The End of the Trinity Fest Part 4: “celebration as a central component in the culture wars”

In reflecting upon the untimely and unannounced demise of the Trinity Fest, we have considered the rather novel approach to history that Pastor Douglas Wilson of Christ Church, Moscow, has taught himself; and we have seen his remarkable efforts at concealing from Kult, community, and all his potential recruits the existence of a serial pedophile, who had his way with the lambs of the flock for 18 months as Wilson fought one culture war after another, starting with the vital doctrine of chattel slavery as they practiced it in the antebellum South. In our third installment we witnessed an incredible stroke of providence that defies the imagination: Two days before Wilson secretly pled with Judge John Stegner to show leniency on Steven Sitler, a Latah County magistrate issued an arrest warrant for one of Wilson’s Greyfriars disciples for sexual abuse of a minor.

The timing of these two events — Wilson’s secret letter to Stegner and the arrest warrant for Jamin Wight — in conjunction with the first annual Trinity Fest is mind-boggling.[1] And I suppose this is a supreme advantage of hosting a fully documented anonymous attack blog. I mean, think about it. If I didn’t fully document these facts, would you have believed me about these two predators? If you didn’t see duplicates of the original documents with your very eyes, would you have believed it possible for so much sin and iniquity to overrun such a “formidable” church pastored by the man chosen (and “anointed”) by God to call the evangelical church out of her exile?

The answer to these questions probably accounts for Wilson’s bizarre pastoral decisions — i.e. his cover-ups — during these dreadful calamities. If you want the world to believe that your church is “formidable” and “potent,” it behooves you to hide its flaws, such as two convicted child molesters, even if it’s to the detriment of your congregation, which was the case here. Wilson never warned his flock about predation; he never stood before his church to identify these two criminals as predators; and he waited until both of his criminal-disciples had run their courses through the court system before he ever said anything to his congregation. He made sure everything was all sewn up nice and tidy before delivering extremely limited comments about them. He couldn’t let anyone, not even his own sheep, know about his weak spots. And as long as we’re on it, I wonder if he teaches this cover-up technique in his Greyfriars Hall ministerial classes — you know, “Cover-up 101: How to Conceal the Existence of Dangerous Criminals From Your Flock.” After all, what they don’t know can’t hurt ’em — right? These facts are beside the point, however, because the point is that he’s leading the 21st-century church into a new reformation, and what’s more important — protecting the children in your care or calling the Church to repentance? Let me ask it another way: what’s a greater priority — fulfilling the duties of a pastor or pretending to be a modern-day prophet?

If you think you’re a prophet, then I suppose pastoral duties take the back seat to the higher calling of a prophet. And if you take his blog post titled “Extended Deadline” at face value, then you must conclude that Pastor Douglas Wilson of Christ Church, Moscow, really believes that God appointed him to some kind of modern-day prophetic office so that he could call the evangelical church out of her exile. Moreover, Wilson really believed the Trinity Fest would be the means to call the church out of her exile. Okay, sure, it sounds crazy, but then so does all the child-molester stuff. Sounding crazy, however, doesn’t make it untrue. Read for yourself:

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. (“Extended Deadline”)

“The reason for Trinity Fest in the first place . . .” At some level Wilson believed that God called him to this extra-biblical office of orchestrating the Trinity Fest to call the Church to repent of its sins. Obviously God’s call on his life placed him in a gut-wrenching moral dilemma though: Either he must obey God and call the Church out of her exile, or he must pastor his congregation through the agony caused by two child molesters. Douglas Wilson took the high road — he obeyed God. And I seriously doubt he ever thought twice about it. In fact, a cursory glance at his blog post shows that the mighty man of God cleverly redefined the word “repentance” to purge all sorrow and remorse from it. It was party time.

