Introduction
So last week a marketing video for New St. Andrews set off a firestorm and, true to form, I have a few words of response, contextualization, and explanation. Whenever I am tired of looking like I am defending chattel slavery, I like to switch it up in order to look like I am a full-throated advocate of cussing. That’s just what I do.
Here’s the ad if you haven’t seen it yet.
First, What It Was
The controversial part of the ad turned out to be the place where we said that we wanted to attract young men who would be willing to hoist the Jolly Roger or use Johnny’s Cash’s favorite finger when confronting idolatry. First, the metaphor of the Jolly Roger—I hasten to clarify—did not mean that we wanted to attract men whose deepest desire was to raid ships and towns in the Caribbean in search of rum, wenches and gold. Metaphors can be difficult, and we regret any confusion or ambiguity this may have caused.
But back to Johnny’s finger. The image that accompanied this was a picture of Johnny’s Cash’s face and the very tip of the finger in question, followed by a nano-second zoom out shot of Johnny, finger and all. This was the video’s method of making the point without doing what Rick Rubin had done on behalf of Johnny himself back in 1998, which was to run that same picture as a full page and very static ad in Billboard magazine. We thought it needed to be softened, or muted, or framed just like other forms of circumlocution do—”he told me to eff off,” or to use asterisks for most of an offensive word (e.g. f***), or to employ the preface of “Language Alert,” or even by saying effin on the blim blam. This was the video equivalent of that kind of thing—very carefully and deliberately done.
So this was not a call for young men who cuss out their moms on the regular, but rather for the kind of man who would be willing to go there with Baphomet if his idolatrous provocations called for it.
So that is the micro-second that was.
Where We And Our Critics Agree
Now this ad drew applause from many (“I wish I had seen an ad like this when I was in high school”), but it also resulted in some push back, criticism, objections, and so on.
Now among the critics, we must begin by making a fundamental distinction. There were not a few critics who are friends of the college, who like what we do, who loved the rest of the ad, but who also thought that this nano-second was a juvenile distraction and not worth it. With all such, we are happy to discuss, and we only hope that their beards grow ever more luxuriant.
But then there was also some high disdain directed at us, accompanied by a furrowed brow from the library ladies of both sexes. There was a good deal of effeminate hand-wringing as well, and as measured in bulk, that appears to have been the majority critical response. There was a lot of that.
I have carefully separated the critics into two categories here, and it is important that I have done so. This is so that when someone now says “you are saying that anyone who criticizes you about this is an effeminate wuss,” it will be readily seen that a. this is not true, and b. it is true of the person who says that.
So I need to focus on the sob-sister response. The thing that cracks me up about it, and I mean that it really cracks me up, is the walking, living, breathing contradiction. A number of these people who believe that Christians should never ever circulate images like this for any reason have done yeoman’s work in giving our ad a shot at big time circulation (over 600K views on Twitter to date, and who knows what on other platforms elsewhere). Moreover, as the creamy frosting on their particular version of carrot cake, I have seen a number of these critics grab a freeze shot of The Moment, sometimes with finger blocked and sometimes not, in order to diligently circulate that along with their denunciations. This is an image not to be tolerated. Here, let me show you.
In other words, they took our glancing middle finger moment, took out our asterisks, and turned it into a Full Scale Eff You. They are like a pious third-grade boy running in to tell his mother what the neighbor boy said, doing so spang in the middle of his mother’s tea-and-Bible group, and announcing his news breathlessly and in a loud voice: “Mom, mom, Billy said [full-text-of-something-that-rhymes-with-duck]” And all the other ladies could see the gleam of righteousness in his eye as he reported on this dangerous malefactor. He was not the malefactor. He was just reporting, and taking his stand against all such behavior. “That’s not right, is it, mother? Billy said [you know]!”
And so this is apparently where we and all such critics agree. We both believe it is appropriate to use an image like that in order to discredit an adversary. This is clearly the case because we both have done so. We both have used that image in order to challenge a foe. We here at NSA directed it at the blasphemy of the recent opening ceremony of the Olympics. They reserved their use of Johnny Cash’s favorite finger to discredit fellow Christians who were attacking the blasphemy of the Olympics opening ceremony.
