Over here;
https://clearlyreformed.org/on-culture-war-doug-wilson-and-the-moscow-mood/?fbclid=IwAR1-mGWEoz3uofTIeXG1iAu8Xqw_z1GAHxQqq_8FvZ7Rr_LYvbcWFu96t14
The Dr. Rev. Kevin DeYoung published one heck of a strange column, the explanation of which can only be that Doug Wilson is increasingly being seen as a threat to established Presbyterianism. I offer that because the minute this piece by DeYoung was hot off the press our favorite academic Presbyterian dunce (Dr. R. Scott Clark) immediately linked it and praised it to the hilt. Of course, Scott also, back in the day, similarly praised to the hilt Tullian Tchividjian. All that to say that Scott’s track record for picking winners isn’t exactly praiseworthy.
Now those who know me and/or follow Iron Ink know that I am no friend to Pope Doug. So, this ends up being a case of “a pox upon both your houses.” Still, the criticisms of DeYoung are so cringe worthy that something has to be said. I guess that in this column I am pulling a Winston Churchill who once said that “if Hitler ever attacked Hell, he put in a good word for the Devil.”
I honestly don’t understand what DeYoung is seeking to accomplish with this piece. Nobody who reads this who already hates Wilson needs to read it, and those who love Wilson will only love him more as a result of the whining that Kevin DeYoung does here.
Below find some quotes from DeYoung followed by some of my observations.
“The most important fight is the fight for faith, not the fight for Christendom. The Christian life must be shaped by the theology of the cross, however much we might prefer an ever-present theology of glory. ”
Kevin DeYoung
1.) This is straight up R2K speak.
3.) This reference to a “theology of the Cross,” is what you hear from the Protestant Clergy who have forgotten that following the Cross was the Resurrection and the Ascension and the ruling at the right hand of the father. These chaps like DeYoung love them the crucifix. One wonders if, in their world, Jesus ever gets off that cross to ascend to the throne at the Right hand of the Father?
“We could do with fewer witticisms front and center, and more conspicuous delighting in the sweetness of fellowship with Christ and exulting in the love of God our Savior.”
Kevin DeYoung
This used to be called Pietism. Now we call it “Karen-ism.” (And no that isn’t a diss at white women alone. For Pete’s sake Karen’s come in all colors, shapes, and sizes.) It is sentimental hooey… God is my girlfriend stuff. It is not the way soldiers love their great Captains. It’s the way that women think about their beaus.
“I’m all for cultural engagement, even for some culture warring rightly understood.”
Kevin DeYoung
The only culture warring that DeYoung is interested in is culture warring against those who culture war.
Clergy like DeYoung and Wilson remind me why I hate admitting to being clergy. Who wants to be associated with these nekulturny? It would be like a Bagel admitting, while visiting the ghettos, that he worked for the Reich ministry of Propaganda as Goebbels’s chief Lieutenant.
Watching DeYoung assail Wilson is like back when you were in High School and you would occasionally see the Special Ed. kid get in a fight in the hallway. You knew he meant to really bring it, but you also knew that he was at a disadvantage from jump.
“For the mood that attracts people to Moscow is too often incompatible w/ Christian virtue, inconsiderate of other Christians, & ultimately inconsistent w/ stated aims of Wilson’s Christendom project”
Kevin DeYoung
Snort …. if DeYoung only knew that Moscow was merely the blunt side of the sword. The side we use when we want to slice bread or spank the toddlers.
“The naughty part is that Wilson uses the words “wussy” and “wuss”—adolescent slang for someone weak and effeminate. These are words most Christian parents don’t allow their kids to use, since the terms probably originated as a combination of “wimp” and another word I won’t mention.”
Article Criticizing Pope Doug
LOL… of all the things that Pope Doug could be justly criticized for, DeYoung chose to go after Wilson for saying “wuss” and “wussy?” I mean DeYoung could have gone after Doug’s constant trimming and equivocating, or he could have slapped Wilson upside the head for his constant usage of false dichotomy, or he could have questioned Wilson’s thinking that marriage can cure pedophilia. There are tons of things that DeYoung could have gone after Wilson for but what we get is that Kevin can’t abide Dougie’s use of a marginally and barely naughty word? It’s like a child seeing little Johnny flash someone on the playground but tattling to the teacher that Johnny cut in line.
