• There is a group explanation for everything;
• Thought control: there are “good” and “bad” thoughts;
• Unquestioning obedience to authority.
  

Emotional and Psychological Aftereffects From Membership in a Destructive Group:

Note: Aftereffects will vary depending on the specific type of group and the length of time spent in the group.

• Feelings of guilt, shame, and self-blaming;
• Difficulty making decisions and simple choices.
• Excessive doubt;
• Short term memory loss;
• Anxiety and panic attacks;
• Depression and anger;
• Loneliness and feelings of detachment and isolation from others;
• Loss of self-esteem;
• Lack of self-confidence;
• Difficulty concentrating and focusing attention;
• Inability to think critically and “uncritical passivity;
• Posttraumatic Stress:



Flashbacks including images, thoughts, and perceptions.

Recurrent nightmares or distressing dreams.

Efforts to avoid places or people that arouse memories of the group.

Significant diminished interest in important activities.

Sense of a foreshortened or non-existent future.

Irritability and angry outbursts.



• Hyper critical of others, other ideas, other philosophies, other life styles;
• Loss of a sense of self and identity;
• Difficult or impossible to stop mental or other group ritualistic practices;
• Feelings of emptiness and loss of a unique mission in life;
• Disassociative episodes, floating, feeling spaced out;
• Afraid to join other groups or make commitments;
• Difficulty forming a new value system or philosophy toward life;
  Nervous tics — often induced by meditative techniques used in the group;
• Fear of the group;
• Estrangement (also while in the group) from family and former friends;
• Difficulty making and expressing opinions.

No sooner did Mr. Dickow post this email (which never identified Christ Church by name) than one of Douglas Wilson’s most virulent monkey boys sent this email to Mr. Dickow and his superior at the University of Idaho (he has done this to several people in the last four years). And please notice the response time: Farris sent this email within 18 minutes of Mr. Dickow’s post:

- - - Original Message- - -
From: heirdoug at netscape.net
Sent:Monday, December 10, 2007 9:07 AM
To: Robert Dickow
Cc: Kevin Woelfel
Subject: Non Official use of University Property and Computers.

Mr. Dickow,

I see that you posted your attempt at joining “the group” on Vision 2020 this morning utilizing your university computer. Is this post part of the music functions of the Lionel Hampton School of Music?

If it is personal time that you are spending doing this sort of activity maybe you should re-read your rules and regulations pertaining to the proper use of Government property.

I have attached the post with your University of Idaho email firmly attached at the top of the page. I was curious as to when works starts over at the U of I?

Thank you for your consideration in this matter.

Doug Farris
Heirloom Electric.

But Farris didn’t do his homework; he just shot off before he had his facts (which is common for him). Here is Mr. Dickow’s public response to Farris:

[Vision2020] FW: Non Official use of University Property and Computers.
Robert Dickow dickow at uidaho.edu
Wed Dec 12 22:49:34 PST 2007

Mr. Farris:

While there are explicit laws applicable to contacting someone’s employer or supervisor with the aim of undermining the employment or status of an individual with regard to their employment, there are no laws or policies against sending email the way that I do. My outgoing mail in this case came from my home, while I was enjoying my morning coffee and correcting papers, on my personally owned computer, and the mail passed through Turbonet.com’s smtp servers — an independent IPS — and not directly through any state-owned servers or equipment or software of any kind.

Robert Dickow

So while monkey boy Mike Lawyer made concessions to Bob Mattes for PR’s sake, Wilson’s monkey boys, who you would think answer to Lawyer’s authority or at least follow his example, continued their antics here in Moscow. Monkey boy see, monkey boy do.

Wilson, by your own standard you and your vicious disciples are “worse than reprehensible.”

Thank you.

This Is “My Town” Hall Meeting

Okay, last “DUMB and Tan” post for a while; but it’s important to fill the archives with these federal facts.

