I don’t know what the deal is with World magazine, but the most recent issue has gummed something up again. Just before a very good summary of an article that I co-wrote with Doug Jones (“Owning the Curse”), Gene Veith destroys the value of that accurate summary by his introduction to it, which goes like this: “Douglas Wilson offers another argument for legalizing gay marriage, predicated not on the morality of the homosexual activity but on its immorality.”
On the upside, the column does make it clear that I believe homosexual acts to be immoral, contrary to the nature of God, and consequently against the law of God. But on the downside, it represents me as arguing for the legalization of homosexual marriage. Of course never in my life have I dreamed of advancing an argument for legalizing homosexual marriage. I am not for legalizing homosexual marriage. I am opposed to it. Being opposed to it as I am, I ask myself, “what is the most effective way to keep this from happening, or to lift the curse from us if it happens?” The point of our article was that if American Christians want the nation to repent, then American Christians need to show the nation how it is done. But of course the concept that God might be chastizing us is beyond the ken of the modern evangelical. “Us? Have a problem?”
Arguing that the abomination of legalized homosexual marriage is a curse from the hand of God, and arguing that it is something that we should legalize are two completely different arguments, representing two completely different worldviews. This is not a difficult distinction. As a prophet of God Jeremiah argued that the Babylonian invasion was a judgment of God, and that the Israelites should simply take it as being from His hand, and use the time as an occasion for repentance. And in that repentance they were to look for deliverance. This hardly made Jeremiah a colonel in the Babylonian Tank Corps.
Inability to grasp this kind of simple distinction is a demonstration of the kind of thing that happens when evangelical Christians allow themselves to be suckered into big tent Republican politics, which I believe began happening to World some time ago. You cannot do that kind of thing — adopting the kind of political strategy that World has, and accepting the kind of puff-political advertisements that World accepts — and keep your prophetic voice.