So the thing that distinguishes us from one another is not the use of this particular tactic, but rather who we apparently consider the real adversary to be. Christians would rather try to police other Christians who are fighting wickedness rather than join in the fight themselves. For these Christians, the threat is not those who are destroying Western Civilization. The threat for them would be those Christians who are promising to disrupt the surreptitious truce that they have made . . . with those who are destroying Western Civilization.
“Then three thousand men of Judah went to the top of the rock Etam, and said to Samson, Knowest thou not that the Philistines are rulers over us? what is this that thou hast done unto us?”Judges 15:11 (KJV)
I’ll Tell You What’s Problematic . . .
One of our critics was Owen Strachan, who acknowledged the electric current of truth coursing through the ad, which I appreciated, but who also lamented that what we did was “deeply problematic.” This, coupled with his face palm and <sigh> presents us with a real difficulty.
Owen wrote a (very good) book called Christianity and Wokeness. This means that he really should know that the wokest word on the planet is that word “problematic.” I am tempted to say that finding things deeply problematic like this is in fact itself deeply problematic, but that would usher us into a hall of mirrors . . . and a central part of our project is showing Christians how to get out of this hall of mirrors.
Look. Owen Strachan knows how to keep his perspective when reviewing a film like 1917, a film he considered a tour de force, despite the 18 f-bombs in it. And I am not here saying anything about the movie, which I have not seen. I am simply pointing out that Owen did not find the movie “problematic.” And if f-bombs were raisins, The Gospel Coalition loves to laud and celebrate movies that would be the equivalent of a five-pound fruitcake. That reviewing habit of theirs is not considered “problematic” either, at least not by the cool kids.
This particular controversy is purportedly about the rifle being used, but please understand that it is actually about the target. People are making a big deal about the rifle, and they are talking about the rifle a lot, but everybody goes mysteriously silent whenever the same rifle is used on targets that are approved as targets by the zeitgeist.
Let me give you a stark example of this. Back in 2012, when I was not nearly the reputational bad boy that I am now, I published a novel entitled Evangellyfish. That book, believe it or not, won the “2012 Best Fiction Award” from Christianity Today. Now how was it possible, even back then, for someone like me to win a “best fiction” award from the likes of CT? I mean, come on. How did I get away with that? This was certainly an unforced error on their part, enabling me to put “award-winning novelist” on various book covers to the end of my days. How did such an outrage happen?
I will explain. It was because of my target. The central target in that book was the hypocrisy and sexual shenanigans of big box evangelicalism, a target which at that time suited CT to the nines. All of my abilities as a satirist, such as they are, were on full display in that book. In other words, I wasn’t handling my rifle any differently than I normally do. But in that book, I was shooting at something that CT thought needed to be full of holes.
The offensive thing here was not the weapon, but rather the target.
Grifters, Eh?
Consider this section a set of responses to scattershot criticisms that I have seen or which I anticipate. In this section, topics may change without warning. Sit loose in the saddle, in other words.
Let it be acknowledged at the outset that in the online rumpus over all of this, there are some staunch defenders of our ad who did not understand it any more than many of the critics did, and who are industriously cussing up a storm. They are doing this for the sake of helping us out, which it does not. Such is life.
“Typical Moscow. They do something provocative and outrageous, and then the following Monday we get a salad of 2,500 words from Doug, tossing his lettuce leaves in the air, pirouetting and explaining. <Gurk.>” To which I reply . . . those are not croutons. They are called arguments, and I included them for a reason. They are crunchy. Satisfying even.
“What you have done above is just a tu quoque fallacy. Stop it.” First, the tu quoque fallacy is an informal fallacy, not a structural one. It is the retort, “Oh, well, you do it too.” But because it is not a structural fallacy, there are times when it is appropriate to turn the tables on accusers.
“Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things.”Romans 2:1 (KJV)
That is the first thing. But there is another point to be made here as well. If someone accuses you of shoplifting, it is not really adequate to show that the accuser is a shoplifter also. That discredits him, but it hardly vindicates you—shoplifting is still bad. That is a situation where we really want to point to the tu quoque fallacy, and rightly so. But this situation is a tad different.
