by James W. Stivers, 11/2/24
Introduction: The Failure of Christian Worldview Education
Boys who are raised among men become men. Boys who are raised among boys, remain boys.
– The Institutes of Biblical Terranomics: A Polemic for the Landed Gentry, James W. Stivers, pending
The first generations of Americans had little to offer for formal education. The necessities of the frontier required that boys accompany their fathers in clearing the land, building homesteads, planting crops, hunting game, and pursuing merciless savages. Yet, in spite of the lack of formal education, or rather because of it, such Americans were among the most erudite of history and alone capable of producing the Republic that has become our heritage.
“We shall not ever have another.” So claimed John Taylor Gatto, the famed NYC educator who upon being honored as the “Public Educator Emeritus,” immediately went on a rage against the public school system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Taylor_Gatto. Now deceased, he is beloved among home educators for his pithy and insightful books, such as The Underground History of American Education, (Oxford Village Press, 2000), in which he argues that it is impossible for modern education to produce the level of literacy and critical thinking which resulted in the generation that founded the American Republic.
Converse to the opening statement above, men who spend their time in the company of boys find themselves becoming “one of the boys.” Educators often find themselves groveling to youthful trends in the quest to be relevant, interesting, and popular with their pupils. They think descending to the level of the juvenile mind will somehow build the bridge to knowledge and maturity.
Dr. Raymond Moore was another early champion of home education. In his seminars, he was fond of citing the cause of the decline of Greek civilization: when its parents abdicated the education of their children. Turning the task over to the slaves, Moore used it as a warning against “hireling” education of the current public school system.
Herein lies the secret of what is wrong with America today. Our system of formal education sequesters the child with other children and with a teacher who must somehow become a child in order to educate him.
That is why home schooling has proved to be superior over the classroom: the child first engages with the adult mind of the mother, and then – when he is ready – the child will engage with the adult mind of the father. Neither the father nor the mother are compelled to pander to the whims of the child. Per the Lord’s command, the parent is entitled to the child’s obedience and has the authority to drive out his foolishness with the rod, if necessary.
The child may learn his academics better in the classroom setting because of the opportunity for rote recitation with a group, but the lessons of maturity come from participating in the life of the family and presumably the family vocation.
For the same reasons, it can be argued that Christian schools commit the same offense as the public schools: they institutionally compete with the family, weakening if not destroying loyalty to the family.
And for different reasons, the Classical Curriculum which is in the forefront of “Christian Worldview Education” has committed a blasphemy of a different sort: it has created a student who is fitted for nothing else than to be a competent bureaucrat, either in government or in the corporate and institutional life of the nation-state. Its Trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric) is tailor-made – as it was for ancient Rome and medieval scholastics – education for pencil-pushers and life in triplicate.
Douglas Wilson: The Poster Boy of Christian Nationalism
The above lengthy introduction is meant to explain the dilemma that is Christian education in the United States and the “Christian Worldview Movement” which has dominated the Christian Right over the last four decades: church schools are no better at imparting a maturity of the mind than are the public schools. And I present as my first exhibit, the life and ministry of Rev. Douglas Wilson of Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho.
For the reader unacquainted with this man, he has achieved some very recent national recognition by an appearance on two popular talk-show programs: Joe Rogan’s Podcasts and Tucker Carlson’s. With his recently published book, Mere Christendom, Wilson has become the poster boy of the “Christian Nationalist” movement. If Donald Trump is elected again as President, I fully expect that Wilson will be assigned a role in the new Administration.
Wilson has spent a career as a pastor, educator and a publisher of textbooks for conservative Christian schools. I followed his ministry in the 1990s and read his Credenda Agenda when Christ Church was something else. And here, I must begin with the caveat that I have never found his articles or his books to be intellectually engaging. He has prided himself as an advocate of the “Christian Reconstruction” ideology (the precursor to that of the current Christian Nationalists). Conceived and espoused by Rev. R. J. Rushdoony (who upon the election of Ronald Reagan was dubbed by major news magazines as the “godfather” of the Christian New Right), Wilson’s prose has always served as a warmed over version (or perhaps, a watered-down version) of Christian Reconstructionist and Worldview intellectuals, such as Rushdoony, Cornelius Van Til, Greg Bahnsen, Gary North, Francis Schaeffer, and reaching back to another from an earlier time, C.S. Lewis (from whose classic “Mere Christianity” Wilson has obviously pirated his title).