I cannot overstate the awful polarizing effect of Douglas Wilson’s Southern Slavery scandal on the Palouse. We have seen the in-your-face ads that Christ Church purchased to rehabilitate their public image, and we have also seen that the Kirk’s mother church — the Evangelical Free Church of Pullman — warned its congregation about Wilson during this time because of his reckless antics in public over one of those essential Christian doctrines — Southern slavery. I have noted before that you can witness him antagonizing the community by reading the Vision 20/20 archives for the months October 2003 – February 2004. But perhaps the best way to establish the psycho environment that Wilson created at that time is to consider the “Town Hall Meeting.”

On December 4, 2003, Wilson changed his strategy towards the Palouse by inviting the public to attend his “Town Hall Meeting” to discuss the Southern Slavery scandal. The evasive op-eds didn’t work; the insulting ads didn’t work (twice); the cutting remarks on 20/20 didn’t work; so Wilson called a “Town Hall Meeting” to see if it would work. Rosemary Huskey, as usual, saw through Wilson’s spin and she called him on it here. Many others in the community didn’t buy it either. Nevertheless, the event took place on December 11, 2003; here is the Spokesman Review’s article from Friday, December 12, 2003.

Church, town test tolerance
Pastor clears Moscow air about stand on slavery
Hannelore Sudermann, Staff writer

MOSCOW, Idaho — A controversial Moscow church held an open forum Thursday night to address accusations of being pro-slavery, homophobic and opposed to public education. “Meeting face to face and speaking about misunderstandings is an important thing to do,” said Csaba Leidensfrost, one of 13 elders at Christ Church, a nearly 30-year-old group that members describe as a Presbyterian/Christian church. “We think there have been some serious misunderstandings.” The church pastor, Doug Wilson, went a step further. “I believe we have been erroneously, slanderously lied about,” he told about 300 people at the Kenworthy Theater.

The recent controversy arose with the announcement of a conference Christ Church members are sponsoring at the University of Idaho in February. Wilson and a man named Steve Wilkins will be speakers at the conference. They have been criticized for their stance on slavery. They co-authored a book on Southern slavery and in it described the situation as “harmonious” and “based on mutual affection and confidence.” Wilkins is a member of the League of the South, which is considered a neo-Confederate organization, and an author and pastor.

Though the topic of the conference is history, not slavery, several UI faculty members and students have spoken out against the men being allowed a forum on campus. Negative attention toward the church has spread to businesses owned by church members. The owners of a bakery say their business has been spit on and vandalized. Some community members have urged a boycott of the businesses.

“We really would like this town meeting to put the controversy to death,” said Wilson. Diving into the heart of the controversy, Wilson addressed the subject of slavery. He said he believes it is sinful and wrong, but that the slavery that took place in the South prior to the Civil War wasn’t as bad as the slavery in ancient Rome. He also said that slavery in the United States could have ended in a more peaceful manner.

Most of the forum took place in an organized fashion, with people talking about philosophy and Scripture and questioning the church’s positions. But a stir went through the audience when Ruth Drollinger stepped up to the microphone. Last spring, she pulled her children out of Logos, a private school in Moscow that many Christ Church children attend. “I’m going public tonight,” she said. “I’m here to say Christ Church is in control of that school.” She said her children were spanked for challenging the teachers’ beliefs, and she feels what is taught about the Civil War at Logos is one-sided. “They celebrate Robert E. Lee’s birthday,” she said. “But not Lincoln’s.” While some in the audience wanted Drollinger to continue, others shouted that she was out of order and called for her to sit down. One man tried to lead her away by the arm.

Others, like John Dickinson, questioned Wilson and the church about their stance on homosexuality. Wilson said he’s opposed to homosexual marriage, but he doesn’t think gays should be executed, as the biblical book of Leviticus advises.

As for public schools, Wilson, calling them “government schools,” said he and members of Christ Church believe they are antithetical to their values as Christians. He said that parents, not the government, should be responsible for educating their children and that he didn’t want to pay taxes to support the public system.

Wilson said he and others see Moscow as a place of faux tolerance. People “really want diversity until they actually get some,” he said. “Here we are.”

Hannelore Sudermann can be reached toll-free at (866) 332-3674 or by e-mail at hannelores@spokesman.com

You can see footage of the meeting below, where the opening scene captures Evan Wilson, estranged brother of Douglas, the other scenes capture glimpses of an outraged community determined to vent on Wilson. But in the end, none of these things mattered. The Town Hall Meeting remedied nothing because Wilson answered no one questions and so he returned to his natural man and began insulting the community once again, as we shall see in future posts.




