I suppose Doug Wilson thinks he won a battle since one of his posts about Duck Dynasty made it on the radar of Rush Limbaugh. The gist of it — as we’ve heard so many times from the BeeBee’s — is that if you’re not fighting the culture war the way Doug Wilson does, you’re gutless, have let your education run rough shod of your love of Jesus, and have taken vows to the church of respectability.
The need of the hour is Christian leadership that is willing to show some intelligent fight. As Chocolate Knox put it in a recent tweet, “Homo’s know what Christians believe there’s no secret, yet they get surprised every time they hear us say it. Time to lean in.”
Time to lean in. This is why I want to come back to the third point I made about this imbroglio yesterday. This whole thing makes me think it is some kind of reprise of the Chick Fil A uproar. Somebody strayed from the Appointed Way, the homolobby flexed in order to shut up a critic, middle America responded by buying so many metric tons of chicken sandwiches, and then sophisticated Christians sneered at this inadequate and “entirely predictable” and “red statey” response. . . .
So what do we need? We don’t need generals. We have that. We need generals who fight. We don’t need leadership councils. We have those. We need national leaders who fight. We don’t need pretty boy preachers. We have those. We need preachers who fight. We don’t need evangelical regiments of pajamaboys. We have that. We need fight, and we need to fight with everything we have — heart, strength, and brains. All in.
Show me your forearms. Unless there are scars all over them, then I honestly don’t want to hear your views of the inadequacy of these cultural clashes (Gal. 6:17). When the barbarians are throwing their scaling ladders against the city walls, if the only defenders at the top of those walls are Chick Fil A employees in paper hats and hot grease from the deep fryer, and rednecks with their beards and shotguns, and nobody at all there from Red Brick Memorial Reformed, Rev. Forsythe P. Snodgrass, D.Min, minister, then let us be frank. We shouldn’t blame the folks who are there.
This is, by the way, the same tactic used by the left. Unless you conceive of a woman’s freedom, or race relations, or global warming the way we do, you are a mysoginist, racist, and ignorant. Fundamentalism is the word often used to describe this kind of all-or-nothing w-w. But I think, having been reared by two of them, fundamentalists were smarter than this. At least my parents didn’t blog.
What Doug Wilson fails to see is that many other believers do fight but some of us don’t evaluate the enemies the way Wilson does. Some us actually contend with our own demons — we struggle against the flesh. Some of us also fight the principalities of this age by supporting the Christian ministry. Some of us also think that a cable television show and the star’s contract is going to amount to a hill of beans in six months, let alone two millennia.
So go ahead, Doug. Fight your battle. It’s a free country (irony noted). And I’m going to fight your inadequacy to discern the times and your capacity to distract your followers from the less obvious but more serious battles that confront the gospel. And please note. I am not fighting Phil Robertson. From some 700 miles away and not having cable television (boo hoo), I don’t know enough to evaluate Phil’s situation. (Not sure you do either.)
Postscript: Geography and denomination alert!
Wilson adds:
The contrast must not be between how unsophisticated Christians fight and how sophisticated Christians . . . what do they do? At most, they demur, with a throat-clearing caveat or two. Theologians and ecclesiastical eggheads can make merry over this kind of pop culture melee if they like. The material is there — “look at those rubes, standing against the principalities and powers with their duck calls, zz top beards, and chicken sammich haute cuisine, hold the mayo.”
But the lack of self-awareness in this criticism is staggering. These are shepherds who feed only themselves (Ezek. 34:2). When shepherds have neglected the flock for so long, and the wolves are ravaging them, and the sheep come up with some kind of strategy to defend themselves, and the shepherds sit up on the ridge, laughing at the tactical inadequacy of what the sheep are attempting, what shall we call that?
Is Doug Wilson, a CREC minister in Moscow, Idaho, feeding Phil Robertson, a professing Christian in Louisiana who attends White’s Ferry Church of Christ? Talk about self-aware.
Old Life 
Why… he made himself General, of course – gotta keep those vanity presses going! His answer will always be “to fight,” because battles are so much more fun than living a quiet, peaceful life. After all, it gets people to buy your books and to call you things like “godly.” Oh, if only this were a battle that God actually gave to us…
I have a hard time believing that the “scars of Christ” that Paul had in Galatians had anything to do with Paul’s objection to the immorality of Rome. Or the notion that Christian convictions about culture were being marginalized among pagans. Oh well, nothing new under the sun – especially in Moscow.
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It’s also the tactic of (some) wives: if you don’t care the way I care then you don’t care at all. Sigh. Ironic the way muscular Christianity seems so effeminate.
