Introduction
Last week we taped an episode of Man Rampant for our upcoming season, and the interview was with Larry Sanger, the man who initially built out Wikipedia. He has done quite a number of other things since those early years, some of which activities have recently gotten him banned as an editor at Wikipedia. One of his recent projects is called WikiCritic, and by the time our Man Rampant episode airs, his site should be up and running. I will let you know.
The review below will fit into that project, and how it works should become apparent when the time comes.
What I Think of What They Think of Me
In a Wikipedia article, it is hard to get everything wrong. In this case, they spelled my name right, got my birth year correct, along with the correct name of my church. So if I don’t say something about what they wrote, that means that it is either correct, or incorrect at levels that make it a mere bagatelle, not worth mentioning.
The things I do need to mention are the things they get wrong. Here is the first big one.
“Wilson, a self-described “paleo-Confederate”, first garnered extensive media coverage in 2004, when he held a conference which publicized his controversial stance on American slavery.”
Wikipedia, on Douglas Wilson
So let me tell you that story. This was the era when we used to hold an annual history conference in February, and that year we were holding the conference at the Student Union at the University of Idaho. The theme of the conference was on Revolution—you know, history conference, Robespierre, communism, etc. It was not a conference on slavery. And one of the outside speakers at the conference was Steve Wilkins.
In the meantime, some of our NSA students were doing some evangelistic outreach at the University of Idaho, and had started attending the Gay/Straight Alliance. They were not being disruptive, wanted to befriend the students there, and so forth. Some of the students there were cool with it, but others were furious. The fury was translated into what I believe is called “direct action.” That action took some inflammatory quotes from Southern Slavery as It Was, a booklet which Steve Wilkins and I had co-written, put them on posters, and plastered downtown Moscow with them. The idea that they successfully created was that the conference was dedicated to defending slavery, which it wasn’t.
There was naturally a tumult, to the extent that the Associated Press picked the story up, which unlocked all the cages in the entire monkey house. So no—I did not hold a conference which publicized my controversial views on slavery. That publicity came from our disingenuous adversaries, who successfully suckered the Associated Press—not that this was all that hard.
My actual views on slavery are to be found in my book Black and Tan, and in my forthcoming commentary on Philemon. That commentary is entitled Slow Abolition: Paul’s Letter to a Slave Master. But regardless, my views on slavery, whatever they are, were not the theme of our history conference.
“His father [Jim Wilson] moved to the Moscow, Idaho, area after retiring from the Navy . . .
Wikipedia, on Douglas Wilson
My father had graduated from the Naval Academy in 1950, served through the entire Korean War, but then resigned his commission when his stint was completed. “Retiring” makes it sound like he had served a full twenty years when he had actually left the Navy decades before he moved to Idaho.
“He [DW] graduated from the University of Idaho, where he met his wife to be, Nancy, whom he married in 1975.”
Wikipedia, on Douglas Wilson
I did graduate from the UI, and I did get married in 1975. But I met Nancy the year before I got out of the Navy when I was home on leave. She had already graduated, and was coming to work at Crossroads Bookstore, an evangelistic bookstore run by my father. So we did not meet at the UI.
This next bit is quite jumbled, so bear with me.
“In 1977, Wilson began preaching at an Evangelical Free Church plant in Pullman, Washington, where he espoused a Baptist theological framework inspired by the charismatic Jesus People movement. He would eventually move the congregation to nearby Moscow, where it became Christ Church.”
Wikipedia, on Douglas Wilson
Simply put, no. The EFree church in Pullman was an already established church. Somewhere around 1973, when I was still off in the Navy, they lost their pastor, and asked my father, Jim Wilson, to fill the pulpit while they looked for a new guy. It was a small church, around 19 members. My dad began preaching there, and the congregation grew to hundreds. That growth was fueled in part by the Jesus movement. Around 30 people from Moscow were driving over to Pullman to attend church there, including my future wife Nancy. A decision was made for the EFree church to plant a church in Moscow, and the organizational meeting for that step took place in August of 1975, right after I got home from the Navy. The name change to Christ Church didn’t happen for another 25 years or so after that. And I didn’t start preaching in the church plant for another year or more.
