November 29, 2023

Douglas Wilson Isn’t Being Manly, He’s Being Teenagerly

Doug Wilson behind closed (not slammed) doors.

Slamming Doors

My son is a teenager, but he’s never slammed his bedroom door. Not once. He’s not that kind of kid. No teenagerly displays of petulance.

My daughter on the other hand…

Well she was a feisty teenager, for sure. In our old house, our old wooden house, with large solid jarrah doors, she would slam her bedroom door and storm into her room. Often.

The house would shake and things would quake and my heart would break. Not really. At least not the last bit. My heart would not break. I would get angry. Angry enough to open her door and shout “Stop slamming the door!”

Until one day, she stopped slamming the door. She stopped slamming the door because after one particular door slam I walked to the shed, got out my cordless drill, and removed the door from its hinges and placed it outside on the verandah. Two ways – probably more – to skin a cat and all that.

She wailed. And wailed. “But I’ve got no door on my room now? How am I supposed to have any privacy?”

When I put the door back on – a few weeks later, she got her privacy back. And magically – the door was never slammed again.

Doug The Door Slammer

Which brings me to Douglas Wilson. In light of the gentle chide from Kevin DeYoung about the manner and tone in which he comes across, there have been all sorts of door slammings from his followers. And the reason is simple, Douglas Wilson is a door slammer himself.

DeYoung’s piece was not a hit piece, indeed it’s very much a call from within the tribe. You can read it here to check it out. Yet the result has been a nuclear explosion, not so much from Doug himself – he’s too smart to do that – but from a whole bunch of his followers who, it must be said, seem well versed in the art of derisory comments and cheap jibes. He has trained them well.

The problem of course, is that such men – and generally they are men – are attempting to come across all manly. As Aussie blogger Murray Campbell notes in his review of the issue , there’s a trend that seems to think that if Plan A didn’t work (the gospel plan), then Plan B (which involves door slamming), needs to be enacted.

Indeed Murray quotes one Doug fan as saying this, when I pushed back on the whiff of teenagerhood that his door slamming attitudes raise:

“We can lament the state of the church and culture all we want, and natter amongst ourselves about what the right tone to strike is. Maybe it’s just time for haymakers and door slamming.”

Two things: First, as if that is the either/or going on here. Everyone’s sitting around navel-gazing and lamenting, Doug’s doing something. Not true. Not true at all. I know plenty of people – plenty of manly men in fact – putting their necks on the line in the public square to get stuff done. And plenty of women too.

Plenty of people are doing lots, including the serious work of lobbying governments. I write and speak about the cultural problems all of the time. I’ve been involved in planting churches that want to help Christians navigate these culturally complex times with faithfulness and fruitfulness.

But Doug is preaching to the choir. His aim is truly inward towards those who challenge his tactics. He hasn’t been landing a serious blow in the public square from as far as I can see. This is all about the inward state of the church, and primarily in the USA.

But second, “maybe it’s just time for haymakers and door slamming“! Chapter and verse please! It’s such a lazy way to see things. Okay, we’re not getting our way, let’s slam the door! And in that context, Kevin DeYoung came along with his equivalent of my cordless drill and removed Wilson’s door, so that we can all see what’s going on behind it.

Wilson’s main aim is the church. He’s going around slamming doors, using cuss words and posting videos of himself drinking alcohol in order to shock the tee-totalling goody-two-shoes among the Southern Baptists and The Gospel Coalition. And I’m with de Young here in saying that he’s targeting friends as he does so. And that’s just teenagerly.

I mean, I’ve doom-scrolled with the best of them, and the only people posting videos of themselves swigging alcohol and using all of the body part words, are teenagers and jocks. Though you have to give it to him, even the teenagers and jocks aren’t smart enough to flog actual flamethrowers online.

Yep that’s right folks, you can buy the actual flamethrower used on Doug’s No Quarter November video 2023, or a replica at least. I also think there are Doug Wilson bobbleheads available, but they may just be the reconstituted Karl Marx bobbleheads so beloved in the actual Moscow. I’m sure Vladimir Putin has one or two on that big desk of his. The opiate of the masses right there.

But here’s the ad if you’re interest, and if you haven’t bought all your Christmas gifts yet at the types of Christian bookshops whose doors Doug would slam in despair on his way out (though truth be told, I sometimes feel like that myself when I see the best-sellers:

What a daft idea. What an infantile idea unworthy of a Christian leader. But my biggest gripe is that for such an expensive item, they only dropped the price by 122 dollars. A lousy 122 bucks takes the cost to just under three grand. Never mind that expensive jar of nard, this is right up there! And they’re taking pre-orders! Must be a hive of workers in a bunker somewhere making them.

They do look cool though. And perhaps you could take it to the temple! Rather than overturning the tables of those selling doves, you could take it to the Dove Awards themselves and flame out Flamy Grant in a culture war move par excellence.

Mind you, I presume “it’s legal” in America, where lots of other crazy weaponry is also legal, so Moscow-Idaho-wannabes around the rest of the Western world should check with their local authorities before purchasing such an amazing piece of kit.

Look, I’ll be honest. There were things about Wilson I liked in the past. And he was a sharp writer. His travelling show with Christopher Hitchens, was great. And some of his early work was incisive and culturally sharp. But like the school bully who gets off on the applause of the audience, an audience who increasingly mimic his ways, he’s crossed the line to performance art in the street, a valuable tool generally of the Left, ironically. Simply put, Wilson’s getting high on his own supply.

