Lots of new readers — Welcome to the website

We have lots of new readers — welcome to the website. We do not have an About page yet. It’s been on the honey-do list since September. But we do have a few questions:

  • Has Pastor Douglas Wilson of Christ Church, Moscow, told anyone how he obtained the performance art videos that he hoped would end one half of his sex-abuse controversy?
  • Did he hire a private detective? If so, what instructions did he give him?
  • How much did he pay? Did the Kirk foot the bill?
  • Or did he deploy Darren Doan and other kirkers to dig for dirt?
  • Does Mr. Wilson normally use kirkers in this capacity?
  • Do the Kirk elders approve of this? Is muckraking a normal element of his pastoral ministry?
  • Does he teach a course in opposition research at Greyfriars’ Hall?

These are fair questions that kirkers and others should ask.

And here are two helpful posts by other bloggers for those still stunned by Jezehellsbells:

“Winning by warping” by Katie Botkin
Ms. Botkin breaks down Mr. Wilson’s arguments. She notes some of his factual errors and she links to this video, which is called “Ask Doug: Nudity in art”; apparently Mr. Wilson’s has not always objected to nudity in art. In fact, “Doug didn’t actually have a problem with Wesley until . . . until . . . . Until Wesley’s wife began to speak out against the way she and her family were treated by Doug ten years ago.”

“There Are Lots of Good Fish in the Sea — Red Herrings” by @KirkCicero
The red herring fallacy of misdirection: Doug Wilson mishandled two sex-abuse cases in the Kirk, so he wants to talk about unrelated videos. However, unlike the typical red herring, this fallacy has teeth — it bites. In this respect it’s probably closer to a African tiger fish, in which case we may say that Mr. Wilson has spawned a new fallacy — the red piranha. It’s a red herring combined with an abusive ad hominem.

21 Comments

  1. I love this quote in the “Red Herrings” post:

    “New Saint Andrews takes a vehement stance against a residential campus, choosing to have students live with families in the Moscow, Idaho, area. Dorms, the college argues, “breed immaturity, immorality and irresponsibility,” and were originally intended to foster socialism.”

    So they stay with families instead, and we get the Wight and Sitler tragedies. Oh well, we can at least hope Wight and Sitler were able to avoid socialism.

    1. Well, in Wilsonland, pedophiles can marry adults and be cured of their pedophilia. Marxists cannot marry capitalists and be cured of their socialism. Obviously.

    2. Right. It’s amusing to see Wilson play dumb on this issue, as though the housing situation just happens to be what it is all by itself. It reminds me of Aaron: “The people made me put in their gold, and this calf came out.”

    3. He does that all the time. Recently it came to light that Christ Church had stacked the Co-op’s board of directors with three kirkers. The Daily News did an editorial on it and the local radio station asked DW for a comment. You should have heard him dissemble. He pretended it was a big misunderstanding and that the three kirkers on the board was just a coincidence.

    4. Moscow Food Co-op. Wilson wanted to take it over; reset their policy on serving homosexuals; force a fight with the world on a Christian’s right not to do business with those they oppose.

  2. I would like to once again state for the record that, based on the photos of the CREC inquiry committee, I seriously question the mental capacity of its individual members for detailed investigation or critical thought. In fact, I question whether or not any of them are capable of dressing themselves unaided, or tying their own shoes.

  3. According to Doug Wilson’s Thanksgiving 2015 post

    “… Throw in my dad, 6 dearly-loved shirt-tail relatives, and our three boarders and you have a roster of 35 [for Thanksgiving dinner].” The uninformed reader learns that Doug has three boarders. Since the inauguration of NSA he has always had boarders. The reason that that these students live in his home, and the homes of “approved” Kirk families is to augment family income. This money serves several purposes. Wives can become money producers without leaving the home; Kirk families can afford large homes in desirable neighborhoods; and most importantly, Doug has a financial hold on the family income. It is not an original idea;it is lifted straight out of his brother Evan’s success in establishing a Christian boarding house called The Big Haus. If, God forbid, Kirk boarding house owners wish to leave Christ Church they would also lose a significant portion of annual income. With Doug, money equals control. If NSA was able to produce the necessary income Doug would have an epiphany and dorms (similar to those of Oxford with house masters and other British affectations) would suddenly be sprinkled over a cathedral close style arrangement.