We cannot forget, however, that the prophet Wilson was throwing a party even though “God’s hand of judgment” was heavy on Christ Church, at least according to Wilson’s standards:

Violent rape is a judgment of God upon a people. . . Violent rape is God’s judgment on a culture, and individual women who are part of that culture are included in the judgment. . . . 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. (Douglas Wilson, Fidelity: What It Means To Be a One-Woman Man [Moscow: Canon Press, 1999] 82, 83)

I don’t think that rape can get much more violent than when a grown man physically violates a helpless infant, as in this case, which Steven Sitler repeated over and over again for 18 months on numerous children in Christ Church, Moscow (in writing this, I do not intend to disparage the awful pain of any rape victim; I only want to note the profound vulnerability of these dear children and the unspeakable aggression perpetrated against them). These historical facts bring us to one of Wilson’s sales pitches for the third annual and final Trinity Fest. I republish the post in entirety sans graphic:

Worship Right, Work Hard, Study Deep, and Play Harder
Topic: Shameless Appeals
One of the measurments [sic] for God’s blessings we can use around here is how many times I am compelled to resort to making a Shameless Appeal. When I first added that category to this blog, it was occasionally used, but now it seems to me that I am always telling or reminding you about something or other. This one has to do with our third annual Trinity Fest.

One reminder, and then the appeal. Reminder: the date for getting the early registration rates is June 15, which is a week from this Friday.

The appeal is this. One of the emphases that we have sought to cultivate in our ministry here is the idea of celebration as a central component in the culture wars. We do this directly when we hold Sabbath dinners in our homes, and when we worship the Lord on His day in covenant renewal. But we also do this indirectly, when our celebrations as a worshipping community spill out into public. This is what Trinity Fest is designed to display, and to do. We want to be neo-Puritans — not the Puritans of the common caricature, or those neo-Puritans who want to revive the dour caricature. We want to be Puritans in the “worship right, work hard, study deep, and play harder” category.

The first two celebrations of Trinity Fest have been wonderful, and we are looking forward to the third being the same kind of thing. We wish you were coming. But you haven’t registered yet. I checked.
Posted by Douglas Wilson — 6/6/2007 1:20:23 PM | Link to this post

In this post Wilson put the stamp of Puritan nobility on the subject of “culture wars” and tied those wars to the Trinity Fest:

One of the emphases that we have sought to cultivate in our ministry here is the idea of celebration as a central component in the culture wars. . . But we also do this indirectly, when our celebrations as a worshipping community spill out into public. This is what Trinity Fest is designed to display, and to do.

I must confess, however, that the only wars he’s ever fought in Moscow had nothing to do with the typical culture wars of the Christian right. Wilson limited his battles to defending the biblical rights of antebellum slaveholders to mansteal; resisting his legal obligation to pay property tax; violating the Zoning Code in the heart of downtown Moscow; and threatening the Latah County Commissioners (I wonder if, when he threatened the commissioners, he meant to threaten physical harm against them or some sort of legal action; perhaps he could draw us a picture). Oh, and maybe some of that middle-aged “pendulous-bellied” Trinitarian skylarking, which the Bible calls sinful folly. Obviously none of these scandals are your standard right-wing hot-button “culture war” issues. In fact, to the extent that Wilson lost each and every one of these battles, his defeats were to the improvement of Moscow. This is because they were “Doug’s wars” not “culture wars.” Regardless, in this blog post he raises the specter of celebrating in public while waging culture war. This was a polite way of saying that for one week each year he really wanted to gloat in the face of his enemies, the so-called intoleristas, as his one-man carnival in the name of the Trinity stretched far and wide across city limits.

