[Vision2020] In Christian vs. Atheist Documentary, a Bizarre Advocate for Christianity

Wed Oct 28 13:38:36 PDT 2009

Well, at least somebody's paying attention . . . 

While in Tucson a couple of weeks ago, I was chatting outside of Starbucks with an older couple who asked me where I was from.  When I said Moscow, Idaho, the woman said, "Oh, that's where Credenda/Agenda is published!"  After an awkward silence, she gingerly asked me if I knew of C/A and what I thought.  More important than what I said was what she said about Wilson, et al, and their take on various secular or religious topics.

"Oh, we just found it kind of odd, nothing like the Christian teaching we grew up with . . . "

Bingo.  I just hope this nice lady in probably her early 60s didn't get the C/A with the infamous "romance novel-looking" cover featuring a gorgeous woman looking longingly at a gorgeous man standing over her.  He had battery cables attached to his nipples.  Forgive me if I'm unable to come up with a context in which that would be appropriate for a Christian magazine . . . 

Keely
www.keely-prevailingwinds.com

> Date: Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:37:06 -0700
> From: thansen at moscow.com
> To: vision2020 at moscow.com
> Subject: [Vision2020] In Christian vs. Atheist Documentary, a Bizarre Advocate for Christianity
> 
> Courtesy of the Southern Poverty Law Center's website at:
> 
> http://tinyurl.com/BizarreAdvocate
> 
> -----------------------------------------------
> 
> In Christian vs. Atheist Documentary, a Bizarre Advocate for Christianity
> Posted By Sonia Scherr On October 27, 2009
> 
> In a new documentary pitting atheism against faith, contrarian critic
> Christopher Hitchens debates evangelical pastor Douglas Wilson on the
> merits of Christianity. “Collision,” released today, has already generated
> buzz: Hitchens and Wilson have appeared on National Public Radio’s “All
> Things Considered,” CNN’s “The Joy Behar Show” and Fox News Channel’s “Fox
> and Friends,” among other programs. Newsweek Religion Editor Lisa Miller
> devoted a column to the 90-minute film, which she thoroughly panned: “So
> uncinemetic is this picture — two middle-aged white men talking — that my
> attention insistently wandered toward anything humanizing and finally
> dwelled, for too long perhaps, on a fleck of something on Hitchens’s
> eyelash.” Hitchens responded in a column for this week’s Slate, writing
> that “the subject of religion is back where it always ought to be — at the
> very center of any argument about the clash of world views.”
> 
> What’s missing from the media hubbub are a few salient details [1] about
> Wilson. The 56-year-old pastor from Idaho seems an odd booster for
> Christianity, considering that some of his views sound downright
> un-Christian. Wilson co-wrote a booklet called Southern Slavery, As it
> Was, which describes the institution in almost reverent terms. “Slavery
> produced in the South a genuine affection between the races that we
> believe we can say has never existed in any nation before the [Civil] War
> or since,” Wilson wrote with co-author Stephen Wilkins, a founding member
> of the racist League of the South. “Slave life was to [slaves] a life of
> plenty, of simple pleasures, of food, clothes, and good medical care.”
> 
> The booklet ignited a controversy six years ago that roiled the community
> around Moscow, Idaho, where Wilson had established a religious empire that
> included a private Christian academy, an accrediting agency for Christian
> schools, an evangelical college, and a church with over 1,000 members.
> Hundreds of University of Idaho students demonstrated against Wilson, two
> local university presidents issued anti-racist statements, and two
> academic historians wrote a damning essay disputing the booklet’s
> portrayal of slavery.
> 
> In 2004, a retired philosophy professor at the University of Idaho
> uncovered another problem with Wilson’s book: At least 22 passages had
> been plagiarized from a discredited 1974 academic treatise. Canon Press
> issued an updated version of the book that corrected what Wilson termed a
> “citation problem” but continued to promote myths about slavery.
> 
> Wilson’s extreme views extend beyond race. He asserted that if a woman is
> raped, the rapist should pay the father a bride price and then, if the
> father approves, marry his victim. He told Christianity Today that exile
> (as opposed to death) might be an appropriate punishment for certain
> homosexuals. However, he’d support execution for cursing one’s parents
> and, in some cases, for adultery. He wrote in one of his books that the
> children of parents who don’t believe in Jesus Christ are “foul” and
> “unclean.”
> 
> Wilson doesn’t always practice what he preaches. Although he wrote in his
> 1999 book Fidelity that the penalty for child abuse should be death, he
> urged a sentencing judge to be lenient on a college student who had
> molested young children. The Moscow-Pullman Daily News reported in 2006
> that people were upset because Wilson had failed to promptly notify
> families in his church about the student, who had spent time in their
> homes.
> 
> Wilson increasingly has found favor in mainstream Christian circles. The
> senior pastor of a 6,000-member Baptist church in Minneapolis recently [2]
> invited Wilson to speak at a national conference marking the 500th
> anniversary of John Calvin’s birth. In June, the prominent Christian right
> leader and Watergate ex-convict Charles Colson was on the program of [3] a
> conference hosted by Wilson.
> 
> “Collision” had its genesis in a written debate between Hitchens and
> Wilson that was published on the website of Christianity Today. The
> exchange grew into a book called Is Christianity Good for the World?,
> which they promoted in several East Coast cities last fall. Filmmaker
> Darren Doane tagged along to shoot the footage for “Collision,” which
> premiers tomorrow and Thursday in New York and Los Angeles.
> 
> -----------------------------------------------
> 
> Seeya round town, Moscow.
> 
> Tom Hansen
> Moscow, Idaho
> 
> “I’ll just speak for our church, in Christ Church. If I found out that a
> member of our church or a church officer was lying to non-believers in the
> community, as a way to get by or protect themself or protect his
> reputation, yes, he’d be disciplined.”
> 
> - Doug Wilson (January 31, 2007)
> http://www.tomandrodna.com/protest/Doug_Wilson_Liers_013107.mp3
> 
> PS - This is just a short advance notice on the upcoming (April/May)
> Second Annual Intolerista Wingding (with Roy Zimmerman).  However, unlike
> last year's Intolerista Wingding, this one is going to be FREE!
> 
> Stay tuned . . .
> 
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