NEW DOCUMENTARY FOCUSES ON CULTURAL WARS IN MOSCOW

 For more on the Wilson controversy see www.tomandrodna.com/notonthepalouse and www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/Wilson.htm

By Nick Gier

Our Town, a new documentary on America’s cultural wars, had its premier in Moscow, Idaho on June 23.  The newly refurbished Kenworthy Theatre was filled to capacity with an enthusiastic crowd of 340 people. Michael Hayes, an education professor from Washington State University, worked on the film for about 18 months, interviewing the principal players in the debate about Douglas Wilson’s religious empire. 

Wilson is pastor of Moscow’s 800-member Christ Church, which has mission churches across the country.  Wilson trains the ministers for these new churches in a two- year program called Greyfriars. He is sits on the board of the Association of Classical and Christian Schools (head office in Moscow) and Moscow's Logos School, one he helped found, is a member.  Board members at Cary Christian School in Cary, North Carolina are required to read Wilson's book on Christian education and Wilson's slavery booklet (explained below) was assigned there until someone in the community discovered it.

In 1996 Wilson founded New St. Andrews College (NSA), and it now enrolls 130 four-year students in a building in the heart of historic Moscow.  He also runs Canon Press in the same building as Greyfriars and it grosses almost $1 million a year.  Last year two Moscow residents challenged the tax exemptions on this building and the NSA site and they won their appeal.

The controversy about Wilson exploded in October, 2003, when some students at the University of Idaho discovered Southern Slavery As It Was, a booklet published by Canon Press. Wilson co-authored the book with Steve Wilkins, a Monroe, Louisiana pastor and founding director of the League of the South, whose vision is new 15-state Confederacy ruled by Calvinist patriarchs.

Details about Wilson’s ties to the Neo-Confederates have been given in a previous essay, so I would like to focus on what new I learned from Hayes’ film. In rejecting the charge of racism, Wilson claimed that it was Christianity, not genes, that make a culture superior.  He said that if Christianity had moved south instead of west, Africans would now be the most advanced people in the world.

One might ask how Wilson defines cultural superiority.  If it is economic power, then Euro-Americans will be overtaken by Chinese and Indians in 20-30 years.  If it is moral superiority, how does Wilson explain that fact that Christian America now imprisons 2 million people, while the Japanese currently incarcerate 150,000, if you adjust for population.  We will be militarily superior for a long time, but I remember Jesus saying that we should be as little children when we come to him.

History appears to disconfirm Wilson's view of Christianity's special advantage. Medieval Europe is Wilson’s ideal culture, but the rest of the civilized world at that time—China, India, and the Islamic countries—was far more advanced than these Europeans.  In fact, if it had not been Mongols bringing Asian goods/inventions and the Muslims preserving Greek philosophy/science and introducing algebra, Europe would have remained stagnant. 

Wilson has the Mongols to thank for the pants he wears, and he should be grateful to the Hindus for the zero. The Mongols were the source of the gunpowder that Wilson's hero Robert E. Lee used against the Union Army. Furthermore, it would be very difficult for Wilson to count his book royalties with Roman numerals. We live in one great world culture in which all people contribute. Even the wisdom of the Bible is based on many Middle Eastern cultures.

At Wilson’s “history” conference in February, 2004, he and Wilkins were joined by George Grant, who has called for the stoning of homosexuals, and who has written this: "Christian politics has as its primary intent the conquest of the land--of men, families, institutions, bureaucracies, courts, and governments for the Kingdom of Christ. It is to reinstitute the authority of God's Word as supreme over all judgments, over all legislation, over all declarations, constitutions, and confederations."

In the film Wilson prophesied that the conquest of Christianity would hit secular culture like a tsunami hitting a folding chair on a beach.  When Wilson encouraged Americans of all beliefs to replace the public schools with their own private schools, his tolerance for their short tenure does not appear to be much of a virtue. Wilson’s tolerance was also pretty thin when a reporter once asked him how he would react to a future Muslim mayor.  That would not be possible, he said, because soon everyone will be Christian. For Wilson the law of the land will not be Shar'ia, but it will be the laws of Leviticus.

 Hayes’ assistant had an opportunity to interview all three men together at the February conference.  Wilkins was asked if he really believed that only propertied males should vote, and he answered “yes,” while the other two nodded approvingly.  Always the jokester, Wilson said that democracy was just like two coyotes and a sheep voting on what to eat for lunch.  Wilson’s “federal vision” for church and society is that husbands would vote for their wives, who would submit to them in all things.

The three men were asked about slavery, but none of them condemned the owning of one person by another.  Wilson said that slavery is a sinful institution, but rebellion is just as sinful.  Slaves who have Christian masters will at least be treated with love and respect.  (God presumably presumably remove sinful institutions according to his own counsel.)  This is a tough question for Wilson, because he has always said that Christians should never be ashamed of what the Bible says. The other problem is moral relativism: Wilson seems to be saying that biblical slavery was moral but it’s now immoral.

For pastors such as Wilson and Wilkins who believe in the absolute sovereignty of God, they should be the last ones to take divine judgment into their own hands.  Only God chooses whether we are saved or damned, or whether all rebels are sinful. Wilson and Wilkins, however, are following in the footsteps of Jerry Falwell who once declared that God does not answer the prayers of Jews.  Again this is surely for God alone to decide, not mere sinful mortals.  We humanists are always condemned for preempting divine prerogatives, so what is going on here?