But there’s a terribly sick irony here that you cannot miss if you ever want to understand his psychosis. Pastor Douglas Wilson wanted to celebrate in public as he waged culture war against his neighbors in Moscow, but he wanted to do this in the same hour that God’s hand of judgment weighed heavily on the culture that Wilson planted at Christ Church, Moscow. Don’t be confused. There are not two things happening here, only one. It’s inner fantasy vs. external reality. And the reality is that there is no culture war in the community of Moscow, despite Douglas Wilson’s inner fantasy and his endless blustering. The only culture war is inside Christ Church. Its citizens have turned on one another in the most horrible way possible — rape. Even worse, its pastor responded to these attacks by defending the rapists. To be sure, he defended the most fearful predators known to society — pedophiles and child molesters — every mother’s worst nightmare. He never warned his church about these criminals; he simply welcomed them back into the fold. And he defended these evildoers because he needed to reintroduce them back into the covenant community as smoothly and as quietly as possible so that no one would know the true state of his church — he needed to cover it up. But by hiding them and their iniquity he insured the complete destruction of the culture he planted at Christ Church. In short, when Wilson covered-up for the two rapists, he declared war against his own congregation. So while he invited the Christian church to celebrate with him in Moscow as he waged culture war, the sick reality is that the celebration could only take place because he waged culture war against Christ Church.

Douglas Wilson pretends he’s a prophet calling the church out of her exile, but the reality is that God has exiled him to a world of delusions. He redefines repentance to look like Fat Tuesday, but the reality is that he needs to repent in sackcloth and ashes if he would ever see the kingdom of God. He celebrates his personal wars against his “enemies” in the center of town, but the reality is that he had to make enemies of his sheep before he could fight his other “enemies.” The mad prophet is so blind that he cannot see the culture he planted is completely disintegrating before his very eyes and it’s falling apart because of him. As I said, it’s a sick irony, because in the end the Fearless Leader fiddled as the lambs of his flock passed through the fire.



Thank you.

---

[1] For those of you just joining us or if you need a refresher, here is the documented timeline of events:

• Winter 2004 – Spring 2005 — Christ Church announces the Trinity Fest.


• March 11, 2005 — Douglas Wilson learns that a serial pedophile preyed upon his flock for 18 months.


• July 7, 2005 — Steven Sitler pleads guilty to one count of Lewd Conduct With a Minor Under Sixteen Years of Age.


• July 24, 2005 — Douglas Wilson parades Kult children before the community and declares his sect “formidable.”


• August 8–11, 2005 — Christ Church hosts the first annual Trinity Fest in Moscow, Idaho.

• “Trinity Fest 2005, Day One”


• “Trinity Fest 2005, Day Two”


• “Trinity Fest 2005, Day Three”


• “Trinity Fest 2005, Day Four”


• “Trinity Fest 2005, Day Five”

• August 17, 2005 — A Latah County magistrate issues an arrest warrant for Greyfriars student Jamin Wight.


• August 19, 2005 — Douglas Wilson asks Judge Stegner to show leniency on Steven Sitler.

And during this whole period no one at Christ Church knew about Sitler or the damage he wrought.

CHORTLE

I’m sorry, I couldn’t help myself.

Thank you.

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.

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.

The End of the Trinity Fest Part 1: First Blast

The untimely and unheralded demise of the Christ Church Trinity Fest marks such a critical point in the slow, continuous, and inevitable fall of the Kirk that we must take time aside from our two ongoing series (“Make Them Say They’re Sorry” & “The Kult Police State”) to consider it in further detail. I call it critical because in the Fearless Leader’s mind the Trinity Fest represented much more than an ordinary summer carnival. Sure, he originally billed it as an act of humble faith, but as we shall see, he believed the Trinity Fest was proof of the Kult’s faithful worship of God and it was proof that God was working in the Kult in wonderful ways. He advertised the Trinity Fest as a platform to “celebrate” in the midst of his “culture wars.” He promoted it as “a table in the presence of [his/their] enemies.” And as the ad in C/A put it, the Trinity Fest gave him a chance to make people “like him even less” (at least he achieved one goal).

It follows, therefore, that when the Trinity Fest went belly up, maybe his humble faith was not so great and maybe God was not working in the Kult in wonderful ways — at least to the extent that he pointed to the TF as proof of these things. It follows that perhaps God did not take pleasure in their celebrations or their culture wars, and that He had not prepared a table for the Kult in the midst of their enemies. I understand the Fearless Leader won’t see things this way — he’s hardened his heart and fixed his course — there’s no turning back for him. To be sure, I am certain that, like Madonna, he will find another look — he’ll repackage himself in order to remarket himself to the evangelical and Reformed church. Like a virgin. But for now, the Trinity Fest is dead and I want to spend some time reflecting on its short-lived life.

