In keeping with the CREC Constitution and our regular church order, the session of Christ Church, Moscow, ID, has invited the presiding ministers of each presbytery to inquire into the pastoral care and counseling ministry of Christ Church, with particular regard to their handling of sexual abuse cases, not excluding the two cases that have been the subject of some recent controversy. Randy Booth

We have considered how Pastor Douglas Wilson of Christ Church, Moscow, has rigged the so-called CREC inquiry “into the pastoral care and counseling ministry of Christ Church,” by limiting the scope of the inquiry in three ways:

1. The commissioners are charged to answer only two questions.
2. The commissioners may only interview Christ Church officers and staff members.
3. The commissioners may only review Christ Church documentation.

Neither the CREC Constitution nor the CREC announcement authorizes the inquiry committee to enlarge the scope of its inquiry beyond these three boundaries. To do so would give the Kirk elders cause of action to dismiss the committee’s findings as unconstitutional.

But when I wrote the post On the CREC Inquiry, I completely missed the most egregious circumstance of all — namely, who appointed the committee. Read it: “the session of Christ Church, Moscow, ID, has invited the presiding ministers of each presbytery to inquire into. . .” The Kirk elders appointed the committee to conduct the inquiry, and they did this before Mr. Wilson recused himself as the CREC Presiding Minister. In other words, Mr. Wilson appointed the men to the committee whom he charged with inquiring into his pastoral ministry and he did this as his final act as the Presiding Minister of the CREC.

Apply this standard to Pete Rose. Imagine if MLB allowed him to appoint a committee to decide if MLB should remove his ban from the Hall of Fame. And not just appoint the commissioners but also determine in advance what questions they may ask, what persons they may interview, and what records they may review. Would anyone bet against Pete Rose’s chances of making it into Cooperstown? Of course not, because he who controls the inquiry controls the finding. Doug Wagging 101.

Mr. Wilson’s Double Standard
In 2006 the 34^th PCA General Assembly appointed a seven-man committee to study the system of theology called the Federal Vision and present its findings to the church. This decision did not please Mr. Wilson because, he claimed, the PCA failed to meet Mr. Wilson’s procedural requirement. In his opinion, the PCA appointed only FV critics to the commission and therefore they “stacked” the committee:

In the same spirit, I continue to express concern about the stacked nature of the FV study committee that Sean Lucas served on. If every member of that committee had publicly rejected the FV in a gentlemanly way, it would still be a procedural problem of the first order to assign nothing but gentlemanly critics to the committee. A committee can be stacked without being snarky, and at the end of the day, injustice is still done. And so that remains a central concern of mine. (A Stacked Committee?)

Please note that according to Mr. Wilson’s written standard, the PCA committed an act of “injustice” when they did not appoint Federal Vision sympathizers to the committee. Please also note that Mr. Wilson was not a witness to how this committee conducted its study. He was an observer. Moreover, he had no ecclesiastical ties to the PCA when he wrote this; he had never been a member of a PCA church; and he had never submitted to its ecclesiastical authority. But he still insisted they did an injustice to him and his FV friends. And he didn’t say it just once — he piled on, writing five blog posts to condemn and ridicule the PCA’s stacked committee:

• A Stacked Committee?
• Greasing the Skids with an Holy Unction
• As Stacked As . . .
• Scotch, Hotch, and Potch

Mr. Wilson appointed himself the investigator, judge, prosecutor, and one-man jury in the matter of this so-called “stacked committee.” Who could disagree with him? His findings were absolute. His “central concern” was the injustice of it all. And his righteous indignation corresponded with his central concern, which explains why he threw his ad hominem machine into high gear. The whole world must know how the PCA stacked its committee.

However, when Pastor Doug Wilson of Christ Church, Moscow, had the opportunity to ensure justice in the matter of the CREC inquiry, he did not. Instead of appointing an independent person to chair the committee, someone such as Boz Tchividjian who could then appoint six independent persons to conduct an inquiry with him, Mr. Wilson appointed seven hardcore CREC loyalists. And then he recused himself. In other words, he stacked the committee.

Finally, to remove any doubts about the ultimate conclusion of this inquiry, Mr. Wilson recently telegraphed his position, writing, “Jesus tells us that when we are struck on one cheek, we are to turn the other. The apostle Paul teaches us to punch back twice as hard.” So the victims may take comfort knowing it was never about justice. It’s about retribution.