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“I have a hard time believing that the “scars of Christ” that Paul had in Galatians had anything to do
with Paul’s objection to the immorality of Rome. ”
Paul gives Wile E. Coyote a run for more awful injuries.
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Wilson also seems to miss the fact that his efforts largely play into the hands of his would-be opponents.
Sure, Papa Duck made some comments that are superficially similar to certain texts in Romans and I Corinthians (except that those texts are largely directed to sexual acts that were part of pagan religious rites). But he also made a number of comments that find no support in Scripture whatsoever. These latter statements were plainly proffered in an effort to dehumanize gay people and to reduce them to one-dimensional foils to Papa Duck’s apparent virtue. I see no reason why any Christian would fail to criticize such statements, much less defend them.
Carl Trueman took a fair bit of heat a few years ago when he admitted that much of evangelical opposition to same-sex marriage is rooted in bigotry. The ready embrace by evangelicals and other Culture Warriors of Papa Duck seems to confirm this.
It isn’t that the egghead Christians lack fight; it’s that they trust in Christ more than themselves. Their refusal to slander and dehumanize a would-be enemy is not something to be chided. Rather, it is something that is sorely missing in evangelical circles today: It is having the faith to believe that God’s grace has its greatest effect when we love our enemies, turn the other cheek, and let no unwholesome (or false or slanderous) words come out of our mouths. Those who callously cast Christ’s commends aside in favor of martial vigor aren’t merely revealing themselves as rubes; they are revealing themselves as men who have little acquaintance with the ways of our Lord.
Is it any wonder that God has generally chosen not to bless the Culture Warriors with their desired ends?
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Who made him judge, etc? Why he, himself, did. Just as he ordained himself, appointed himself head of his own denomination, founded his own seminary, and publishes his own books.
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He likes the beards. Manly men stick together. Jesus had a beard according the one surviving picture we have.
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Ephesians 5: 8 for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light 9 (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true), 10 and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. 11 Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. 12 For it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret. 13 But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible, 14 for anything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says,“Awake, O sleeper,
and arise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you.”
15 Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, 16 making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. 17 Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.
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Not sure how pervasive the trend is, but considering guys like Doug Phillips and Doug Wilson, one of the things that jump out at you is a romanticizing of a particular era or culture. Wilson has done it with medieval europe, civil war south, and colonial America during the war for independence varyingly. Phillips centered on Victorian era (Titanic) gender distinctions and mores. Wilkins did it with civil war south. Rabbi Bret, chivalric France( probably unaware it’s French) maybe the Baylys too. I’m sure there are many other examples, but at a minimum it shows the dearth of training in church history. And at least implicitly, an prior commitment to triumphalism that’s not dissimilar to chiliasm and correspondingly can’t find adequate grounding in Christ’s history and teachings, so in service to this prior commitment goes in search of it elsewhere and after the fact baptizes it as ‘Christian’.
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Phillips and the Titanic probably should not be mentioned in the same sentence until this all blows over…
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wjw,
New archaeological evidence suggests that Jesus may have actually adopted the bald head with a soul patch look. Oh, and hipster glasses.
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@RGM
Are you referring to Wilson or Bayly? Oh, wait. I guess it’s Wilson. Bayly hasn’t yet collected his “wisdom” into a book. Funny, isn’t it, that manly Calvinism doesn’t look a whole lot different from what you’d expect authoritarian Calvinism to look like.
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@Erik
Speaking of Phillips…
I somehow made it off of the mailing list Vision Forum, and didn’t realize that the whole operation had gone belly-up amid allegations of adultery. Apparently manly Calvinism doesn’t include having your way sexually with teenaged girls in your church. And we learned earlier this year that it doesn’t include going all Carrie Nation on the local Planned Parenthood office. What indignities manly Calvinists must face as they await the establishment of their own self-ruled theocracies. After all, cult leaders still have to deal with the messiness of laws and scorned wives.
I guess I’ll have to find another source for my coonskin caps.
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Can Wilson roll up his sleeves to show a scared forearm or two? No. It’s all metaphor.
Generals…, lean in…, barbarians, etc. More metaphor.
Are Wilson’s scars like Paul’s… – from physical persecution from haters of Christ? No. Paul’s Gal. 6:17 scars were visible every time he took off his shirt.
Wilson’s scars are in his mind, but he shames Christians into seeing them anyway, get angry, and fight.
Schismatic that he is, Wilson’s scars are from his long fights with Christians.