You may or may not know this, but the Trinity Fest is the direct descendant of the Christ Church History Conference, which they held every February in Moscow. Things went sideways, however, during the Southern Slavery scandal of 2003–04, which presumably became the cause of action for the Fearless Leader to reinvent his event. Nevertheless, if my math is correct, Christ Church, Moscow, held its first annual History Conference in 1996, which is not especially noteworthy except for one fact: that year Wilson and Wilkins (I have no idea if George Grant participated) addressed the subject of slavery in the antebellum South and published a monograph to commemorate their historical findings. They titled it Southern Slavery As It Was. I know this because five years ago, during the Southern Slavery scandal, my UPS driver told me he attended the history conference that triggered the controversy. Here’s a direct quote from that conversation: “I couldn’t believe the stuff they were saying and thought to myself, ‘This one’s going to come back to bite them.’” Then he put his head down and chuckled, “I guess it bit them.”

So for C/A’s inaugural “History Conference,” Wilson and Wilkins sterilized one of the most horrific points of American history — the unbiblical subjugation of an entire race of mankind — to portray the most anti-Christian culture of American history — the antebellum South — as the most noble society the world has ever seen. In other words, Wilson & Wilkins established their revisionist agenda during their first conference and I can’t think of a more delusional way for anyone to begin teaching history. Interestingly enough, however, Beelzeblog indirectly accounted for his knack at revising history in his blog post that announced the first annual Trinity Fest:

History is story telling. Faithful history is faithful story telling. And it is amazing how many little errors and emphases can go wrong in just the course of one generation. . . . This being the case, then where do we get off having a history conference every year? If I am not exactly sure what I was doing in 1959, then why would I undertake to talk about events in the 18th century? But for a decade now, we have had an annual history conference in February. None of the speakers at this conference are trained historians. And this coming year, the history conference will be moved to August, rolled into a bigger event called the Trinity Festival, and we will do it all again. What are we doing? We are telling stories, and the reason we are doing so is that we believe that God requires it of us.

History depends on the dedicated historians and archivists who sort, assemble, and work through the mountains of material available to them. And when they have done their work, they present to the layman . . . mountains of material. Not only does it appear that we need specialists to deal with the raw material, we also need specialists to sort out the finished products. . . . Historical laymen should read broadly enough to make sure they are not reading some truncated account or other, but neither should they be embarrassed by the necessity of popularizing the material. . . . Everyone who undertakes this kind of task is in way over his head, and this includes the trained historians. And we cannot protect ourselves by means of our own prowess.

This means that we walk by faith, faith in the God who orders all history to His own perfect ends. . . We are not omnicient [sic], and so we must trust the God who is.

One other element has to be mentioned. Just as we trust Him, we also read the story with our loyalties intact. In other words, we cannot love God without loving those whom we believe to be His sons and daughters, and our brothers and sisters. I read the story of Latimer and Ridley while identifying with them. I am pulling for John Knox, and not for Mary, Queen of Scots. We are a people, and so we must tell the stories of our people to our children. We are not given the option of being silent. And to step out in faith like this is not hubris, but rather humility. (“History for Everyman”; October 9, 2004)

Before we consider Wilson’s methodology, please note his candid admission that he’s not a trained historian, which would be a remarkable statement if not for the clever sleight of hand that accompanied it. Observe: First, he paid tribute to “the dedicated historians and archivists who sort, assemble, and work through the mountains of material available to them.” But then he pretends as though historians don’t deal with conclusive evidence but only pile “material” that the present to laymen: “And when they have done their work, they present to the layman . . . mountains of material.” This in turn allowed Wilson to create a special category for himself — the layman — to sort through the material, which is where he identified himself as a “specialist”: “Not only does it appear that we need specialists to deal with the raw material, we also need specialists to sort out the finished products.” Notice that his specialty requires him to “sort out the finished products” of trained historians, and notice also that he places the difficulties of his specialty on the same par as that of a trained historian: “Everyone who undertakes this kind of task is in way over his head, and this includes the trained historians. And we cannot protect ourselves by means of our own prowess.” And with a wave of the hand Douglas Wilson dismisses the science of history to justify his brainless revisionism. Voila!