Thank you.

Kommunity Relations

This morning I mentioned the two quarter-page ads, or “press releases,” that Christ Church ran for about a month in all the local papers. Here’s the first one, which appeared on Saturday, November 15, 2003; they ran it daily for two weeks:

It’s Not About Slavery.
It’s About Silencing Dissent.
FOR MORE THAN A DECADE, Christ Church, Moscow, through its various ministries, has been constant and gladly controversial in making the case that modern secularism is boring, hypocritical, and ugly (with secularism understood as the exclusion of religious life for a strictly human vision). But you can’t pierce secular sacred cows without defensive folks finally insisting on changing the subject.

Christ Church has a long published history of revealing the uglinesses and hypocrisies of the right and the left, conservatives and progressives, racists and egalitarians, religious fundamentalists and secular fundamentalists. All these groups despise the good life and deserve one another. We want no part of their family infighting.

Christ Church walks in the path of historic Christian Trinitarianism, drawing insights from Presbyterian (primarily), Lutheran, Anglican, Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox traditions, all of which stand against the ingrown secularisms of our day.

Obviously Against Racism
Despite our published record and debates against racism and white supremacist hideousness, some locals are trying to silence our dissent by acting as if we are part of some vast conspiracy to impose slavery on the Palouse. It’s ridiculous to have to say the obvious — that slavery has always been an evil needing to be abolished. But that has been our position from the start.

Christ Church has a deep hatred of war, and our comments against the butchery of 600,000 persons in the Civil War have been opportunistically twisted into a defense of the hell of slavery. Christianity has long been a leader in ridding slavery from the West, but it prefers nonviolent means (like Wilberforce in England) rather than the savagery of warfare. If our opponents are sincere in wanting to deal with our arguments and are not just the opportunists they appear to be, then they need to be honest and defend the superiority of unbelievable bloodshed over more peaceful means of abolishing slavery. They can side with war. We side with nonviolent abolitionism.

The Charade of Diversity
Slavery isn’t the issue. Establishment secularism can’t stand real criticism. It can’t bear real differences. It must try to erase its challengers. It must make weird twists like labeling our multiracial families as racist. It must make up lies that we are hosting a conference defending slavery. Pure smears. Pure opportunism. Fear of dialogue.

Let the protesters be honest. Let’s talk about the real issues some seek to suppress —

• why secularism can only fake tolerance, diversity, and inclusion,


• why secularism undermines rationality and knowledge,


• why secularism guts beauty, play, the arts, and laughter,


• why secularism inherently encourages racism and violence,


• why secularism has to hate the ancient Christian message.
  

Christianity and secularism have plenty to disagree about without locals hiding behind fake conspiracies and self-righteous pronouncements. Always be suspicious of Darwinists bearing such dogmatic absolutes. It’s oxymoronic. It’s hypocritical. Their subtext is a demand for conformity to their ideology and a hatred of real difference.

Board of Christ Church
Moscow, Idaho
www.christkirk.com

Of course, everyone in the community understood exactly what this ad meant; it was about as popular as an infectious skin disease. Citizens flooded the local papers with letters to the editor expressing outrage at the Kirk for its irresponsible PR campaign and on Tuesday, November 18, 2003, the senior editor for the Lewiston Morning Tribune published this response to the Kirk:

Condemnation begets condemnation in Moscow
By Jim Fisher, the Tribune’s editorial page editor

What was it that the leaders of Christ Church in Moscow were objecting to again? If it appeared they disapproved of blanket condemnations based on ignorant assumptions about a group’s beliefs, the appearance was mistaken.

The church has reacted to offenses against its members from some Moscow liberals — including charges of racism untethered to actual evidence — by responding in kind. Its board now accuses not just its critics, but all nonsubscribers to its old-time religion, of hypocrisy, ugliness and encouraging racism and violence.

Those charges and others appear in a paid advertisement in the weekend Moscow-Pullman Daily News. And they hardly encourage residents of the Palouse who are uncertain about calls to boycott businesses run by Christ Church parishioners, or to silence messages rather than answer them, to rally to the church’s side.