Trying mightily to mentally engage with his publication, I thought, “Why waste my time with this drivel, when I can go to the sources? I can read Rushdoony and North myself and be much more richly rewarded for my time.”
That is not to say his writings have had no value. I’m not so arrogant to think that they are beneath me; perhaps, they are above me. But many times, and to this day, I have tried to do so, only to give up from his labyrinthine equivocations.
There are many people who claim to have benefited immensely from his writings. It’s just that those people will never be able to fully grasp Rushdoony, Schaeffer, or Bahnsen and certainly not North or Van Til or even David Chilton. Somehow, Wilson has failed to build the intellectual bridge of the matured mind to help his readers transition from his own pamphleteering to more serious concepts which these men have contributed for the making of a Christian civilization. He has distilled those authors for a more “popular” audience, but I would call it “truncated,” if not “sophomoric.”
[Remember the “maturity of the mind” task of the educator mentioned above]
He tries out theological fads like a new flavor of ice cream. He thinks he is a “preterist” (ala Chilton) but backs away from “full preterism.” He embraces the “Federal Vision” doctrine (even has written on the subject), but then abandons it with reasons – if you can follow them – he attempts to elucidate on one of his blogs.
He fancies himself as a Christian apologist of the Van Tillian school and often engages in forums or debates at the local university but does not seem to understand the difference between “theodicy” and apologetics.
Of his most recent work, Mere Christendom, online complaints of his distasteful humor and even vulgarisms sound familiar. Wilson has always enjoyed verbal denigrations of his opponents, and so have his readers going all the way back to the 1990s. For a brief period in the early 2000s, when local liberal protests and boycotts scared his socks off – in particular for hosting at campus facilities alleged Southern racialists for a speakers conference – he then tempered his rhetoric. But with the rise of America’s very own Rasputin in the person of Donald Trump, such rhetorical flourishes in Wilson’s eruditions have returned.
And it never seems to end. Even as this article is prepared for posting, he is defending another of his ingenious “shock the sensibilities” advertisements to recruit students for his New St. Andrew’s College (NSA).
Responding to criticism for featuring the obscene “middle-finger” gesture in trashing the obviously easy target of the already self-trashed opening ceremonies of the 2024 Olympic Games, he has invoked success as a justification, in that he claims freshman enrollment at his NSA has tripled. This he announces on his “Blog & Mablog” podcast, which is obviously a play on the infamous biblical arch-nemesis of God’s Kingdom: “Gog & Magog.” And I wonder how he came up with that one. Sort of like someone starting a blog and calling it, tongue-in-cheek, “Rape & Be Raped.” But then again, he would brush me off as one of those “library ladies of both sexes”! (His insult to men who work at libraries).
[Again, remember the “maturity of the mind” issue mentioned above]
Lest the reader think me a “Johnny-come-lately,” I wrote a worker’s manual for Christian Reconstruction in the early 1980s entitled Wyoming As a Christian Republic when I served as a pastor there. In the 1990s I updated it and called it “Kansas As a Christian Republic” when I had a teaching ministry in Wichita, Kansas.
Finally, it was updated when I moved to Moscow, Idaho in 1998. It was called “The Palouse as a Christian Republic.” I published it anonymously and good thing I did, because my harshest critics were from Wilson’s board of elders.