Wilson’s real fight isn’t with the immoral of this world but with the Christians who have fought him, and those who refuse to join in his fights.
His mental scars obscure what is obvious. He can’t stop fighting Christians.
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“dearth of training in church history” nails it. And birth control.
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Bobby,
Try finding a decent jousting lance, flail, or chain mail since they shut down.
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“Django Unchained” and “Twelve Years a Slave” may have driven the final nails in the coffin of Steve Wilkins’ romanticizing the Antebellum South. What a heinous society that would have been if the Confederacy had survived. They would have had to invade Mexico to expand slavery someplace. It would have made Apartheid South Africa look benevolent. But hey, Christians will buy about anything.
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Erik, it’s blown over, scorched and smoldering. ‘Two men and a Truck’ are on their second intensive day of carting off the remains. I actually am sympathetic( I take no joy in having to watch it), but that body is being buried as we speak. I,unfortunately, have no doubt it will rise from dead in some form or fashion.
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Bobby, more curiously, how did you even get on the mailing list?
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I’m not sure. When I was in college, I bought a Gordon Clark book from The Trinity Foundation, the outfit run by the late John Robbins. At about the same time, I bought some books from the now-bankrupt theonomic bookseller, Great Christian Books. Shortly after making these purchases, I started receiving catalogs from Vision Forum. It was probably one of the two of these outfits that sold my name and address to the Phillips cult.
When I was in grad school, I was on the mailing list for Credenda/Agenda. Once it arrived in the mail on the same day as one of my housemate’s copy of Out magazine. We got a good chuckle about seeing the two publications sitting side by side in the mailbox.
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@Erik
I didn’t realize that you had a blog. I’ll check it out more regularly.
I still need to make it out to Iowa sometime. Despite living a state that borers you to the east, I’ve never set foot in the Hawkeye State. Come to think of it, I’ve never even made it as far west as DeKalb. Right now, though, I’m just imagining myself somewhere far away from the polar vortex.
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This is rich coming from the guy who has done more than his fair share of subverting the reformed faith in his day, in doctrine, worship and government.
After Norm Shepherd and Jim Jordan, the third generation apologist for Federal Vision’s affinity with reformed confessionalism, check.
Graduate member of John Frame’s Worship Children, check.
Denominational front man for the CREC FV safe haven for those fleeing NAPARC discipline, check.
Sure, Papa Duck made some comments that are superficially similar to certain texts in Romans and I Corinthians (except that those texts are largely directed to sexual acts that were part of pagan religious rites)
Huh? Are you referring to 1 Corinthians Bobby, in that Paul in Romans 3, goes on to extract the universal condition of total depravity from the hall of gentile and jewish shame that precedes it?
“There is none righteous, no not one . . . . .
Or to put it another way, contra Peter Jones, can sexuality ever be separated from religion?
On another note, this guy says the kerfluffle is a decoy, a manufactured incident:
http://takimag.com/article/manufacturing_outrage_guy_somerset/print#axzz2pmCV8QAn
And these guys ought to sue somebody for ruining their name and their image:
http://www.today.com/entertainment/beards-duck-dynasty-stars-are-unrecognizable-8C11411204
But forget about “reality” TV, (a contradiction in terms), back in the “real” world, California passed a law to allow all boys or girls who say they really are girls and boys to use the
inappropriate restroom for their supposed/dream gender.LikeLike
Bobby, or when you ordered that coonskin hat wrapped in the stars and stripes with the bonus Patriot’s Bible. And three cheers for the US postal service delivering on more gay ironies.
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This is an article that totally missed the point of Wilson’s. Wilson was defending those who may not have the best education or know all the right words to say but will stand up anyways. There is a group of people who think of themselves as the sophisticated intelligentsia that look down their noses at the common christian when they dare engage in the culture war. Wilson was right in his article.
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Jjoe, which intelligentsia would they be? There are fans of Wilson who hate me and, you know, hate is a sin. Is that a fair claim?
You may have also missed the grandstanding that Wilson does. But maybe you are a fan of the television coverage of the Super Bowl.
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JJS (hey!), plenty of unsophisticated inarticulates and uneducateds would rather that the likes of Wilson would sit down and shut up–they know the foibles of muscular Christianity when they see it. I’ll take them over the sophisticated intelligentsia cheerleading Duckbeard. Hart is right to tweak his nose at the chest thumping.
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“the common christian”
That’s Baylyspeak.
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Bobby,
Iowa is like Illinois without the corruption and interesting stuff.
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I can Chew Gum and walk at the same time, apparently Doug Wilson can as well.
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