On Madness and Doug Wilson

[[Periodically, we get the opportunity to share thoughts from those in our community. This article comes from Jeremiah Forshey, and we believe it to be essential reading. The "madness" of Wilson will soon become the madness of us all unless we organize, and our leaders take action. Enjoy.]]

G. K. Chesterton begins his great work of apologetics, Orthodoxy, by saying that since his audience doubted the doctrine of human sinfulness, he would instead begin from an observable problem they could agree on: madness. That is, since we don’t all agree on the theological point, but we all know that some people lose their minds and that is a bad thing, let’s start from there.

I advise a similar approach to Doug Wilson.

Wilson has spent his life building intricate theological towers. To the outside observer the structures are clearly unsound--crooked and impossible things not made for human habitation. But to Wilson and his followers, everything follows with ironclad logical necessity, and everything depends on everything else. 

Wilson wrote a middle school logic textbook for the Christian school movement he founded, and he approaches the world with a middle school logic mindset. In his own mind, he has started from true premises (because they come, he says, directly from Scripture); he has proceeded (he says) without logical error; and thus he has arrived at necessarily true conclusions. He has built what he calls “the Christian worldview,” and inhabits the small but perfect circle where this system of thought he’s built explains everything for him and his followers.

That’s all very abstract. Let’s look at a clarifying example.In 1996 Wilson wrote a pro-slavery pamphlet, “Southern Slavery As It Was,” in which he argues “the Bible permits Christians to own slaves.” He concedes American slavery was imperfect because there were some abuses (“rare and infrequent” from a “very small minority”), but he holds that by and large “slavery in the South was a biblical slavery” and “There has never been a multi-racial society which has existed with such mutual intimacy and harmony in the history of the world.” In contrast the abolitionists were “driven by a zealous hatred of the Word of God.” 

This is, of course, exceedingly stupid and wrong. But why does Wilson go out on a limb to defend slavery in 1996? What’s the point? 

In that pamphlet, Wilson has a section titled “So Why Are We Writing About This?”.His answer is telling. He says that in order for evangelicals to use the Bible as the moral standard in their culture wars -- he mentions abortion, “sodomites … with foul sexual habits,” and “feminists … invert[ing] the order of the home established by God” -- they had to proclaim without embarrassment the morals of the Bible, which includes accepting slavery as right. 

In other words, for Wilson it all hangs together or all falls apart. He writes not because he is trying to bring back slavery, but to defend the notion that his radical fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible (his “Christian worldview”) should be the blueprint for morals and laws in America. He instructs his followers on how to defend it at its weakest point, because he realizes that if you question his fundamentalist worldview on any one point, you pull out an essential block and his whole precarious tower will topple. 

It’s for that reason that there is no arguing a fundamentalist cleric out of fundamentalism, whether his name is Doug Wilson or Ayatollah Khomeini. They live in those towers, which means they know them very well. They have an answer for any objection you might raise that is sufficient to themselves and their followers. It also means they cannot admit error because everything is at stake for them. That is why Wilson to this day defends his abhorrent pamphlet on slavery. He may add a few nuances, but he will retract nothing, because if he’s wrong on any one point, his tower collapses.

So rather than engage Wilson or his supporters in the finer points of theological debate, this is why I advise Chesterton’s approach. Chesterton sees madness as a small but perfect circle, a narrow internal consistency that is disconnected from reality. It is air-tight, which means it admits no healthy breeze and people suffocate inside it.

There is no greater evidence of the madness of Doug Wilson -- of his complete disconnection from moral reality and fixation on arguments he finds so convincing -- than the abuse that his “Christian worldview” enables and condones. 

• Despite his arguments about good versus bad treatment, Wilson condones enslavement, a fundamentally abusive system. This isn’t just a quixotic historical take. Wilson believes that people can thrive enslaved within a patriarchy. He wrote, “Because of its predominantly patriarchal character, [slavery] was a relationship based upon mutual affection and confidence.” If he can believe it about enslaved people who left a scorching record of their abuse within that system, he will believe it about the women and children in his circles of influence, no matter what they say about their experience.   

• He heaps verbal abuse on his culture war opponents, regularly using vile and demeaning language for women and LGBTQ+ people. Wilson argues that this verbal abuse is “biblical satire” that cuts with a “serrated edge.” Christian Nationalists use his arguments and example to justify the torrents of verbal abuse they deploy online.  

• His parenting advice enables child abuse. He advises parents that children and babies are “little bundles of sin,” that “the sinful heart needs a jack hammer not a feather duster,” that failing to hit your children is evidence that you’re not a real Christian and is actually the real child abuse, that sometimes children want to be hit so they can feel clean again. Despite his hedging words about calm discipline, fundamentalist parents use his arguments to justify prolonged sessions of intense physical abuse, made worse by twisted spiritual and psychological elements. 

• Similarly, although he says that he does not approve of “marital spanking,” fundamentalist men use his arguments about male headship and female submission to justify hitting their wives. His disavowals are, in fact, evidence that the debate exists in his circles of influence. Tia Levings, author of A Well-Trained Wife, understands well the effect of his words: “Doug Wilson does not ever come out on the page and say that husbands should spank their wives, but he says all of the supporting things that would get you there.”

• On at least three occasions, a child was sexually abused at Wilson’s church or school, and his response to that abuse has been truly horrendous. 

  
  

That last point deserves more attention. Perhaps the most damning incident, and the most relevant to my argument, is the case of Steven Sitler.

Sitler, who attended Wilson’s church and was a student at his Classical Christian college, was charged with several counts of child molestation. State therapists labelled him a “fixated pedophile” who had a high risk to re-offend. But Doug Wilson, dismissive of “secular counsellors" (they do not begin from “biblical presuppositions” like he does) and confident in what his “biblical worldview” says about repentance, wrote a letter to the judge asking for leniency since he was counseling Sitler. After serving only one year, Sitler was released on probation. And Doug Wilson, confident in what his “biblical worldview” says about married sex as a tool for controlling lust, encouraged and officiated a wedding between Sitler and a 23-year-old graduate of his college. As predicted by the “secular counsellors,” Sitler molested their infant son.

In the face of public outcry about this horrific abuse made possible by his involvement, Wilson said, “to be really clear about this — I conducted the wedding and would do so again next week.” He again dismissed the judgment of professionals that Sitler was a fixated pedophile and asserted his “biblical worldview” that repentance and marriage must remain open in such cases. In response to the condemnation, he wrote in his blog that he was exceedingly glad to be persecuted for righteousness’ sake.

Here is what we must understand. Even when he’s defending enslavement, even when he’s justifying enabling a pedophile, Doug Wilson has “biblical arguments” for why everything he says or does is right. Engaging with those is as much a waste of time as trying to convince someone that they aren’t actually the second incarnation of Jesus Christ. Instead, take Chesterton’s approach. A worldview that condones and enables abuse is false. It should be rejected out of hand. 

If you feel trapped within those spaces, you don’t need to counter their arguments. You don’t need to fix their twisted towers. You can just leave them. Like Jesus says, you will know false prophets by their fruit, and thistles don’t grow on grape vines.