From The Serrated Edge To Purposeful Defamation To The Death Prayer, or An Unfortunate Trajectory of "Christian" Political and Social Engagement

Christians, particularly those who identify with the Right and who assume no one else not from the Right could possibly be a disciple of Jesus, have become among the most belligerent of social commentators -- the example below of the pastor praying for Barack Obama's death, while extreme, illustrates the point.

Those in Moscow are also privy to Doug Wilson's Blog and Mablog, Dale Courtney's Right-Mind blog, and the occasional, but always head-spinning, ugliness of Doug Farris and Chris Witmer, as well as those staunch Reformed defenders with pseudonyms, like Dontbia Nass, No Weatherman, and the inimitable Princess Sushitushi, Witmer's nom de plume from a couple of years ago. I'm unaware of any other self-identified Christians in our area who match these guys in meanness -- never mind imprecatory prayers directed at their enemies, accompanied by tortured exegesis of the indefensible.

In a college town with thousands of students questioning their lives and sorting through their faith, it's always nice to have the most influential, biggest church in town spawning a culture of bitter derision, flippant disregard, and a classical vocabulary of pejoratives in the name of Christ. It's an evangelism strategy from one of Dante's nether-regions, to be sure, and the relative silence from other Evangelical churches -- anyone? anyone? -- is deafening and, perhaps, comforting to our Trinitarian trash talkers.

And bitter it is -- I'm not aware of any pastor who features on his blog, for example, the many possible words heterosexual Christian men can use in referring to homosexuals, but for those who were confounded beyond "sodomites," Wilson and his commenters cheerfully supply "Catamites, buggarers, faggots, poofters, and perverts," discounting the homosexual community's chosen descriptor, "gay," as dishonest.

Just in case we don't get that he finds homosexual men and women disgusting . . .

And Wilson is the author of "The Serrated Edge," a paean to snarkiness in the name of Christ published by Canon Press, his in-house organ for his thoughtful musings and steadfast analysis of the world -- an analysis that offers "Father Hunger" and a return to Biblical patriarchy as diagnosis and cure. In "The Serrated Edge," he describes various Old Testament and New Testament examples of caustic, sarcastic rhetoric employed against enemies by faithful men of God. Most Moscow residents, and certainly most Kirk/CREC/ACCS men, remember Wilson's analysis of Jesus' interaction with the Syrophoenician woman, a vignette he exploits to the advantage of his embrace of the offensive by recasting it with Christ using the N-word to refer to Gentiles.

It was not, shall we say, a high point in the history of Biblical exegesis and pastoral guidance.

Then again, most of what Wilson writes is accompanied by the "serrated edge" of God-ordained dismissiveness and disdain for opponents; one wonders why it took him 'til 2002 to develop a book-length doctrine thereof. I met with Wilson in May 2002, when he was writing the book, and we talked about its content and his purpose. Wilson was, typically, very gracious to me as I pleaded with him not to publish "The Serrated Edge." I made two points: First, I disagreed -- passionately -- with him that the New Testament shows Jesus and the disciples engaging in the spewing of verbal spitballs toward non-believers, much less giving the imperative for Christians to follow suit. Second, I said, even if there was a Biblical precedent and call for Christians to engage in mockery, sarcasm, insult and bite -- a point I will not concede -- shouldn't he, as a self-identified pastor, follow the Biblical admonition to set aside his "right" to employ a serrated edge in engaging with the world in order that the Gospel not be maligned? Wouldn't it be a powerful Gospel witness, especially in light of the "Southern Slavery As It Was" turmoil he had created, to decline to publish "The Serrated Edge" -- even though he legally could, and felt he morally could, write and publish a theological guide to Christian snottiness?

Wouldn't that've been great?

Alas, while Wilson promised me he'd consider my counsel, the book came out, and hundreds of NSA students, Kirk men, and Wilson accolytes nationwide gleefully explored its pages to find new ways to "skylark" and behave badly. And he continues to lead the charge, smacking down non-believers in the name of the Lord.

That's wrong. I've written this before, but it bears repeating: I will not employ sarcasm, dismissiveness, meanness, or insult toward those who do not identify as Christian, with the possible exception of my choice to call Limbaugh obnoxious, or say that Dick Cheney is evil. They're public figures whose cruelty and deception call for truth in the form of sharp rebuke. But what I believe is the prophetic (lower-case "p") nature of my writings is, by definition and intent, to be directed toward the Church.

It is good to remember that Jesus' rebukes and anger were directed at those within the community of the faithful, the Pharisees, Saducees, and ecclesiastically powerful, and not toward those who were on the outside. He wove leather cords into a whip and angrily tore up the moneychangers' booths in the Temple. He didn't set fire to either the house of Herod or the local gay bar. That's the model all Christians should follow; we withhold judgment of those who don't claim the name of Christ, praying for them to find the Light, and we truthfully, lovingly, sometimes sharply -- angrily -- respond to those who do that Name dishonor.

That model, then, would preclude the entire sickening premise of "The Serrated Edge," which holds that the world and the "reprobates" it's teeming with are fair game for the preacher's verbal spitballs, mocking, and attack. The premise -- that Jesus and the Apostles did the same -- is utterly vacuous. The result is absolutely vicious, and, coupled with the enthusiastic defense of imprecatory prayer, gives blessing to all sorts of bad behavior, much of it embraced by young men of chest imitating their elders as well as their Elders. And it stinks.

The "serrated edge" Wilson employs has cut many. It also gives license to explore the far reaches of innuendo, suspicion, gossip and, finally, outright slander -- the kind of slander that leads to hate and violence. The hatefully anonymous "No Weatherman" of the recent presidential campaign, presumed by one and all to be affiliated with the Kirk (how sad is that?), flooded Moscow's Vision 2020 forum with a torrent of lies, bigotry, and unGodly innuendo directed toward Obama. Those of us who waded even partway into his sewer got quite a bit directed at us, too.

No more honorably for having used his name, Wilson paralleled the stream of anti-Obama rantings by his reckless blog forays into the future President's actual birthplace and citizenship; his shadowy nature; his socialist policies; his insouciance, if not encouragement, of "baby killing;" his easy acceptance of terrorists and his false Christian testimony. It was a smorgasbord of rotting bread and sour wine offered by a pastor, one of thousands, perhaps, who joined with ministries and para-church organizations to ruin a man. In doing so, they formed careless alliance with the racist Right, too often called "Christian," in putting into real danger the life of a man who has publicly confessed Christ as Savior and whose "otherness" scared the living hell out of them. I hold every blogger, pastor, author, commentator and strategist who fans the flames of anti-Obama bigotry responsible should some hideous devil shoot him down in the name of Christ.

Note: That's "responsible," not "accountable."

And so I continue to explain why a local pastor's teaching of imprecatory prayer and his snotty conduct toward the unbelieving world around him is part and parcel of the ugliness we see today -- the kind of ugliness that somehow seems to gratify men in power, and men in power who like being called Christians.

I just wish mine weren't such a lonely voice, but each of us has our part in spreading the Gospel, whose witness on the Palouse over the last few years is about as foul as foul gets.