Theological Door Slamming

It has to be said that some of this is theological. Douglas is now firmly in the post-millennial “give us our culture back” camp. At least from where he writes publicly.

There’s certainly a shift towards that viewpoint, and an admission from Doug that Jesus won’t come back probably for five thousand years or so. In light of that lets get on with culture making and see how far we can spread a good thing. And if we can spread a good thing to the whole edges of our nation(s), so much the better. The nation should start to look as good as it looks in this church movement we are planting.

But the truth may turn out to be more tawdry than that. Surely there is some alignment with our public and private personas? Surely the intemperate way he speaks – and the manner in which many of his followers scorn and chide and scoff and troll – is baked into the vibe of the thing, and is central to it? And that means there might be something wrong at the source. Something that could come back to bite people.

Here’s what I mean. If Wilson treats his enemies – and your enemies – like that, don’t for a moment believe that he won’t treat you like that if you become his enemy. “But how would I become his enemy?”, you might ask. Poor naive soul that you are! Simply challenge him or call out something that you might think is wrong. That will be the test case.

I say that in the context of a litany of church movements that are white hot and zealous, but eventually fall apart. And when they do it always comes back to the narratives of control from a charismatic leader.

But as I said, Doug doesn’t really do the dirty work. The comments already around some of the women pushing back on this are pretty dreadful. Henchmen do the hack work. And if you don’t believe that, then read the X/Twitter responses to those who backed Kevin DeYoung’s article. Someone on Facebook ordered me to apologise for suggesting that Doug had had a crack at women who challenged him online. To be fair, that’s beneath his pay grade. He leaves that to the minions. And boy do they go to to work on those women!

A New Standard Bearer

The biggest theological door slam, however, is Wilson’s own statement, captured on video a few years ago, that in the current cultural climate – which if you’ve read anything I’ve written, you’ll know is a difficult, bracing one for orthodox Christians -, we really need a “standard bearer” to gather around, a deliverer, so to speak.

“A standard bearer? A deliverer?” you say? Yes, a standard bearer, a deliverer. Wilson, in the video, implies that like in the Old Testament times in Israel, when the nation had gone down the toilet, God raised up a deliverer, a judge, to sort it all out. Which has all sorts of theological wrong-turns, and pastoral implications. In fact, that’s how cults start surely. For all cults are initially cults of personality, not cults of theology after all. The theological missives are drawn in only later.

But here’s the theological concern: We are not waiting for a deliverer like national Israel was in the OT. Why? Three reasons 1) this is the new covenant. 2) we are spiritual Israel not national Israel. And – most importantly – 3), we have a deliverer already. Yes that’s right folks, the Lord Jesus.

Can you imagine Paul writing to the Christians suffering in the empire, while he himself is imprisoned for the gospel?:

But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Saviour from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body…BUT IN THE MEANTIME WE AWAIT A STANDARD BEARER, A DELIVERER.”

Patience is Manly

The real struggle – the real patient struggle – in that the true secret to the Christian life is in the waiting! The lack of waiting is what leads to so much sin. Saul could not wait for Samuel. So he sinned and sacrificed when he ought not to have done so. Jesus, by contrast, did wait when the devil offered him all of the good things now! Patience is the manly thing to do. Surely we’ve had our fill of impetuous men.

Doug is right about one thing in that video: or a couple of things. Our role is to pray and raise our families and do what is good and right and true. But in terms of waiting? We have a standard bearer who is one day going to return and bring fiery judgement on all that is untrue and ungodly.

And that’s annoying. Yep, that’s right. I find that very annoying at times. Cos do you know what I want to do when I see terrible things happening? When I see the denial of the created order in our sexuality and gender legislations that put pressure on schools, and do terrible things to young children? I want to slam doors. I want to get out my flamethrower. I want all that. I want to swear and cuss about it all.

It’s not a sign of manliness to do those things. It’s not even teenagerly to be honest. It’s infantile. Yet what we get when anyone challenges it even in a godly way such as Kevin DeYoung did, is a whole heap of self-righteous chest-puffing by blokes who can strain out a Facebook gnat and demand full-blown apologies, but who swallow camels, often allowing their sisters in the Lord to be spoken about in a way that is derogatory, sexually exploitative and plain bullying.

That’s not being a man – even despite what your adoring and assenting wife and five or so children tell you. There’s many a woman who is more than happy to turn a blind eye to a woman being bullied, if it’s her man doing it. Until of course, she’s the one being bullied.

Is Douglas Wilson always wrong about everything? No, of course not. Only teenagers are so certain about things being completely black and white. Teenagers and the followers of Doug Wilson, as far as I can tell on socials.

What would be good to see, what would be truly manly, is a well-considered non-ad-hominem rebuttal to Kevin DeYoung, one that doesn’t go straight to scorn or derision. But all that’s happened is that the henchmen of Moscow, Idaho get onto Twitter and slag people off. And from such times I offer a hearty petition: “Good Lord’ deliver us.

Cue the online abuse. It’s like Pavlov’s dogs. Write something vaguely critical of the standard bearer, er Douglas Wilson, and the packdogs arrive.

But hey don’t worry about me, I get itt from both sides, as anyone who has read the Facebook feed after my post about an affirming church will attest to. Then again I’ve always considered the pen mightier than the sword, mightier even than the flamethrower!

Written by

stephenmcalpine

There is no guarantee that Jesus will return in our desired timeframe. Yet we have no reason to be anxious, because even if the timeframe is not guaranteed, the outcome is! We don’t have to waste energy being anxious; we can put it to better use.

Stephen McAlpine – futureproof

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