“And just as you want men to do to you, you also do to them likewise.” Luke 6:31
So you go to the doctor because you have XYZ symptoms. They run their battery of tests on you and discover a tumor. Pick your organ — kidney, brain, breast — each one has its own unique downside because there’s not really a good place for an invasive growth. And you’re waiting in the doctor’s office because he hasn’t told you the results yet. He walks in the room and says, “You have a growth in your _______ and we must remove it to determine if it’s malignant.” The doctor’s voice begins to fade out as your heart begins racing. In your mind you’re examining every possibility this could entail, given your limited knowledge — a worst-case scenario and a best-case scenario, and everything in between.
The one thing about these conversations is that the doctor comes off like a textbook — professional and clinical. He’s not there to hold your hand or address the emotional components involved with the hard news. He’s there to identify the problem and give you a plan to remedy it, to the extent it’s possible.
The narrative above is a real long way to set up this discussion: You belong to a church that is slowly poisoning you to death. At present, you have large levels of toxic contamination in your system and, if untreated, your condition is terminal. The symptoms are manifold, but today I want to discuss one in particular: Dehumanization.
You belong to a community that dehumanizes pretty much everyone who disagrees with him — and the community does it because he does it first. He sets the agenda. It’s the first thing that happens to you when you join. You immediately learn who’s in and who’s out. It’s a conditioning process that doesn’t take long because you really don’t have a choice to dispute it. It’s the first unspoken term under which you become a member. Yes, I am aware that no one says it as plainly as I just did, but I am also aware that it’s there — just like that growth in the X-ray.
Test the hypothesis: He says, “Rose Huskey is a member of what I call the local intoleristas. . .” And when he says it he knows he has conditioned you to respond to the word “intolerista.” Whenever you hear it, you automatically think, “That person doesn’t matter. They’re an intolerista. They’re irrelevant.”
He delegitimized Rose Huskey and he has taught you to do the same. This is why neither he nor anyone else in the Kirk or the CREC cares that he lied about her. They dehumanized her. You have dehumanized her. She doesn’t matter. It follows therefore that you can’t really violate the ninth commandment against an intolerista because technically they’re subhuman.
Delegitimisation works hand in hand with dehumanization. They don’t matter because they’re nonhuman. And if you disagree, please show me where I’m wrong. But first you have to explain why that false witness is still on his website and why you haven’t done anything about it — and we both know the reason for that: He’s allowed to delegitimize whomever he wants and he will do it to you if you press the issue. So you stay there, in silence, and the contamination works ruin in your soul.
He dehumanized Natalie, which is the reason he refuses to call it sexual abuse. You can’t really abuse a subhuman. He dehumanized her father in frightening ways — actually wishing death upon him. He dehumanized Katie Travis when he encouraged her to marry the serial pedophile. (In this respect he’s no different than Steven Sitler, who dehumanized his victims. To him those children are not humans, they’re objects of gratification.) He does it all the time and it rubs off on you, hardening you to the tender mercies of the gospel.
Scripture prohibits dehumanization, from Moses to Christ. The Bible doesn’t say, “If you meet your enemy’s ox or his donkey going astray, you shall surely bring it back to him again — unless they’re an intolerista.” (Exodus 23:4) It says, “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” (Matt. 7:12)
This subject deserves much more time to develop, but for now I wanted to put the idea in your head to contemplate. And I want to remark the obvious: If you don’t address that tumor, it will eat you alive.
All of us are known by the company we keep, the values we embrace and live, and the words we speak. Doug Wilson’s low opinion of me is a badge of honor. I pray God’s mercy on those who identify Doug as a friend, mentor, or pastor. In each of these roles he will surely use, fail, or mislead them. There is a long and wretched public record of how former companions including church members and officers, relatives, employees, and educators in his private school systems have been run over (metaphorically speaking) by his little red pickup while he, with a Mephistophelian sneer on his face, drives hell bent for leather on his own private highway (which is not aimed at heaven). Sadly, many more stand by and watch while he demolishes families who wistfully once believed they were immunized against similar treatment.
It is my belief if anyone chooses to work for, associate with, or be lead spiritually by a bully, a nepotistic king maker, and a self-important blowhard (who mistakenly believes that owning a very large library is the equivalent of being a weighty intellectual), they have become a willing cooperator in their own dehumanization. If Rule 1 is park your brain at the front door — Doug does your thinking for you (and it is); it follows that Rule 2 is that if you break Rule 1 you are the human equivalent of a moldy three week old casserole hidden far back in the refrigerator. Don’t be stunned when you are tossed in the garbage while the Toadies and their wives pinch their noses closed and stand silently by to watch your public shaming. They’ve learned not to dissent. Every actor and audience member in the drama that Doug creates, except the victim, (who is fully human) is dehumanized.