Sure, boycotts based on business people’s religious beliefs and calls for public universities to suppress certain speech are affronts to a liberal democracy. But no better are allegations that all those without religious belief “can only fake tolerance, diversity and inclusion.”

The ad is the latest volley in the communitywide furor over the Rev. Douglas Wilson’s co-authorship of a pamphlet seeking to sanitize the treatment of many American slaves. Wilson is pastor of Christ Church and has a long history of outraging his neighbors in northern Idaho’s most progressive town with his brand of biblical literalism.

For the most part, that has been healthy. No one should be protected from the mental challenge posed by contrasting beliefs. And the American way of responding to speech that is deemed false or even dangerous is not by suppressing it, but by rebutting it. Speech begets more speech, and that speech begets more speech still.

As pamphleteer, Wilson deserves repudiation for historical inaccuracy. And if he were a business person himself, he should expect to receive much of it across the counter from customers telling him what he’s full of. But his parishioners deserve better than to lose business because of something he wrote independent of his church duties.

Similarly, nonreligious people, in Moscow and elsewhere, deserve better than to be told by followers of Christ that their belief system “undermines rationality and knowledge . . . guts beauty, play, the arts and laughter . . . inherently encourages racism and violence . . . has to hate the ancient Christian message.”

With that language, the board of Christ Church has forsaken an opportunity to set the example for generosity and goodwill in a community immediately in need of both. — J.F.

Methinks the Kirk elders got the message because they went back to the drawing board and drafted this little gem, which they released on Saturday, November 29, 2003:

Why the “Not in Our Town” Campaign is So Dreadfully Boring
“He is not only dull himself, but the cause of dullness in others,” worried the dramatist Samuel Foote. The same concern arose from us when the local human rights group Equality announced its “Not in Our Town” petition against Christ Church, Moscow.

We had hoped to hear some spicy pizazz [sic], some cutting-edge criticism, but all we got were the same humorless cliches secularists have lobbed at Christians for centuries. Even the accompanying scowls hadn’t changed. Secularism needs new writers, new blood, new scowls.

Leading with a petition is so passé. Been done to death. Where is the creativity? It’s even a petition to show that some locals reject historic Christianity. Old news. And petitions are so self-congratulatory. It gives signers a cheap thrill of holiness. But who wants to hang around the self-righteous? Yawn.

An inability to grasp irony is key proof that a vision is boring. This campaign presents us with a human rights group — we note: a human rights group — trying to silence the opinions of a minority group in the name of Diversity. Now that’s comedy that can’t be bought for ready money.

The dogmatic directive “Not in Our Town” is not exactly an invitation to dialogue or a celebration of difference. It’s a blocking of the ears. “Not in Our Town” means shut-up, shut-up, go away. Only the most austere human rights group could pull that off with a straight face. As Oscar Wilde said, “A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.” Secularism used to be a little more fun than this.

Guard Your Children from the Humorless
We worry that this dullness of life will spread throughout our region. Without a check on this, infants, too, will soon wag their fingers like prairie school marms, and high schoolers will fail to get punch lines. Parents should pay special attention to each signature on the “Not in Our Town” petition and not allow these people to attempt comedy near their children.

We understand the campaign’s burden. Many of us are recovering Darwinists ourselves. We remember how naturally humorless Darwinism is, what with its core values of survival, domination, subjugation, force, and infomercials. Darwinists have such a sordid history of violence that for them to defend human rights is like Grizzly bears promising to defend salmon.

Triumphing Over Pettiness
We wish it were as easy as saying lighten up, get a life. But sin and guilt make people do weird and tragic things. We don’t say these things as personal taunts but rather as a call to repentance — the living God summons us away from this soul-deadening dullness of life (Matt. 13:15). Sin is a deceptive web of excuses that we use to block out the profound joy at the heart of the Christian God, that most intriguing, unpredictable, and fascinating God. Secularism offers only pettiness and resentment.