“Logos Academy, one of the first schools associated with the classical Christian education movement, was founded in 1981.”
Wikipedia, on Douglas Wilson
The name of the school is not Logos Academy, but rather Logos School. This is a small detail, but it serves to show that the people who are contributing to the article are not all that familiar with their subject.
“Wilson came to national prominence after organizing a conference at the University of Idaho in early 2004, for which the promotional material included Wilson’s tract Southern Slavery as it Was.”
Wikipedia, on Douglas Wilson
See above. We did not promote the conference that way at all. The defamatory and slanderous “promotion” was being conducted by certain mendacious others, and their tools at the AP.
Then there is one section entitled Theology, and the statements made there are more or less accurate, except for the fact that they are tossed into sort of a jumbled pile. It is a junk drawer collection of observations, the first being an intro, and then seven paragraphs covering subjects like apologetics, eschatology, covenant theology—with side comments about the New Perspective on Paul and the declaration of Microbrew Presbytery that I am a heretic—biblical patriarchy, Christian nationalism, a little bit of Euro-hate, topped off with the observation that I am a vocal opponent of antisemitism. All true, okay, but the portrait is still stiff and disjointed. And my nose does not look like that.
Of course such an article could not exist without a section on Southern slavery. There were two glaring problems in this section, both of them sins of omission. The first of them can be seen in the condemnation of my views as delivered by professional historians. To wit:
“Some historians, such as Peter H. Wood, Clayborne Carson, and Ira Berlin, condemned the pamphlet’s arguments, with Wood calling them “as spurious as Holocaust denial“
Wikipedia, on Douglas Wilson
The sin of omission here is that there are historians on both sides of this question. They failed to quote Eugene Genovese, a renowned historian who won the Bancroft Prize in 1975 for Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made. In short, he was a recognized expert on that era of American history. Dr. Genovese was kind enough to read through the manuscript of Black & Tan, my follow-up book on the issues of slavery and the Confederacy. And here’s what he said about it:
“The Reverend Douglas Wilson may not be a professional historian, as his detractors say, but he has a strong grasp of the essentials of the history of slavery and its relation to Christian doctrine. Indeed, sad to say, his grasp is a great deal stronger than that of most professors of American history, whose distortions and trivializations disgrace our college classrooms. And the Reverend Mr. Wilson is a fighter, especially effective in defense of Christianity against those who try to turn Jesus’ way of salvation into pseudo-moralistic drivel.”
Eugene Genovese, blurb for Black & Tan
And speaking of Black & Tan, that brings up the other sin of omission. A very brief mention of that book is made near the end of this section on slavery, but Black & Tan really is a comprehensive statement of my views on the subject. A reasonable review of the slavery controversy would really need to engage with the arguments of that book, and this article did nothing of the kind. This article and my book length arguments passed each other like a couple of Trappist monks in the corridor.
“Wilson held a conference at the University of Idaho in 2004 for those who supported his ideas. The university published a disclaimer distancing itself from the event, and numerous anti-conference protests took place.”
Wikipedia, on Douglas Wilson
Sigh. See above. The conference was not about sl . . . etc,
One last thing:
“The Southern Poverty Law Center connects Wilson’s views to the neo-Confederate and Christian Reconstruction movements influenced by R. J. Rushdoony, concluding, “Wilson’s theology is in most ways indistinguishable from basic tenets of [Christian] Reconstruction.”
Wikipedia, on Douglas Wilson
The Southern Poverty Law Center? Really? We are still citing those guys? This was frankly an unexpected threat from an unexpected quarter, one that I must take quite seriously.
So I need to state—as firmly as I possibly can—that I am not receiving any monies from the SPLC to circulate my views on these topics, nor have I ever received any payments from them. I do all this for free.