This brings us to his self-taught method for studying history. According to this post it’s a three-point process:

1. “History is story telling. Faithful history is faithful story telling.”


2. “Historical laymen should read broadly enough to make sure they are not reading some truncated account or other, but neither should they be embarrassed by the necessity of popularizing the material.”


3. “. . . we also read the story with our loyalties intact. . . we cannot love God without loving those whom we believe to be His sons and daughters, and our brothers and sisters. I read the story . . . while identifying with them. I am pulling for . . . and not for . . .”

The Fearless Leader’s three-step process explains a lot. In fact, as this series develops we shall see that his methodology is really a subset of his psychosis — his mental detachment from reality — but for now we want to concentrate on the so-called specialist’s discipline as it applies to history.

First, he says, “History is story telling. Faithful history is faithful story telling.” This is true. The noun “story” derives from the Latin historia so in its most elementary sense history is story telling. It’s the modifier “faithful” that should concern us, as we shall see.

Second, he says, “Historical laymen should read broadly enough to make sure they are not reading some truncated account or other, but neither should they be embarrassed by the necessity of popularizing the material.” This is true as well. There’s certainly a place for popularized accounts of history. Not everyone has the time or the budget to read The Story of Civilization.

But now we come to the third and most troubling step in his methodology where he writes, “We also read the story with our loyalties intact,” and he defines “loyalties” as “loving those whom we believe to be His [God’s] sons and daughters, and our brothers and sisters.” Moreover, he defines “loving” as “identifying with” and “pulling for” them. He says, “I am pulling for John Knox, and not for Mary, Queen of Scots.” But he never specifies exactly how his “pulling” affects his “story telling,” i.e. his version of history. Moreover, he never explains when he starts “pulling”; is it before or after he’s done his research? Or does his “pulling” influence his research? Even worse, does he believe that by “pulling” for one person against another he may alter the past? And I’m curious what litmus test he uses to determine a historical person’s status before God. For example, Mary I of Scotland was baptized, which means that, according to the objectivity of the covenant, she was/is a child of God. So why would he pull for Knox over Mary? I suppose that technically he answers this question when he refers to “loving those whom we believe to be His sons and daughters,” etc. The “we” means him — Beelzeblog — which means it’s not so much the objectivity of the covenant as the arbitrariness of the Fearless Leader, because there’s nothing objective about this. Regardless, I believe these are important considerations for anyone who might rely on Wilson’s story telling.

You can see a good example of the Fearless Leader keeping his “loyalties intact,” or “pulling,” for someone in his biography of the aforementioned reformer, For Kirk and Covenant: the Stalwart Courage of John Knox. When discussing Knox’s best-known written work, The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, Wilson never noted that Knox wrote the book anonymously, which historic fact obviousl rubs Beelzeblog the wrong way. After all, the last thing he’d want to affirm about Knox is that he was ashamed of his baptized name, or that he was an anonymous coward making anonymous accusations, or that he was so ashamed of his accusations that he wouldn’t even sign his name to them, or that he was a dead rat behind the fridge, or that he may have left a soiled prophylactic in Wilson’s mailbox, etc. But you can’t tell the story of Knox without mentioning this historic fact. Anonymity played a role in the Reformation whether the Fearless Leader likes it or not (I wonder what that monstrous woman Edna Wilmington would say). To be sure, The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women was a prototype of the fully documented anonymous attack blog, though I’m not sure if Knox fully documented his blast. I am sure, however, that if Knox had had access to the Internet he would have uploaded a website to excoriate that monstrous regiment of women — Bloody Mary and her cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots. And the bottom line is that the Fearless Leader “pulled” for Knox and expunged this well-known fact from Knox’s story. In other words, he recreated Knox after his own image.[1]

