[Vision2020] Trinity Festival protest

[Ted Moffett]

Andreas et. al.

Thanks for your interesting post.

It was not long.  It took just a few minutes to read, and not applying any
speed reading techniques.  And it was not boring.  Fascinating, in fact,
even though I had already studied some of this content before.

The fact you stated your post is "long" and that it will "bore most of you,"
if this description accurately fits the way many view your post, in part
explains why many are perplexed and dismayed at the "protest" of the Trinity
Festival.  They have never studied the issue in depth because the
information is boring and takes too "long" to read.

We see unconscious bias at work here, perhaps, not a reluctance to study in
depth.  Most people in Moscow are Christians, who do not wish to view a
Christian Church in the community as a threat based on a church's
interpretation of Christianity.  After all, they follow the same word of
God, the Bible.  The fact that this "word of God" can be construed in a
manner that results in such "unpleasant" conclusions, reveals to some extent
what the Bible really says. And many moderate Christians pick and choose
what quotes from the Bible to live by, according to ethical principles of
compassion and tolerance, and ignore or dismiss, in one way or another, the
quotes from the Bible that are disturbing, brutal, cruel, etc.

They apply principles of freedom and toleration for differing religious
views to justify causal acceptance of churches that preach forms of
intolerance, while not facing the full implications revealed in a careful
reading of the Bible, that the "word of God" in Biblical text
sometimes involves barbaric and cruel ethical mandates, that some churches
merely insist on applying literally.  Thus many well meaning and kind
compassionate Christians give cover to more extremist Christians when they
insist that the Bible is the literal word of God, rather than a book written
by flawed human beings, who, even if sometimes divinely inspired, made
serious and substantive errors in judgement as expressed in the text, rather
than acting as direct transcribers of the perfect thoughts of a Supreme
Being.

