does a really grand job of giving the deep contextual background for the reason for the kerfuffle. The long and the short of it is that this battle is shaped by the century long percolating and simmering fight between the neo-cons (Trotskyites) and the paleo-cons as to the definition of “conservative.” This becomes important in relation to Christianity because Christianity is by it’s very nature a conserving and conservative faith.
The battle here has always been as between the moderate left (the Girondists of the French Revolution) who were viewed as “conservative” as compared to the hard left (Montagnards) and those few who genuinely belonged to the Ancien Regime — the old line conservatives. The neo-cons were referred to as “Trotskyites” because they believed that the Revolution should be ceaseless. The neo-cons today then are those who are on the right side of the left but who also believe that social revolution should be ongoing and continuous. There is no desire on the part of the neo-cons to return to the theology of the Ancien Regime, characterized as it is by a unique love of one’s own people, King, and country. The neo-cons have a Democratic impulse and Democracy has always been the hand-maiden for leftism. Neo-cons will never want to see any of the gains made by their continuous Revolutions rolled back. For the Moscow gang this most immediately means a absolute resolve to never see a return to a time when Bagels were seen as the enemy of the Church and of Christianity, as well as never countenancing the vanilla doctrine of Kinism that was held everywhere by all people at all times until the latest major expression of the perpetual revolution that was World War II. When folks like me and others advocate for an older Christianity that was Bagel wise and familialist in practice the cry that arises from Moscow and from James White, Joel Boot, Andrew Sandlin and their ilk is “FASCISTS,” or “NAZIS.” This libel on their part is confirmation that they are indeed Trotskyists and Girondists …. as well as garden variety idiots.
If you want to understand this bubbling war completely you have to start doing the heavy work of reading. You have to read Sam Francis, and Joe Sobran, and Garet Garett and Wimoore Kendall and Frank Meyer and Albert Jay Nock, and H. L. Mencken and M. Stanton Evans, R. J. Rushdoony and others. These men did not always agree with one another but I am fairly sure they all would have disagreed with the “new Christendom” that Doug Wilson is trying to fashion. It is the attempted fashioning of Doug’s “New Christendom” that is driving all the drama from his side. You see, the Ogden chaps just do not agree with Wilson’s vision of “New Christendom.” It strikes me that they prefer the older Christendom.
Upon viewing the Suave video on can say the following;
2.) This contest is monumentally important to the future of both Christianity and the broader culture. If it is true that “as goes the church so goes the culture,” (and I believe it is) then whoever wins out in this contest (and oddly enough R2K is on the side of Moscow here in the broad contours of the matter) will define the church and the culture for another generation.
3.) Doug and James White and Boot and Sandlin etc are doing the work of the devil here. Because they have no ability to know who the enemy is they have no ability to resist the enemy. This necessarily means redefining Christianity per the worldview of the enemy.
4.) If you really support the cause of Christ you have to quit supporting all things Doug Wilson, White, Sandlin, Boot, etc. They are the enemy.
5.) Keep in mind that which is driving all of this is different theologies and so different understandings of Christianity. One might think upon reading this post that this is all political and doesn’t have anything to do with religion at all. That would a mistaken reading. Theology drives everything and the differences between Ogden and Moscow are being ultimately driven by considerably different theologies.
A common prophetic interpretation of the “epistles to the churches” in the early part of the Book of Revelation claims that they symbolize different church ages. The “Church of Sardis” would symbolize Protestant churches, born out of Reformation, that are doctrinally good but mostly dead inside.
This could be like a depiction of Protestant churches castrated by Enlightenment philosophy – that yet still have some faithful people in them:
https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/90-476/the-lords-word-to-his-church-sardis
“So many churches like that. This nation and the world is covered with them – dressed up, organized – but the whole congregation is blind and dead. Like the ancient mariner, dead men pull the oars, dead men steer the ship. Listen carefully the next time you pass that kind of church. You may faintly hear the den a lot of weak, sinful, blind dead people grinding; and you remember that Jesus said, “You have a name that you live, but you are dead.”
There is, in verse 4, in verse 4, one little hope. There is nothing to say to commend the church, but there is some hope: “But you have a few people in Sardis who have not soiled their garments, and they will walk with Me in white, for they are worthy.” That describes believers. There were believers in that church, true believers.”