It is not only a duty but a pleasure to speak out publicly against Doug Wilson and his lickspittle lackeys. The only thing I truly regret and have publicly apologized to him for is my rude lapse in manners by pointing out his roly-poly shape. That was hypocritical on my part; not only because I am similarly fat but because the size of his belly is immaterial. Doug is not an evil man because he is an obese glutton but rather because he is cruel simply because he can be — reminding me of an aging Henry VIII. His adolescent obsession with female bodies is the mental and moral equivalent of a fifteen year old with a foul mouth shooting his trap off in a locker room.
His complete failure to grasp the social, cultural, and legislative history of the antebellum South demonstrates his eagerness to substitute fact for his self-serving Gone With The Wind fiction. It also laid bare his deep hunger to open a lucrative market for the bullshit that resonates with the intellectually thuggish class of neo-confederate racists. He’s no scholar folks, and a perfect example of that is how he responded when his squalid little pamphlet was critiqued. In this instance he wrote to Governor Kempthorne of Idaho to complain about University of Idaho PhD history faculty members who factually challenged his execrable pamphlet Southern Slavery As It Was. Doug backloaded the letter with sensational falsehoods about Kirk businesses being vandalized and three tons of sympathy seeking, whiney rhetoric. To read his letter go to:
The promise I make to Doug Wilson and his followers is simple. I will never stop exposing his lies. Never. Bullies never stop being bullies unless they are called out on their misbehavior. Nepotistic kingmakers will never stop unless they are over thrown (I can’t do that job but if the elders would grow a pair they could). And, it is to be hoped that congregation members will finally recognize the train wreck they are a part of and leave the Kirk and its affiliates. The more they gather their courage and act on it, the easier it is for others to do so. The heroes in this story are the brave souls who paid the price, and there is a high price, and regained control of their spiritual and material lives. Life without Doug and the CREC can be like a glorious springtime after a dark and bitter winter.
Rose Huskey
“In this respect he’s no different than Steven Sitler, who dehumanized his victims. To him those children are not humans, they’re objects of gratification.”
Myself (my comment yesterday under “But when…death”): ” I keep thinking of Doug in terms of him being, in his own way, a serial molester. ‘Serial spiritual molester’ you might say.When it comes down to it he seems like he identifies with Sitler on some level. I’m not saying this lightly at all. And sitting on Jamin Wight’s side and not Natalie’s in court? It’s hard to process how twisted the man is. Where is his empathy? Compassion? It’s all a big power trip. I’m just trying to work through it all some more right now. Dude is seriously freaking me out. I’m not naïve about human depravity. But he’s so sick. :(”
I was attached for a bit to a cult that definitely took pages from Doug’s playbook. And got the shunning treatment after I left *on friendly terms* (*at the time*)! Soon enough I was very publicly lied about in a seriously vicious deceitful way.
“You belong to a community that dehumanizes pretty much everyone who disagrees with him — and the community does it because he does it first. He sets the agenda. ” Yyyyyyyyup. Been there. Smugly went along with it while I was part of the gang. 🙁 So my intensity vis a vis Doug and his garbage has roots in intense personal experience. And I’m clearly not alone in that from what I’ve read here and elsewhere. Doug and his ilk (which rhymes with “Sow’s ear not silk” PLEASE WAKE UP KIRKERS) leave a trail of spiritual PTSD and love it. Doug seems to picture himself on a white horse with a sword…no, blade with a nice Serrated Edge coming out of his mouth. “Vengeance is mine” saith the LOOK-AT-ME Lout. Those who try to expose the evil of these arrogant vindictive trolls are mud to be trampled beneath their feet. The messy antics of Doug’s Messianic pretensions…UGH!!
I no doubt have serious differences of belief with a number of people who are calling out Doug and company. But we’re all human. Fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of God. Including those who hate and deny God in an overt manner. And yeah, Doug’s human too. As human as those the Bible calls “dogs” or “serpents” or “whitewashed tombs” etc. So don’t expect me to think we mustn’t use the kind of language I’m using Wilsonistas reading this.
The Nazis used to refer to Jews as vermin and parasites — in other words, as non-humans. Doug is a little more subtle than that, but you are correct, he has dehumanized people, and his congregation has imitated his example because sheep follow their shepherd.
Such a powerful post and equally powerful responses. I wonder how many Kirkers read here and are trying to work up the courage to leave?
I kinda sorta know a Kirker (via the net over the years). A likable, intelligent, talented, personable woman. She nearly joined the cult I escaped but settled for a non-Doug CREC church at the last minute. It so pains me that she later joined Dougtopia. If she’s reading this please please please think again _______.