Ted Moffett

On 8/10/07, Andreas Schou <ophite at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 8/10/07, g. crabtree <jampot at roadrunner.com> wrote:
> > To a certain extent I agree, but then again I didn't choose the
> > battleground. I fight where the opponent is. Mr. Schou for some reason
> > wanted to attempt to make a point involving that resource and I was only
> too
> > happy to refute him on the ground of his choice.
>
> Gary --
>
> Not having wanted to donate money directly to Doug Wilson, I'm
> unfortunately without direct quotations from his books, and I am not
> going to take a walk down to the library in order to win an argument
> I've already had a thousand times, and which I'm sure is boring the
> list members who've had to sit through me having it a thousand times.
> This will be long. It will bore most of you. You can stop reading
> here, if you like.
>
> So let's go back to the beginning here, which was the teachings of
> Doug Wilson's denomination, the Confederation of Reformed
> Evangelicals, on the issue we were originally discussing: the
> execution of homosexuals for homosexuality. The issue is confused more
> than a little, now, by the rapid backpedaling and sidestepping that
> occurred in 2003, when Christ Church finally realized that the locals
> were paying attention to what he was saying (he thought) to an
> external audience.
>
> First of all, let me start out by saying that of his two most regular
> confederates, George Grant and Steve Wilkins (the two co-presenters at
> most of the "History Conferences"), our Doug is by far the most
> publicly reasonable. George Grant is an unreconstructed Christian
> Reconstructionist, who, in 1993, wrote an entire book (titled
> "Legislating Immorality") devoted to the subject of executing people
> for crimes ending in the letter 'y'.
>
> Steve Wilkins, on the other hand, is largely a southern theo-partisan
> and co-founder of the League of the South, a neo-confederate hate
> group. His works include a full-throated defense of the Salem Witch
> Trials as being appropriate for American jurisprudence, a reprinting
> of the works of R.L. Dabney, including "A Defense of Virginia," in
> which Dabney claims that the purpose of the Civil war was to breed a
> race of killer mulattos to destroy the pure Southern Anglo-Celtic
> stock.
>
> You'll likely get the same answer from the vast majority of members of
> his church -- like, for instance, Andrew Sandlin, whose Church of the
> King in California is part of the CREC, is a former editor of the
> Chalcedon Report, whose sine qua non was the establishment of,
> essentially, Christian sharia courts in the United States. Here's a
> quote:
>
> "It is not our responsibility to select certain portions of the Law of
> God that we like. I realize that in late 20th century America, we have
> certain tender sensibilities about how abortionists or homosexuals
> should be treated. We live according to a "rights" theory of life,
> rather than a responsibility view of life. So there are some of God's
> laws that do, especially on first reading, seem harsh and difficult.
> The question we have to ask is -- Are we going to conform our ideas
> and practice to the Law of God? -- Or are we going to permit the
> modern culture dictate to us our ethical values?"
>
> So, again, up until 2003, Doug really had nothing to lose by saying
> whatever it is that he wanted. These guys -- knuckle-dragging,
> unreconstructed theocrats like Grant and Wilkins -- were the only
> people he was speaking to. And he wasn't particularly good at
> moderating his message for public consumption; again, he hadn't had to
> up to this point. At that point, he was, in fact, poor enough at
> moderating his message that his books were widely promoted and
> discussed on "kinist" websites, "kinism" being basically racism with a
> theocratic twist (again, if you've the stomach for it, you can look at
> the November 2003-February 2004 archives of blogs like Badlands and
> Little Geneva).
>
> Now, why is that? Because his "nuanced" views were, at the time,
> non-existent. His current protestations to the contrary
> notwithstanding, he was making public claims that the only option for
> homosexuals was execution -- he actually made that claim (along with
> arguing that raped virgins should be forced to marry their rapist) at
> a debate with Edward Tabash in October of 2002, long before I actually
> knew who he was.
>
> When backed into a rhetorical corner with no way out of admitting to
> what he said (and knowing that continuing to say these things in
> forums accessible to outsiders would certainly hurt him in Moscow),
> Doug started to scramble for "nuance" where none had previously
> existed. He told the Daily News that exile was an alternative to
> execution -- a rhetorical move that, when he found that it did not, in
> fact, quell the furor over his bigotry, he disavowed. He began
> claiming around this time that the "real issue" (as though no one
> really cared about the slavery issue) was homosexuality.
>
> This was not a particularly novel claim, as George Grant and Steve
> Wilkins had been explaining that the reason for the "abortion,
> feminism, and homosexuality" was, in fact, the abolition of slavery
> for years.
>
> So this brings us, then, to his contemporary views on using the
> judicial system to murder gays and lesbians.
>
> I actually sat down for lunch with him, at Zume, around this time. I'd
> characterize it as a perfectly pleasant lunch. And I got to ask him
> quite a few interesting questions -- about his links to Christian
> Reconstructionism; about homosexuality; about the implementation of
> Mosaic Law in modern society. I didn't ask about the slavery issue (at
> the time, it was, of course, a little touchy), but I did get a fairly
> straight answer with regard to his wildly skidding theology (or
> politics; the distinction is a bit vague for Wilson) with regard to
> homosexuality. It was that "oh, sure, in 500 years, when everybody's
> Christian, execution will be mandatory, but there will, of course, be
> very few homosexuals at that point, so it will merely be a sad, rare,
> eventuality."
>
> He's a little more coy about it here, but from this blog post --
> actually, a reprint of an answer he gave me on the list back in 2004
> -- you can see exactly the same answer. Again, remember that this is
> written specifically to mollify an outside audience.
>
> "There are a number of other questions I am leaving unanswered. One of
> them has to do with the governmental treatment of certain individuals
> convicted of certain homosexual acts in some unnamed Christian
> republic five hundred years from now. They are reasonable questions,
> but please keep in mind that I am in a series of controversies of some
> unreasonable people, and so I will answer generally. In such a
> republic, would homosexual acts be against the law, and if so, what
> would the penalty be? Like I said, reasonable questions. Yes, such
> behavior would be against the law -- just like it was throughout all
> fifty states just a few short years ago. And what would the penalties
> be? The answer to that question requires a certain level of cultural
> maturity (beyond what is currently in evidence) -- that has to take
> into account careful exegesis of the Old Testament texts, the nature
> and purpose of common law, the circumstances of each particular case,
> the flow of redemptive history, and the forgiveness that is offered to
> everyone in Jesus Christ.
>
> It is not hard for me to imagine a secularist differing with all of
> this. But the one thing he should be careful to do is not to
> misrepresent it."
>
> This wasn't really the end of it all. In order to further muddy the
> waters, Doug Wilson (in conjunction with Doug Jones) produced a
> further elaboration of this "nuanced" view. I'll use World Magazine's
> summary of his view, rather than repost it:
>
> "In an article entitled "Owning the Curse: Re-Thinking Same-Sex
> Marriage," written with Douglas Jones in the journal Credenda/Agenda,
> Wilson makes the following argument: (1) Homosexuality, according to
> Romans 1, is God's judgment on societies that reject Him. (2)
> Christians should not reject God's judgments, but take responsibility
> for them so as to repent. (3) Homosexuality is a particular judgment
> against the Church, for failing to promote Biblical fatherhood. (4)
> Homosexuality may well be genetic--as are other sins from our
> inherited fallen nature--and Christians should treat homosexuals
> kindly, as victims of bad fathering. (5) Christians should let gay
> marriage happen, as God's judgment on our culture. (6) The only remedy
> for this judgment is restoring "right worship" and recovering Biblical
> fatherhood."
>
> So, in other, less charitable words:
>
> Homosexuality (including gay marriage) is a judgment on America, much
> like a plague of locusts or frogs, brought on by feminism. Men haven't
> sufficiently oppressed women; therefore, God judges us by making men's
> sons effeminate. Therefore, under the current system, harsh punishment
> for homosexuality is uncalled for, because it would be an "autonomous"
> (contrast "autonomy" with "theonomy")  rejection of a judgment against
> America by God. However, once America has brought its house in order,
> punishment for homosexuality can include death; however, the Mosaic
> code specifies only *maximum* punishments -- a judge might sentence a
> homosexual merely to exile, if he were merciful. The death penalty is
> reserved only for the most "serious, unrepentant" cases.
>
> And that's the final word.
>
> -- ACS
>
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