I have thoughts a plenty about the splash that Rory made, and so I am just going put them down in the order that they occur to me, with perhaps some arrangement after the fact. The transitions between paragraphs may seem somewhat abrupt, and so if it seems that way to you, just say, “Ah, he has decided to write aphoristically this morning.” Which is fair enough.
This will get filled out a bit more as we go along, but this is what a “lone bulwark” actually looks like. Someone standing courageously against a surging mob, defending something that honestly does not deserve to be defended, but standing firm anyhow. More on this shortly.
Masked bullies appear to have a thing about Rory. Back during the COVID hysterics here in Moscow, he was charged for protesting the illegal arrest of some of our church members at a psalm sing, and that case is now before the Idaho Court of Appeals. If you are not up to speed on all of those festivities, you can go here, and then follow the Stickergate tabs. And now, a few years later, when Rory does his home town and his home state proud by standing up to a different set of masked bullies, we find that Idaho officialdom is nevertheless engaged in continuing to pursue the most cockamamie prosecution I ever heard tell of.
Some of the online reactions to this episode on the right were . . . surprising. It is quite true that Columbia is crammed full of leftists, and that the mobs outside are crammed full of hard leftists, and so the thought occurs to some conservatives about whether we shouldn’t just let them devour one another. And there are times and places when that could be the appropriate sentiment—to repurpose Kissinger’s comment about the Iran/Iraq war, “It is a pity both sides can’t lose.” But in a situation like this one, Rory was not defending leftism, or liberal hypocrisies, but rather defending the rule of law.
In a disintegrating culture, which ours most certainly is, this is what it means to be a lone bulwark in real time.
Now if you wonder why I keep using that phrase, here is the reason. After Canon Press published Stephen Wolfe’s book, The Case for Christian Nationalism, Stephen tweeted that white evangelicals were the lone bulwark against moral insanity in America. Canon tweeted in response that this was “dumb,” not objecting to the demographic truth of it, but rather to the implied credit accruing to the whiteness. And then a few months ago, Stephen wondered aloud if Canon should reconsider our objection to the “fourteen words,” to which I replied with a counter offer. We would be happy to sign off on something like “Zionist dispensationalists are the lone bulwark against moral insanity in America.” As demography goes, it is every bit as true, but the implied credit would then go to a place that neither Stephen nor I share.
It would be additionally fitting because almost all Zionist dispensationalists have mounted that lone bulwark in order to defend the moral order of the West, while at the same time tens of millions of white people voted for Obama twice, Hillary once, Biden once, and are gearing up to vote for Biden again, a thing scarcely to be believed. If you can find me anybody chumpier than those tens of millions of white people you deserve some kind of sleuthing award.
As lone bulwarks in crazy times go, Rory and Charles showed us what it looks like. Rotting institutions nurture the seeds of their own destruction, and as the rot starts to manifest itself in a big way, the people who still have sufficient character and courage to defend anything come forward, and we have moments like this one—courage defending something that has forfeited all rights to be defended.
But this is the pattern set for us. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us (Rom. 5:8). Should we want to defend America? Of course. Does America deserve to be defended? Not even close. Nevertheless, we still must stand against the chaos that is threatening now to devour those who created the chaos in the first place.
There is no objection to Rory defending a Columbia that will not defend itself that could not with equal force be applied to white evangelicals defending an America that will not defend itself. Rory defending a Columbia that did this to itself is exactly like American Christians defending an America that did this to itself.
So we must not imitate the failure of Denethor. Gondor was deeply diseased, and Denethor was a big part of that . . . but he nevertheless despaired too early, and as a consequence he missed the great moment of eucatastophe. Aragorn: men are better than gates.
And this is what the Moscow project is actually all about. We want to be, at a town level, a thriving community of believers, standing in front of doors. The Moscow project is one that insists on defending actual community, not abstract ideas. It is actual community, with worship at the center, that produces men and women with actual courage, such that they know what to do when the moment comes. And also, unlike the abstractions of some of our based bros. we are a community that is happy to have blacks and Jews in it. Most of us are white, but we think that’s okay too.
In addition, we are seeking to stand between the pietists who want to keep everything internal and the externalists who simply want the right things to be affirmed on paper and imposed from the outside. We were this way during the Federal Vision controversy, and we are being this same way during the Christian Nationalism controversy. If you cleanse the inside of the cup, then the outside will be clean also (Matt. 23:26). So external application of the sacraments and external application of judicious political theory alone won’t cut it. Outside in doesn’t work. Inside trapped inside doesn’t work either. The men who will do exploits are men who have to grow up somewhere, be established in a form of worship, who are educated and discipled in a particular way, and who are prepared for the moment when the moment comes.
Moments like this are assigned by God, and not scheduled by man. It is quite true that something like this should have happened back when the mobs were pulling down statues. And so I could wish someone had interposed to defend Robert E. Lee, just as I rejoiced when the paper mache Satanic thing was pulled down at the Iowa capitol. But I also see the wisdom of God in it. When defenders of the West simply do their duty, remaining at their assigned post, God is the one who decides which moments become viral and representative and which don’t. But all who do their duty are still being faithful.
When Martin Luther went to post his theses on the Wittenberg door, he did not know he was lighting a spark in a room filled with fumes. The church door was just the community bulletin board, and he was offering to debate some things down at the community center, hope you all come, refreshments afterwards. And so he posted his theses, and three weeks later Europe was on fire. That’s how these things go.
One of the best things about this moment was that it flipped the script on the protesters. They had been positioning themselves as the victims in the whole affair, being picked on by. Columbia, but the optics of this revealed them to be no more than thugs in masks. So this was a moment that smelled like burnt marshwiggle, which is a smell that I hope we all come to enjoy more than we do now.
In conclusion, I also need to say something about the humanitarian disaster that is now occurring in Gaza, and which I don’t dispute at all. There is a humanitarian disaster going on in Gaza, but I draw a different conclusion from it than the protesters wanted everyone to draw. In Scripture, it is lawful to besiege a city, and this is the kind of thing that happens in besieged cities. This is no different in principle than David’s siege of Rabbah (2 Sam. 11:1), the only difference now being the presence of numerous cameras so that every heartbreaking scene can be shared to the world. But here is the different conclusion that I draw from those images. Every appalling thing that can be shown coming out of Gaza is to me an unanswerable argument for Hamas to release the hostages, for Hamas to surrender, and for Hamas to stop starting wars that they keep losing.
Below is a clip of the guys being interviewed by Laura Ingraham. Enjoy.