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?