    1. This is very interesting, Rose. Does this mean that those women leaving “testimonies to Doug” on the womenfreed website may actually be dependent on him for at least a portion of their families income?

    2. The women leaving testimonies to Doug may not even exist. They’re anonymous. They could be written by anyone: male or female, young or old, abused or not, elder or ghostwriter. But even if they exist and Doug did help them, it’s just another red herring– look at something good Doug did so you don’t look at his abuse of Natalie, or his defense of Sitler and Wight, or his lies to cover it up.

    3. I have no idea what connection the anonymous women who purportedly were helped by Doug et al have to gain from writing narratives of their recovery from the trauma of sexual abuse. I certainly hope that they were not “treated” and I use that word with as much irony as can be attached to it by Mike Lawyer and his crackpot Counseling In A Week scam. It is my fondest wish that that place and its half-assed, ill-trained, ignorant “counselors” would be permanently closed before they do further damage to anyone. The grandiose thinking behind the one week training program is distinctly akin to thinking that snake handling Pentecostals are admirable examples of holy men.

    4. Frank, at least some of those testimonies are real. I know this with certainty. I don’t think Doug’s counseling has been as great for them as they think, but I would like to show respect to them anyway.

      And since it’s a red herring, it really doesn’t require any refutation.

  4. “Moscow Food Co-op. Wilson wanted to take it over; reset their policy on serving homosexuals; force a fight with the world on a Christian’s right not to do business with those they oppose.”

    In spite of every shocking thing that I’ve read about Doug Wilson, the Kirk, CREC, I’m completely gobsmacked. He wants to get all up in the business of a FOOD CO-OP, and institute everything that is the antithesis of what a food co-op stands for? He wants his finger in EVERY PIE in this community. Scary, at least for Moscovites. Sounds like he’s going for total takeover.

    1. “Total takeover” is not far off the mark. Several years ago, and I’m paraphrasing, not having the actual quote handy, Wilson was talking about “feasible, strategic” locations for launching the “culture wars”. He named a small town a few miles from Moscow, labeled it as “feasible”, but not “strategic”, and NYC as “strategic”, but not “feasible”. But Moscow, Idaho and Pullman, Washington, being just seven miles apart and both with large research universities (University of Idaho and Washington State University) made for (makes for) an ideal “strategic, feasible location” for his empire. Rose may know more about that, and be able to flesh it out more. I do believe he was asked about this by the local paper in the recent past, and he came up with some cockamamie rationale, saying his words were “misunderstood”. Or something lke that.

    2. @CNW: very close:

      In the 60s, my father wrote a small but enormously influential book called The Principles of War. In it, he applied the principles of physical warfare to what he called strategic evangelism. This idea of warfare is necessary in order to understand a central part of what is happening here, and by this I mean the concept of the decisive point. A decisive point is one which is simultaneously strategic and feasible. Strategic means that it would be a significant loss to the enemy if taken. Feasible means that it is possible to take. New York City is strategic but not feasible. Bovill is feasible but not strategic. But small towns with major universities (Moscow and Pullman, say) are both. (“The State of the Church 2003”)

    1. Methinks the proposed takeover intended to correct that by adding it to the roster of Wilson organizations.

    2. Something like EMSI which functions as a Kirk hiring agency — although to be fair not everyone there attends or attended New Saint Andrews College (as used to be the case) — where they learned absolutely nothing about economics.

  5. Boy, DW is beginning to sound more and more like Jim Jones to me. He wants Moscow, Idaho to be his Jonestown….er….Wilsontown.

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