We see another example of the Fearless Leader “pulling” for Knox in the same biography when he described the reformer’s 19-month captivity in the French galleys. In order to sympathize with Knox, Wilson leaped a full century out of Knox’s lifetime to find a vivid description of the galley slave’s horrors:

Warren Lewis, brother of C.S. Lewis, makes the point bluntly. “Until the coming of the concentration camp, the galley held an undisputed preeminence as the darkest blot on Western civilization; a galley, said the poetic observer shudderingly, would cast a shadow in the blackest midnight.” (FN: W.H. Lewis, Essays Presented to Charles Williams [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1947], 136.)

Lewis was writing of life in the galleys a century after Knox rowed in them, but from all accounts, the time Knox spent there was a time of horror just as it was for his Huguenot brothers 100 years later.

Life on board when the galley was at sea was a sort of Hell’s picnic, for there was really no accommodation for anyone. For the convicts, there was, of course, no question of sleep . . . Cooking facilities were primitive, and, as no one ever washed, the ship crawled with vermin from stem to stern. From below came the constant clank of chains, the crack of whips on bare flesh, screams of pain, and savage growls. At each oar all five men must rise as one at each stroke, push the eighteen-feet oar forward, dip it in the water, and pull with all their force, dropping into a sitting position at the end of each stroke. “One would not think,” says a Huguenot convict, “that it was possible to keep it up for half an hour, and yet I have rowed full out for twenty-four hours without pausing for a single moment.” (FN: Ibid., 141–2. Quote uses “feet” instead of the American “foot” for length description.)

Constant rowing did not bring about the despair of the galley slaves. Had it been, they would all have died in short order. Nevertheless, the whole time, including the respite provided by winter, had to have been the most severe trial. Knox speaks of it as a time of “torment.” Years after, he spoke of the “sobs of his heart” and how he was “sore troubled by corporal infirmity.” (FN: Henry Cowan, John Knox, 83–4.) For those who have not experienced such things, all such words should be taken as understatement.

Knox was for two years a galerien in the French galleys, a very common and expendable form of cheap fuel. (Douglas Wilson, For Kirk and Covenant: the Stalwart Courage of John Knox [Nashville, TN: Highland Books, 2000] 33, 34)

I have no doubt that Knox suffered immensely in the French galley. My point is the great distance Wilson traveled in order to lionize Knox’s imprisonment, his “most severe trial.” Wilson never had the decency to tell his readers when he was “pulling” for Knox, though he alluded to his yank job toward the end of the book:

But in discussing history, a moment comes when one has to make a decision, a judgment call. In studying the War Between the States, was the South right? Or wrong? In studying the American War for Independence, did Romans 13 require the colonists to submit to the usurpations of Parliament? Or not? In writing this book, I must either appreciate Knox or attack him. He lived his life in such a way as to leave a biographer no other option. (Douglas Wilson, For Kirk and Covenant: the Stalwart Courage of John Knox [Nashville, TN: Highland Books, 2000] 220)

“In writing this book, I must either appreciate Knox or attack him. He lived his life in such a way as to leave a biographer no other option.” What kind of twaddle is this? Where’s the crime with presenting the facts, warts and all, and offering a historical assessment? Why must he reduce the life of Knox to a false dilemma? History may be “story telling” but that does not mean that “story telling” is history and in Wilson’s case we never know when he grounds his stories in history and when he grounds them in his imagination. But they sure are entertaining.


And don’t forget that we’ve seen the whole “loyalty” thing before. That’s the word he uses to describe the virtue of ignoring the reprehensible behavior of his friends so that they may maintain a unified front in their war against the Christian church. It goes something like, “Faithful are the loyalties of friend” because “loyal” friends don’t “wound” one another.

