I blame Libby Anne for sharing this link and making me write despite my sore wrist!
Doug Wilson just can’t shut up about Rachel Held Evans, which is curious for two reasons: she’s already stopped bothering about him, and there are scores of other bloggers who are pissed off about his misogyny, and several of them have penises. Take, for instance, Unreasonable Faith’s Fifty Shades of Lipstick on a Pig, or all these people, or Fred Clark (Slacktivist)’s The men of the ‘Gospel Coalition’ really hate women.
I suspect that Wilson keeps doing this for the publicity (it’s always good, right?). He obviously hasn’t thought about that very much. Because the more he stirs trouble in the spiritual abuse survivor community, and in the Christian feminist community, and in the Community of Decent Human Beings on the Internet, the more his name will be linked in search engines with words like “hateful, racist misogynist.” And that’s what all his new potential converts will see when they Google to figure out who he is.
Unless, of course, he rigs the engines with money somehow.
Here’s yet another screed:
I love it when the guys get up a robust game of pick-up basketball. I hate it when some feminist sues the gym for the right to join in, because she is tired of all these lame traditionalist categories, and then, without any self-awareness at all, limps off the court five minutes into the game favoring her left leg because she got bumped on the right elbow, and spends the rest of the year writing letters to various authorities about how “hurt,” “offended,” and “deeply concerned” she is about how “dismissive” everybody was being about her perspective on this unfortunate affair.
Seriously, what would this guy do for a living without the feminist movement? He should be paying us all royalties for the privilege of making a living setting up and burning down straw feminists.
I love it when someone engages me in a meaningful debate about religion. I hate it when some misogynist windbag starts spouting off as if he can dominate the debate by shouting “I don’t like you, okay? I just hate your stupid face! You’re such a girl!”
I have no business setting up amiable dialogue within the boundaries of Christian faith with some discussion partners who deny or subvert first principles in the way that Rachel Held Evans does. And I have every responsibility to pursue discussion with Anthony Bradley, despite his sin against me. Given what he teaches and what I teach, we ought to be in fellowship. But given what Rachel Held Evans teaches, I have a duty to not be in fellowship. If somebody arranged a discussion event with me and with her (which someone unsuccessfully tried to do), I would be happy to go, and moreover I would be pleasant throughout the entire event. But me being pleasant, however remarkable that might be, will not turn a mango into a pear, and will not turn feminism into Christianity.
Incidentally, this does not mean that I cannot learn from out-and-out pagans — I most certainly can, and I do it all the time. But when I am reading their books, for example, I never forget where I am, who I am, and where my loyalties are.
And this is the last thing — loyalties are shaped by understanding the story. This concerns those Christians I mentioned earlier who are in the middle, pulled this way and that. Such Christians who are instinctively protective of the wrong side in such controversies are obviously Christians, but they are (equally obviously) badly equipped for reading stories. The fundamental skill in identifying the antithesis in history (which is astory, remember) is the skill of distinguishing the protagonist from the antagonist. If you come out ofBeowulf feeling sorry for Grendel, if you think Mr. Wickham was misunderstood, if you wince at the hubris when Aragon rides up to the gates of Mordor, if you come out of 1 Samuel thinking King Saul had a reasonable point, then you might think that this particular fight within the evangelical and Reformed world is a bad thing and a discredit to the gospel.
Who wants to break it to Doug that Sauron isn’t real?
Seriously, the fundamental skill of understanding history (not identifying its imaginary bogeyman) is realizing that all stories have context. All stories are written by people with particular perspectives. That’s why feminist history, subaltern history (the history of underprivileged groups whose voices are seldom heard), LGBTQ and black history are so powerful. Because they reveal the wealthy white male narrator in simplistic stories that have made up history for centuries. They reveal how the “antagonists” (the arrogant, the destructive, the foolhardy) in history are often the ones writing it. How they have systematically controlled the memory of the human race to preserve their present power. How we get a clearer picture of the world when we listen to the people living in all possible circumstances, not just the ones that get filed away in the Library of Congress.
Hey, Christian feminists – take note, this guy is telling you that feminism is incompatible with Christianity. I’m calling on all of you to tell him how wrong he is. Because while misogyny like his drove me away from Christian churches, you still hold the authority vested in the Scriptures you and he both believe in. And he’s basically just carved out a hole in the Bible and is using it to stroke himself.
Now, back to this whole “healing, not blogging” thing.
