“The first thing we did was place Jamin under oath, and when he was under oath before God, we asked him if the written confession he had provided to the Greenfields some months ago was a true and accurate account. He replied that it was. . .” Douglas Wilson

We have seen that on August 15, 2005, Pastor Doug Wilson of Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, called a meeting to address Jamin Wight’s crimes against a fellow kirker. Gary & Pat Greenfield, Dr. Peter Leithart, Douglas Wilson, and Jamin Wight attended this meeting, which lasted two hours (10 AM–12 noon). The public record does not contain minutes for the meeting or a agenda of things discussed. We know of only one outcome: Jamin Wight swore an oath that his written confession of guilt was “true & accurate” and that he would pay the legal consequences for his illegal activities. Three hours after the meeting ended Natalie Greenfield filed a criminal complaint against Mr. Wight with the Moscow Police Department.

The historical fact that this meeting occurred may have never come to light, if not for Natalie’s police report. She cited Jamin Wight’s sworn confession of guilt as proof that Mr. Wight committed crimes against her. However, last week we saw that Doug Wilson ignores Mr. Wight’s “oath before God” whenever he discusses Mr. Wight’s illegal conduct. More specifically, Doug Wilson has framed a narrative that omits the most important legal & historical fact of the ordeal — Jamin Wight’s sworn confession of guilt, which he volunteered in the presence of his two pastors and the victim’s parents.

Douglas Wilson’s revised account of events raises the question, Why did he put Jamin Wight under “oath before God” in the first place? To my knowledge Mr. Wilson has not accounted for this. He described the point of the meeting to the MPD: “determine what needed to be done”:

On Monday, August 15, Pastor Peter Leithart of Trinity Reformed and I met together with Gary and Pat Greenfield and Jamin Wight to discuss the situation, address any aspects of the situation that we were able to address, and determine what needed to be done. (Douglas Wilson, Letter to Officer Green, August 22, 2005, page 1)

However, he did not state what he determined “needed to be done,” though based on his post-meeting behavior he concluded that nothing needed to be done. Still, this does not explain the point of the oath.

We can rule out the possibility that he hoped the oath would expedite justice, because he did not report Mr. Wight to the MPD after he heard the 28-year-old man swear that he committed multiple felonies. To be sure, this event marked the second time in six months that Doug Wilson failed to notify the police after he learned that a Kirk rapist had perpetrated unthinkable acts against Kirk children: On March 10, 2005, Mr. Wilson learned that serial pedophile Steven Sitler had molested Christ Church children — yet he waited 24 hours before he encouraged the victims’ parents to report the child molester. And on August 15, 2005, Mr. Wilson witnessed Jamin Wight confess that he committed lewd & lascivious acts against Natalie Greenfield — but he did nothing.

Presumably Doug Wilson was not too busy to report Jamin Wight to the MPD, because he did find time to post three blog entries to his personal website on August 15, 2005: He promoted two of his books in two separate posts, and he wrote third post defending himself against charges of racism. Ironically, one of the books he plugged that day was Black & Tan, which is his revised defense of race-based chattel slavery in the antebellum south. (Link here, scroll to the three posts dated August 15.) This demonstrates where Mr. Wilson’s priorities lied but does not explain why he put Jamin Wight under oath.

The official Kirk timeline of events does not indicate that Doug Wilson bothered to call Natalie after he heard Jamin Wight swear that he sexually abused her. This is noteworthy because Natalie was a kirker in good standing; she was the victim of these violent crimes; and generally speaking most pastors care for the wounded sheep in their charge. So we know that Doug Wilson didn’t place Mr. Wight “under oath before God” out of concern for Natalie.

This point becomes clearer when you remember the subject of Jamin Wight’s sworn oath. Douglas Wilson performed this rite to specifically ask Mr. Wight if his written confession was “true & accurate.” However, Mr. Wilson never granted Natalie this consideration. That is, he never asked her to swear that the private diaries she kept as a 14-year-old girl were “true & accurate.” Granted, this would be an optics nightmare but bad optics hasn’t stopped him from citing them like Moses’ Tablets of Stone. So as before, this underscores Doug Wilson’s disregard for Natalie but it does not explain why he put Jamin Wight under oath.

We can eliminate the possibility that love for God’s law moved Douglas Wilson to place Jamin Wight “under oath before God.” On August 19, 2005, just four days after Mr. Wight swore his oath, Mr. Wilson wrote a letter to Judge Stegner in which he communicated his “urge that the civil penalties applied would be measured and limited.” This for an unrepentant serial pedophile who leveraged the State by trading confessions for a plea bargain. Biblical precepts did not burden Doug Wilson that week.

Finally, in his letter to the MPD, Douglas Wilson affirmed the State’s jurisdiction in this criminal matter and simultaneously denied the church’s jurisdiction:

One of the members of our congregation was guilty of a criminal offense against another member, and the church does not have the authority to settle such issues in the way we would if it were a mere personal or civil dispute (1 Cor. 6:1–8). On this basis, I am more than willing to state what I know, and to answer any further questions you may have for me. . . . (Douglas Wilson, Letter to Officer Green, page 1)

However, reconciling Doug Wilson’s act of administering the oath with his conduct afterwards creates jurisdictional difficulties. He put a man under oath despite claiming he did not have lawful jurisdiction. And after hearing Mr. Wight swear he perpetrated felonies, Doug Wilson did not report the criminal to the proper jurisdictional authority. Tough to reconcile this.

But as the title says, this is a post without answers. We have many different reasons why Douglas Wilson did not interrogate Jamin Wight “under oath before God,” but we do not know the reason why he did. Given his behavior, it’s as though he intended the oath to serve no purpose at all, which I do not believe for a moment. It’s more likely that Natalie ruined Doug Wilson’s plans when she went to the police. And it’s even more likely that Doug Wilson administered the “oath before God” with the same sincerity that Doug Wilson actually believes in God.

None at all.