Jesus Christ said He came to give life and to give it abundantly (John 10:10). The path to life involves an odd reversal: life comes through trusting in the person and sacrifice of Christ on the cross, the removal of the prisonhouse of sin from our lives. Because of Christ’s death and resurrection, the Christian gospel becomes, “Go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already accepted your works” (Eccl. 9:7).

Christ Church Board
Moscow, Idaho
www.christkirk.com

Well, if at first you don’t succeed, poke them in the eye again.

Thank you.

The “anonymous flyer”

If you get bored reading about Douglas Wilson’s stunningly stupid revision of Southern slavery, then you’re missing the big picture. Yes, Wilson’s position on slavery represents his twisted worldview, but it also represents a first step of indoctrination for his loyalists. If you surrender your intellectual faculties to buy his revision, then you have given him a stronghold in your head that he will exploit. You’re fast on your way to becoming a monkey boy. And if you dismiss his Southern fantasy as just that — pure fantasy — but you still think that he has something to offer, then you have conceded no less of a stronghold to him than his loyalists, because you have made excuse for a man who has no excuse. Furthermore, if you do it once, you’ll do it again.

The Southern Slavery scandal did not hit the Palouse by accident. Douglas Wilson could have averted it easily if he had simply admitted that, in hindsight, he relied on specious arguments to overstate his case. End of story. In fact, there is no story. The whole thing goes away. But that’s not how it happened.

Early in the week of October 11, 2003, someone (no one knows who) papered downtown Moscow with a flyer advertising Wilson’s and Wilkins’ booklet Southern Slavery As It Was. The flyer made two points: First, Wilson & Wilkins wrote a book containing these quotes (and it reproduced some of the more shocking statements from the booklet) and, second, it noted that both men would be speaking at the UI in February 2004. It closed with the words “Meet the Authors!”

The flyer looked more like litter than street art, but that wasn’t the point. The point was to call attention to Southern Slavery As It Was by saturating the town with these flyers. Accordingly, someone left a stack of 50 flyers on the front desk of the Daily News who contacted Wilson to confirm the accuracy of the quotes. Unbelievably, Wilson not only confirmed the quotes, but he invited the News — with their cameraman — into his living room to discuss the biblical merits of that Peculiar Institution known as Southern slavery. He even smiled for the camera, it’s the famous photograph you see here. Two days later they splashed photo and headline on the front page.

Now, please stop for a moment of morbid introspection to reflect upon Wilson’s conduct. A so-called minister of the gospel took time out of his busy pastoral schedule to inform the local media in northern Idaho that he thought the slaves had a pretty good deal and that history has maligned the reputations of their noble masters. And as you contemplate this historical fact, remind yourself that serial paedophile Steven Sitler was raping helpless children in the Kirk and he would continue to rape lambs of the flock for another year and a half.

Now, stop for another moment to pick up your jaw.

That’s Douglas Wilson, mighty man of God.

Regardless, he got his headline, just as he wanted, and it took him exactly three days to figure out that this story had legs. Manstealing, slavery, and racism are a tough sell to a civilized audience — educated or not. So the first thing Wilson did to sidestep this controversy was use dougspeak to blame an “anonymous flyer” for his woes. Never mind that he invited the local media into his home to discuss the story; he pinned the whole thing on a mysterious “anonymous flyer” and he never let go of his scapegoat:

[Vision2020] Aaaaa? Slavery!
Douglas
Mon, 13 Oct 2003 13:38:55 -0700

Visionaries,

Related to the article in the newspaper this weekend, there is one other item you should know. The Daily News did the story on the basis of an anonymous flyer that was circulated downtown. The flyer was done in such a way that if someone was not paying close attention (as some people on this list sometimes don’t), they might think we had done it. But no, not us.

Cordially,

Douglas

P.S. I think someone needs to write a biography soon — The Life and Times of Anonymous: A Profile in Courage.


[Vision2020] Journalistic integrity
Douglas
Mon, October 27, 2003 8:52 AM

Visionaries,

Ambrose Bierce once defined ink as a “villainous compound of tanno-gallate of iron, gum-arabic and water, chiefly used to facilitate the infection of idiocy and promote intellectual crime.”

On Friday, The Idaho Statesman picked up the article which had previously run in the Daily News. They ran it with this by-line: “Pair to give their “biblical” defense of practice at U of I conference.”