During the early 2000s, I published a book on American Exceptionalism before it was a thing: The Westward March of Christianity & the Destiny of Nations. Published serially in The Family Spokesman newsletter during the 1990s, it was collated and published to the internet in the early 2000s. Currently out of print, a study edition can be found here:
The Westward March of Christianity & the Destiny of Nations
As clever as Wilson’s wordsmithing might be, it is important to understand that he has not really offered anything new or original. I don’t consider him to be a seminal thinker. Preachers usually do not have the intellectual discipline to write books. Their sermons are transcribed by others (or ghost written) and then published as books. Their length depends upon the verbosity of the preacher. Wilson has the gift of gab. No doubt with the help of his scribes, he has something like 98 books with his name as the author!
In spite of that verbosity, he has not advanced the intellectual tradition which he represents. He has been a successful propagandist and pamphleteer and maybe that is his true role. And sometimes, he is an excellent analyst, if you can follow his meandering metaphors, a fault typical of the preaching profession.
But he is also an opportunist and is currently riding high the crest of a wave of popular acclaim. In the 1990s he was dismissive of home schooling and mocked people who home birthed. Today, of course, with the majority of his constituency consisting of such people, he sings a different tune.
Unfortunately and inevitably, this wave of Christian renewal will crash into a wall of reality: that the American dream and its Christian foundations are a myth. The “Christian Nationalist” movement is a doomed venture for reasons which can be found here:
Biblical Terranomics #24: Christian Reconstruction, Which Paradigm? (December, 1999)
More below.
What is “King Saul’s Army”?
Short answer: Churchianity.
But what is wrong with that?
One can have the correct “Faith” but the wrong “Religion.” The word “religion” refers to how we practice our faith. “Churchianity” is an institutionally-driven movement that permeates all of society like a miasma. Institutions become an end in themselves.
That is why I have entitled this article “Douglas Wilson: A Captain in Saul’s Army?” Like King Saul’s wars against the Philistines, the “Secularists” who are our modern Philistines keep coming back after every American revival/apostasy cycle, and with greater intensity and power. Like a modern Saul, Wilson thinks he is defending Christianity against Secularism. He thinks he is winning because he is able to chase the Philistines down the mountains and back to the coastal plains from which they came. But because the Philistines enjoy “sanctuary” – a constant source of reinforcements and resupply – they are able to come again to besiege our modern tribes of Israel.
For example, Christian education is not enough, although, Wilson has misinterpreted postmillennialism as an excuse for incrementalism. Defunding tax supported public education is an imperative. Public education is the breeding ground for our neo-Philistines. Where do you think “Wokeism” has come from?
That would have been a better endeavor – although just as controversial – than his strange affiliation with defenders of Southern slavery. The famous Southern Agrarian, Richard Weaver, would never have found such a discourse as necessary.
I can take my biblical analogy even further:
Saul spared the lives of his rival pagan kings. But he wanted to kill David. In contrast, when David became king, he did the opposite: he slaughtered rival pagan kings, but spared the lineage of Saul.
Wilson thinks that our quarrel with secularism is a gentleman’s debate. He thinks we can win them over. He does not think he is a compromiser. It is because he does not think like a man who has had to engage his enemies in total intellectual and institutional warfare. As I said elsewhere, “You defeat them first, then convert them.“
[And lest the reader think I am advocating the abolition of public education. It’s state-funded education that needs to be abolished. Each locality should fund and operate its own school system as it sees fit.]
He might think he is a straight arrow because he has taken heat for his stand on Southern slavery, feminism, and now “Wokeism.” He does not realize that his clumsy interpretation of the Bible is really the source of his woes.
Like Saul, Douglas Wilson is merciless against his fellow Christians on doctrinal matters. At one point, he held under church discipline his own brother for taking biblical anthropomorphisms too literally. Wrangling over a proper definition of Divine Omniscience should never expose a thoughtful Christian to pastoral abuse. But such is the case for many hyper-Calvinists who represent a tradition which attracts a disproportionate percentage of bullies.
Conversely, as abusive as Wilson has been toward his fellow-travelers, especially in the earlier years, yet, the Christian Nationalist movement requires alliances with otherwise anathema groups such as Roman Catholicism, Mormonism, and “Patriotic” movements which are spin-offs from the John Birch Society. These all are brought together under the umbrella of the “Christian Worldview,” “Western Civilization,” and now Wilson’s treatise, “Mere Christendom.” To succeed, Wilson must compromise with these rival kings.