But if you look carefully there’s something else going on with the word “loyalty.” In the second sentence of the post, Wilson wrote: “Faithful history is faithful story telling,” and by “faithful” he really means “loyal.” He’s blurring the distinction between “faithful story telling” and “loyalties-intact story telling,” or if he’s not blurring he’s definitely melding the distinction. Obviously, he doesn’t make this direct connection (why would he admit the obvious if it would thoroughly undo his already-tattered credibility?) but it certainly closes the loop and it’s consistent with his moral values. How else do you resolve the obvious conflict of interest that emerges between “faithful” as in “truthful” and “loyal” as in “love for God obligates me to pull for them”? This accounts for his bizarre revisionism — in the end he’s demonstrating loyalty to his pets and to his sympathies and, like everything else, Wilson’s approach to history is a self-serving exercise unrelated to truth or accuracy.

If you don’t think that there’s something wrong with Wilson’s “loyalties intact” bias, then compare it with the loyalties of a real historian. Dr. Scott Clark recently made this observation vis-à-vis the discipline of history:

As a historian I realize a little more each day how hard it is to know the truth, even when that is the goal. My vocation as a historian is to “tell the truth about the past as best I can.” That’s a lot harder than it sounds. Sometimes the truth about a given question doesn’t seem to want to be found. If that’s the case when documents are to hand, how much harder is it to tell the truth in the midst of conflict when emotions are running high and when there is hurt and frustration on all sides? (“A Word to Students in the Midst of Controversy”)

As a historian, Dr. Clark is committed “to tell the truth about the past,” contra Wilson who is committed to “loving those whom we [he] believe to be His [God’s] sons and daughters, and our brothers and sisters,” which is code language for shading the truth to make them appear better. Love for the truth moves Dr. Clark’s history; loyalty to a perverted, unbiblical love moves Wilson’s. This brings us back to the first annual History Conference.

How in the world could Wilson and his fellow incompetent gush so much about the antebellum South? Beelzeblog answered this for us. In their minds they were keeping their “loyalties intact.” They were loving those whom they believed to be God’s sons and daughters. They were pulling for those saintly slave masters who bought and sold human beings like they were trading cattle, and they were pulling against the ungodly North who persecuted those God-fearing slave-traders. Therefore they wrote,

Slavery as it existed in the South was not an adversarial relationship with pervasive racial animosity. Because of its dominantly patriarchal character, it was a relationship based upon mutual affection and confidence. There has never been a multi-racial society which has existed with such mutual intimacy and harmony in the history of the world. The credit for this must go to the predominance of Christianity. The gospel enabled men who were distinct in nearly every way, to live and work together, to be friends and often intimates. This happened to such an extent that moderns indoctrinated on “civil rights” propaganda would be thunderstruck to know the half of it. (Wilson & Wilkins, Southern Slavery As It Was [Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 1996] 22)

Behold the fruit of unfaithful story telling, the fruit of misguided loyalty. And I’m sure that from 1996 to 2002, they had a pretty good show during their History Conferences. But God is not mocked and in 2003–2004 Christ Church, Moscow, began reaping what it sowed. In the words of one former Kult member, “That was the beginning of the end” (he would know). And it didn’t matter if they moved the event to summer and changed its name to honor the godhead. The Fearless Leader used his stage to deceive those in his care, and he did it in the name of the gospel. Pastor Doug Wilson erred, however, not knowing the Scriptures or the power of God. The gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ proclaims “liberty to the captives” and “sets at liberty those who are oppressed.” It doesn’t misinform the masses under the guise of “faithful story telling.” It doesn’t justify cruelty to make light of human suffering, whether the suffering of galley slaves or Southern slaves. And if you don’t believe me, just ask John Knox.

Thank you.

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[1] I thumbed through the book yesterday morning and saw that there’s lots of that going on; Wilson constantly imputed to Knox his own self-perceived personality traits without as much as a shred of evidence. The second half of the book is essentially an autobiography of Wilson’s perception of himself with a few anecdotes about Knox to support it.