1. The conference is not on slavery. Never has been. The Daily News really needs to quit relying on anonymous flyers as part of their crackerjack reporting team. The savings in payroll are not really worth the embarrassment.


2. No, we are not going to give a defense of slavery at the conference.


3. It is not a U of I conference.


4. Having shouted their error on the front page, the Daily News had whispered a teeny correction later on. The Statesman must have missed it somehow.

I would like to ask Nathan Alford to respond, or someone at the Daily News. Who is responsible for misrepresenting our history conference in this egregious way? What are you going to do about it?

Cordially,

Douglas Wilson


[Vision2020] Journalistic integrity
Douglas
Tuesday, October 28, 2003 12:30 PM

Visionaries,

Greg Burton asks:

My question is will Wilson and Wilkins discuss slavery or will they not?

The answer is that no, we will not be discussing slavery. The conference is on Revolution and Modernity — Marx, Robespierre, et al.

If so, the article is accurate in my mind.

But if not, then the article is inaccurate, right? And the Daily News should correct it. The real issue in my mind here is that the Daily News is being as stubborn as the pope’s mule. The only basis they had for connecting this conference and slavery was the fact the connection was made for them by the anonymous Timid One.

Many times, too, a journalist will get a tip about something, examine the veracity and go with the information if they can confirm it elsewhere.

In this instance, the reporter confirmed with me that the conference was NOT about slavery. And the error appeared in print anyway. And the newspaper will not acknowledge it as an error.

Maybe that happened in this instance. If not, there should be a simple correction or clarification. Further, the “journalistic integrity” slug to this thread is a red herring.

What brings journalistic integrity into question is not the initial mistake (although it is at least suspect). The thing that shows a lack of journalistic integrity is the simple refusal to acknowledge that the article wrongly identified the topic of the conference. What would be lost if the Daily News said, “The article xyz wrongly identified slavery as a topic in the upcoming history conference.” They did that, the conference not about that. Why the reluctance?

The New York Times incident was about integrity and ethics, this seems more like quibbling.

It is only quibbling if you don’t mind being called a racist on AP wires across the Pacific Northwest. But I do object to it. I do not mind (at all) standing up for what I believe. I do mind being made a defender of something I loathe. Quibbling?

Cordially,

Douglas Wilson


[Vision2020] The end of Moscow?
Douglas
Wednesday, November 26, 2003 11:41 AM

Visionaries,

Donovan wrote to ask about my responsibility in helping to give Moscow a black eye in the PR department. What was my intent in all of this?

First, Donovan is exactly right in anticipating how I would respond. We did not print and distribute the anonymous flyers, we did not ask for a front page news story that erroneously proclaimed slavery as the topic of the conference, we did not ask for the AP to pick up the story, using that error as the hook of the story, we did not ask for certain progressives to start boycotting businesses owned by multi-racial families who happen to attend our multi-racial church (to show their opposition of racism!), and we did not ask for the subsequent torrent of shrill, humorless, and ugly denunciations. Now, according to the normal drill, whenever the progressive meat grinder goes into action, the selected victim is supposed to apologize and promise to be a good boy thereafter. But we, taking our cue from Tom Petty, are not backing down. And now Moscow has a black eye because certain people insisted on maintaining their slanderous lies at the top of their voices. . . .

Cordially,

Douglas Wilson

I think you get the point. The implication was plain, though Wilson never stated it outright: “The story is not true; the Daily News relied on an anonymous flyer and reported lies.” Clearly his monkey boys understood the message because if you search the Vision 20/20 archives you’ll see them swarm the Internet, advancing Wilson’s falsehood wholesale. But not once did he ever take responsibility for granting an interview to the Daily News. Without exception, he blamed this so-called “anonymous flyer.”

Now look at the flyer. Please notice that there is not one false, incorrect, or misleading representation in it, which is why Wilson confirmed the accuracy of its contents to the Daily News.

And now I have exceeded my word count. So if there’s anything you can take from this post, it’s that when Wilson screams the word “anonymous,” it’s because every word of the anonymous witness is true. And you should not make excuse for a man who has no excuse.

Thank you.