[As rival institutions]
[If Churches as institutions now become self-contained social units – which is what Wilson’s vision of the “Kirk” is all about (a medieval-style institutional supremacy for the Church as it was in Scotland) – then purges from within and intrigue from without will become the norm of power politics.]
Like King Saul, who was a master of equivocation, Wilson embraces movements and ideologies when it suits him, but then abandons them (as mentioned above) when their usefulness seems to be at an end. His most recent “equivocation” is that of a disavowal of “federal vision” ideology espoused by his long-time friend and colleague, Peter Leithart. I notice that soon afterwards, Rev. Leithart moved away from Moscow to a parish in the Deep South.
Theocracy & the Christian Nationalist Movement
“I am a Christian and I love my country. What shall we call it?” – Douglas Wilson
Yes, indeed, Rev. Wilson, “What shall we call it?”
How about “idolatry”?
In a nation of fifty states in which the respective state legislatures claim “sovereignty,” and every year add reams of new laws and codes – a right which God, the Divine lawgiver, has reserved exclusively to Himself – “loving one’s country” becomes idolatrous. Sort of like King Jehu who killed the priests of Baal, only to revive the Golden Calf apostasy – the American Colonists threw off the pretentious idolatrous claims of the English Parliament (at that point, King George III was the convenient figure-head) only to set-up new tyrannies in the respective state legislatures. Gary North’s unpleasant yet unrefuted analysis can be found here:
If Christian Nationalism can be regarded as a vaguely “theocratic” movement, which is what really distinguishes Calvinism from all other religious traditions, it will require some kind of creedal commitment – contrary to the “no religious test” clause of the Constitution (a document which purposely avoided the term “sovereignty”). However vague such a creed might be, it will require an explicitly “theistic” nomenclature rather than a “humanistic” one. In Wilson’s Idaho, the GOP now has a closed primary system and features its own boards of inquisitions for people who want to join the party or run for office under the GOP banner. In Idaho, Churchianity – of which Wilson’s “Kirkism” has been an example – has institutionally crossed the barrier between Church and State.
The irony of these “patriot” movements is that they replace one form of authoritarianism for another. The social order which Christian Nationalism requires is still an administrative state run by experts; it’s just a different class of experts. Instead of public school and public university secular experts, they are being replaced with home/parochial schooled and church college experts. It does not matter if they are the guys with the “white hats.” It is still an authoritarian system. “If it walks like a duck . . .”
As I have argued for a generation, a solution to this would be one taught by Biblical Terranomics; namely, the restoration of a non-medieval form of a landed gentry. It would be as Rushdoony called it, a “Protestant feudalism,” one without king or pope. This is what the old English Common Law was all about, an area of jurisprudence of which the clergy, like Wilson, know nothing. The “landed gentry” were the lesser magistrates who acted as buffers between the people and tyrannical clerics and kings.
Lacking such a cultural and legal institution at its foundation, America has become a failed national experiment. “Making America Great Again” (MAGA) would only return us to an earlier, more innocently, idolatrous time.
Evangelicals, like Wilson, cannot comprehend such a thing because in their theocratic social model, society is divided into two counterbalancing institutions: the Church and the State. They are held together by confessions and party platforms. Evangelicals may experience glee at my criticisms of Wilson, until they find out that they are the Philistinophiles with whom Wilson must temporarily compromise to achieve his theocracy.
[He will turn on them when “it suits him.”]
In contrast, a truly landed gentry needs neither confessions nor party platforms. The foundations of social order grow organically from the discipline of working the soil and raising families in conformity to the realities of nature. Nature has its own way of disciplining a wayward society. The Church and State, as conceived by these theocrats, can only exist in an insulated, urban environment. Creeds and confessions demand the magic of words. In contrast, the yeoman and gentry merely require calloused hands. . .
go to savebenewahcounty.com for part 2: The Agrarian Manifesto (January, 2025)