This is why many men no longer take conservative Presbyterian clergy seriously. Personally, I never let my son go outdoors to play if he DIDN’T promise to use words like that when necessary. Personally, I never knew any Christian parents who didn’t allow their sons to use “language like that,” and if I did know any Christian parents like that, they sure didn’t want to know me.
Yeah… it’s true… Kevin DeYoung is a WUSSY.
Rev. Dr. Kevin DeYoung explains perfectly that old French proverb;
There are three sexes,
1.) Male
2.) Female
3.) Clergy
At the end of the day my complaint about Wilson is he is not enough of the things that DeYoung accuses him off. I think that Wilson is not really serious and if he is serious he has seriously underestimated what it will take to restore Christian Western civilization. In other words, Wilson takes half measures. Wilson sustained this accusation when in replying to an accusation against him that he was trying to be Rushdoony 2.0 he quipped, “And here I was trying to merely be Rushdoony 0.5.” The fact that Doug is trying to cut the potency of Rushdoony in half communicates that Doug is moving away from Rushdoony to what Doug views is a safer place. That reality shows in many of Doug’s position, from his reluctance to advocate for the death penalty for sodomites, to his reluctance to insist that sabbath laws should be implemented across the whole social order Doug wants to turn back the hands of time to when we had a peaceable classically liberal social order. However we have, in America, long passed that exit and we won’t be going back to any classical liberal social order since such a social order given our demographic composition today will not allow for the exclusivity of Jesus Christ as the unique King of the social order. Our classical liberal social order could work for as long as it did because of two reasons,
1.) Here in the states we were overwhelmingly White. The European cousins had made flight to America and intermarried and yet remained 87% white.
2.) Here in the states we were overwhelmingly Christian of one flavor or another. Those who weren’t Christian had to conform. (Think US vs. Reynolds where the Mormons were told polygamy would not be allowed.)
A classically liberal social order can not work where there no longer exists a shared demographic and a shared religion wherein harmony of interest can be shared among the populace.
Neither Wilson nor DeYoung are going to help us return to a social order that refuses classical liberalism.
Now those who know me and/or follow Iron Ink no that I am know friend to Pope Doug. So, this ends up being a case of “a pox upon both your houses.”
LOL. Who would ever think you would say such a thing? LOL.
To some, I suppose I am an open book.
Wilson doesn’t seem serious when I’ve heard samples of him speak, but that’s a small exposure. He has a community he’s building so that seems serious.
KDY and URC are seriously intellectual, but try so hard to be inoffensive to feminists and Marxists and progressives and career Moms and partying girls that I don’t see how they can achieve serious saltiness or intense light.
Lots of reading, lots of small groups, lots of hospitality and helping each other for illnesses and moving. All biblical fruits. But changing a social order? I can’t even say I hope so because we shouldn’t be rewarded for our lack of fight against socialism or any initiatives such as CRT, climate change, etc. All of which URC says it’s okay if you are interested in, but is also a distraction to the gospel.
They don’t want to make a statement about public schools, working Moms, climate change, masking, etc, because it’s divisive and a distraction to the gospel in their view because they don’t want to anger libs. “We should never offend except for our extreme love and by proclaiming Jesus,” is a very common plea in our sermons.
Confronting men about ugly sins without sensitivity, we have that! Confronting women about sin? Only when abortion is brought up, and then it’s with a massive dollop of extreme sensitivity.
I’ve seen nothing from KDY or URC that would suggest that they are seriously intellectual. Intellectual frauds maybe, but certainly not intellectual.
Given your description of URC, I would not consider it a “Church.” I would probably consider it a “Do-gooder club.” I might even be glad for it since “do-gooder clubs” have their place. But Church?
I don’t think so.