We defend what we are doing, believing it to be righteous, while the metric being used by our critics would condemn not only our behavior but also three quarters of the movie reviews at The Gospel Coalition. And yet our critics insist on applying the metric in one direction only. And what will The Gospel Coalition do with Taylor Swift’s desire to f*** the patriarchy in her song All Too Well? Give them five minutes and they should be able to find some gospel lineaments in it.
There are two main lines of criticisms for this sort of thing that we do. The first is to say that what we are doing is unbiblical, and the second is to say that while it may be biblical it is counterproductive. The only appropriate response to the first would be to say, “Okay. Let’s have a Bible study.” The reply to the second would be to say that this ad is part of a marketing campaign, one that began with the bathroom ad. To date, this is a campaign that has been astoundingly successful. During the course of the campaign, our entering freshmen classes have basically tripled in size. So, no, it is not counterproductive. And you cannot toggle back to the “unbiblical” claim without agreeing to come to my Bible study.
My daughter Bekah commented on our family chat that there are a bunch of folks who are embarrassed for us, not because they object to the thing in itself at all, but rather because they are embarrassed when dad does it. “It’s less about the actual words and more about who is allowed to use them and in what context in order to maintain that superior cool vibe. Dad doing it ruins everything.” Kind of like this, she said.
“Pay no attention to Moscow. They are just a bunch of attention-seeking grifters.” Said the person giving us his full attention. Said the person getting attention by giving us his attention.
The Heart of the Difficulty
Let us zoom out for our few remaining moments, and reflect on the evangelical landscape as a whole.
As we do so, here is the principal thing to keep in mind. You are watching more fault lines appear—whether local, national, or in between. And decisive issues—dividing line issues—need not be crucial issues in themselves. Sometimes a random thing will, for some mysterious reason, cause everyone to revert to their factory settings—and such a moment can be far more revealing than most of the people involved in it think. There are good reasons for thinking that this is one of those times. I would encourage everyone involved in this to examine their reflexes. They are telling you something.
The Reformed evangelical world in North America is currently functioning (or not) like an ecclesiastical Somalia. We are an ecclesiastical failed state, but with most of the population still here. We used to have an identifiable center, but that center is long gone. That center is now a smoking debris field.
A couple of decades ago, I remember defining a broad evangelical as someone who liked Billy Graham. And in a similar spirit, I defined someone as Reformed if they liked R.C. Sproul. This observation then caused me to wonder what was going to happen when those two worthies went to be the Lord, and the titular leadership vacuum became apparent. Sproul died in 2017 and Graham followed the next year. There was a loose coalition of sorts that held on a short while—one might even call it a gospel coalition—occupying the center for a few years after that.
But then, like the Maenads of old, TikTok’s dancing nurses descended upon us. Various high-placed health officials did their choreography, and we suddenly found ourselves surrounded by lockdowns, and masks, and vaccines, and flaking pastors. Any remaining semblance of evangelical cohesion was blown to blazes. But remember, we still have millions of evangelicals running around loose, like sheep without a shepherd. Such a state of affairs cannot continue, and because it cannot continue, it will not continue. There will be a coalescing at some point, but not around any of our now discredited institutions.
And this is where people want to say, “Wilson, you sly dog. You want to be the next big cheese.” But actually, no. Putting me in a position like that would be like making H.L. Mencken the mayor. I think it should be someone like Kevin DeYoung, once he becomes a little less fastidious. I am not angling for that slot at all. But I am saying that a lot of people around this Somalia of ours think that I am in fact running for the nomination, and hence all the brickbats. Whenever we do a marketing thing that goes viral (which has happened more than once), or something else that is high profile like Tucker, their concerns naturally get ramped up. Something must be done. This is because they assume that I must be the same kind of political animal that they are—which is not true, but also another subject for another day.
But don’t get me wrong. When the great Reformed Evangelical Unity Banquet is finally held, I do want to be invited. I would be honored to come. And I would come thoughtfully, and courteously, understanding the concerns that the organizers might have. They naturally would be worried that I might throw my dinner roll at somebody, like that waiter carrying the champagne glasses. Sure, but the chance must still be taken.