A couple notes. First, please allow me to review what is actually being done to Louisiana Presbytery, all for the sake of getting at Steve Wilkins. And second, I want to explain what I am doing about it here and why. In doing this I am not giving anything away, because for those with a basic sense of justice, this whole thing is as easy to understand as pie and as sensible as shoes. For those who are dedicated to complicity in the coming injustice, these things are dark parables, and it won’t matter to them what I say.
First, remember that the Standing Judicial Commission is an entity past which there are no appeals. What they do in this case cannot be undone by the General Assembly. A wronged defendant has no appeal. This is a high-wire act without a net. There are to my mind unanswerable arguments against setting up this kind of mechanism in the first place, but if you have that mechanism in place it is absolutely crucial that you take every precaution against a possible miscarriage of justice. Having it fixed in your mind what the burden of proof actually is would be one of those precautions. Having the verdict established about such things through the means of trials would be another.
Now, meditate on this. The PCA has stumbled into a situation where an entire presbytery is approaching a trial (her first trial), and that presbytery does not have the presumption of innocence going into it. Bob Mattes, a member of the study committee on FV, has said that there is a “strong presumption of guilt” for the presbytery, based on the strong presumption of guilt for Wilkins, also established the way David Copperfield might do it. And Bill Lyle, a member of the Commission itself, has said that while the prosecutor has to prove Louisiana’s guilt, Louisiana has the burden of proving her innocence. Centuries of presbyterian judicial theology down the memory hole. It is clear that the onus probandi, the burden of proof, is not clear in this. And when this murky trial is over, assuming that Louisiana will be found guilty, that presbytery has no appeal. This is being done to a whole presbytery, and it is being done in broad daylight. Now when the stakes are this high, it is absolutely necessary that something as fundamental as the presumption of innocence (which our secular courts inherited from us in the Church, back before we ditched it) be strongly articulated, defended, and maintained. That is not happening — the need for real trials is all muddled up, and the need for a presumption of innocence going into those trials is muddled right along with it.
Now what I am doing here? I have many faults in my writing, and I do confess it, but generally speaking, I don’t think I write boring prose. A few posts ago, I mentioned my “peculiar gifts,” and that is what I was referring to. And according the cyber-bean counters down at google analytics, the stats for this page, generally high, shot through the roof yesterday. I believe that if I make this interesting enough, we can arrange for every interested Reformed believer on the planet to be looking straight at the Standing Judicial Commission when they make their momentous decision. And the show is set up this way — before David Copperfield takes the stage, I will have been explaining to the assembled audience how the trick will be done, and what to watch for. I will have ruined the show, but I sincerely hope I will have provided another one to replace it.
There is another aspect to this (and it’s all in Girard, man!). When due process is abandoned, as it has been in this case, and the rights of the victim are being trampled on, a lynching of some sort (Scott Clark’s word) is in process. Now how can those involved in something like this live with themselves? Due process helps us do justice and keep our consciences clean. If that due process is abandoned, what is substituted for it? The question is an important one because a clean conscience is still most necessary. As Girard points out in multiple places, the designated replacement for due process is unanimity. This is why the engineers of show trials love it when the accused steps up to the plate and accuses himself. See? We all agree that there was no injustice done here! And this is also why (unless I miss my guess) there is enormous pressure on Louisiana to resolve this dilemma for us all by pleading guilty. If that is achieved, then nobody has to prove anything, ever. We don’t have to have due process if there is unanimous agreement that we must have had due process. Where is it? Oh, around here somewheres. We all agree on that.
Now because this is going on, I have resolved to be a discordant voice. I have resolved to ruin the smooth flow of what is passing for likemindedness. Not only am I being a discordant voice, but I have every intention of being a loud and interesting one. Standing up to a crowd mulling angrily about in front of the courthouse is difficult work, but actually getting heard is the most difficult thing about it.
When a discordant voice is actually heard, it creates another kind of anger — the kind of anger Job experienced when he refused to accuse himself, when he refused to plead guilty. There is an anger that occurs when a dispute descends to personalities, when the polemics spin out of control and the ancestries of the various participants are loudly discussed. I don’t want to have anything to do with that kind of thing. But there is another kind of anger — this erupts whenever self-righteousness is exposed. Those who pride themselves on the rule of law, and due process, and having everything moved, seconded, minuted, approved, and filed, cannot abide the discordant voice that shows and demonstrates they are not passing righteous judgment. As with Harry Truman’s famous response to the “Give ’em hell, Harry!” cry — “I just tell them the truth, and they think it’s hell” — the anger here is much more fundamental.
In response to this, many things will be said about me. Don’t have an M.Div., Canon Press publishes a lot of my stuff, not in the PCA, don’t know the BCO, and the NAI has proven numerous times how evil I am (Nameless Accusers of the Internet). Fine. They will also say my charges here are false, but notice that (to this point) they have not answered even one fundamental point I have raised. Who has the burden of proof? Where are the transcripts that show how we got to a strong presumption of guilt without any trials? You know, the kind of question that J. Gresham Machen could have answered at two in the morning in his sleep. The kind of thing Presbyterians used to know.
So we got to a strong presumption of guilt without a trial, and we will shortly establish that guilt without any appeal. What’s wrong with this? Oh, I don’t know . . . everything? Now is the time for all conscientious PCA men to be staring at the tops of their shoes in humiliation and embarrassment. Something awful is unfolding. Want me to keep quiet about it? Let me think about it, no.