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Director’s Dicta: June 2024, Supplement
Acknowledging Friendly Push-back: Doug Wilson
My colleague, Joshua Gielow, hosts the weekly TxC Podcast. There, he and I (and occasional other guests) conversationally explore – sans footnotes – issues and input from our readers. This is a rich time of iron sharpening iron. Last week’s Dicta generated a lot of social media inquiry and at points, push-back. Doug Wilson, someone I have known for decades, posted an entire blog ostensively pushing-back. Because I know Doug, I thought I would generate a brief acknowledgement – set forth below. ENJOY!
Dear Doug –
Thank you for the winsome, empathetic, (and incipiently effeminate) mention in your recent post.
I continue to appreciate and benefit from your decades long faithful leadership and establishment of many Kingdom relics: CEF, now Christ Church, the Logos School, ACCS, NSA, et al.
Your recent post I call a “mention” because it did not reply or respond, and it certainly did not rebut last week’s DICTA. That essay exposed several pagan notions which now sit comfortably in patches of the Church. I say this not to be clever, but because you really didn’t grapple with the thrust of the piece: the paganism of the Bronze Age Mindset (BAM) that manifests itself in neo-masculinity folderol. I did reference and rebut your tweet – what are things on X now called – tweets or chirps? – because it was and remains an inane and vapid notion: that you support measures to exclude Hindus from voting. This is how BAM metastasizes when applied to public policy – connect the analytic dots. And, I call your post incipiently effeminate because it seems thin-skinned, emotive, and whiny – perhaps I’m mistaken on this point.
The fundamental error you make in discussing the public square is similar to an error I know you recognize when made by other Christians: they conflate and equate the Kingdom with the institutional Church. In the same way, as I see it, you are doing something similar here by conflating and equating Christian culture (or the US’s Christian founding) with “Christian Nationalism”. The former does not imply nor require, let alone necessitate, the latter.
I am delighted you are reading our recent collaborative volume, Virtuous Liberty. I do suggest, as I suggested when we met years ago in Boise at the Muffin Break (8th and Idaho Street) and you were grappling with infant baptism: Recall that I presented you an outline of the argument and identified three books to “work through” on that issue – you eventually “got there.” I suggest you take a sabbatical from addressing the political arena and instead spend some deep time reading and reflecting on solid resources addressing it – just a suggestion – perhaps after your NatCon4 appearance – see you there!
As for my Classical Liberalism having a leaky tire, my view is that the motorized tri-cycle of your Christian Nationalism is stuck in the mud – up to its axle – with an empty fuel tank – and lacking handle bars.
[Snappy, snarky, serrated sign-off omitted because I’m a Christian gentleman and the Fruit of the Spirit has no expiration date no matter what time it is]
God bless you!
Cordially in Christ,
JJV