“So, You Wanna Go Back to Egypt? . . . What? Oh, no! Manna Again?” – title and lyrics from Keith Green’s album, circa. 1980
Author’s Note: This series is autobiographical to provide background for the books and articles you will find on this website. When the series is finished, I will provide a summation in a bio-page. Links to previous installments are found at the bottom of the article. —JWS, website creator.
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The final years of the 20th Century found me reformatting my writings and surveying local Christians to discover their level of commitment to the notion of Christian Reconstruction (CR). I had arrived to Moscow, Idaho with my family in the summer of 1998, the logistics of which, as anyone who has had to move a household across the country, proved to be a daunting task, especially arriving at a destination with no contacts and no job.
I flew back to Wichita for two-week stints to finish out the painting season and then again in the summer of 1999, until I could get my business going. Getting started in a small university town is no small task. But as God’s providence would have it, it so happened that I had the same first and last name of a long-time local resident who had just passed-away. Undeservedly, I benefited from his good reputation in getting initial solicitations. I would explain to people that I was not related to the man – and certainly not risen from the dead! – but offered a discounted price for the courtesy and won many bids.
We started visiting local churches. Having heard that Rev. Douglas Wilson’s church sponsored the celebrated Logos School, I made inquiries concerning the possibility of a satellite program for home schoolers. The receptionist sneered at me and essentially told me to go away.
During the interim months, we visited the fledgling congregation of Wilson’s brother which was meeting in the school facility at the time. Somehow, I discovered he was in the midst of church discipline for heterodox theological views which did not conform to strict Reformed theology. The people were nice – particularly the Lucas family, who were gracious – but the atmosphere was bleak. We migrated across town to the Church of the Nazarene until the summer of 1999. It was then that we moved to our rural property in a different county just north of Moscow.
Readers should recall that was the time of what was then called the “Y2K” panic. It was a concern held by many leaders that the internal clocks of our computer systems would not read the “00” of the transition to the new millennium and just shut down. I believed the threat was credible and followed Dr. Gary North’s daily updates at his website: garynorth.com.
It is important to remember that North did not interject his own opinions in these reports. He compiled his webpage as a collage of headlines with links (a format later copied by others, such as the Drudge Report) which led the reader to all of the analysis – and fear mongering. The leaders of government, academia, finance and industry were responsible for the panic, not Gary North.
Y2K came and went. Then, there was 9/11. Sometimes, I think world leaders engineer real or imagined “crises” to keep the populace off-balance and to keep themselves in power. Public panic, like war, tends to favor incumbents.
From time-to-time, there is a rumbling of political separatist movements here in the Northwest. The eastern half of Washington state has sometimes wanted to join Idaho. Today (as of 2024), the eastern half of Oregon wants to join. There is internal dissent even within Idaho, itself. Sometimes, the Panhandle of Idaho wants to separate from southern Idaho where Boise, the state capital, is now filling-up with California migrants.
Noticing that separatist impulse in 1999, I adapted my training manual on Christian Reconstruction (CR) and published it as “The Palouse As a Christian Republic.” (“Palouse” – Puh-loose – is the name for this unique agricultural region).
The de facto response from Wilson’s church came from his long-time attorney, Gregory Dickison, in which essentially and condescendingly, he, too, told me to go away. I was not a worthy leader for the Christian Reconstructionist cause.
But, as they say, “What you send around, comes around.” Wilson’s bid to be the champion of CR causes blew up in his face. He got himself into trouble for using the University of Idaho facilities to sponsor an annual conference which featured neo-Confederate ideologues and theologians.
In defense of these men, the reader should appreciate that they were smeared by the sycophants at the Southern Poverty Law Center, an allegedly CIA-controlled, Communist-front organization. It has always seemed weird to me that such a promising organization as the SPLC in fighting “hate” should focus on only one demographic: white Christians.
Local liberals were outraged at Wilson, of course, and staged some ugly protests outside of the facility. Wilson pleaded with the Governor for police escorts. The Governor responded with essentially, “Man up!
In the midst of this controversy (circa. 2003), I was interviewed by a talk radio host at KUOI, the 89.3 FM radio station which is sponsored and broadcasts from the University. I was asked to comment on the Wilson controversy after having been previously interviewed on the Holy Grail phenomenon (e.g. Dan Brown’s book, The DaVinci Code had just made the best-seller list). I warned his listeners – his campus-based, hyper-liberal constituency – that Wilson and the Reconstructionists were favored by demographics. Because of their family size – unlike the puny reproductive habits of local ageing hippies – they would overwhelm county politics by sheer numbers within 20 years. I was right (as of 2024).
And a local professor offered this unflattering critique of Wilson’s group:
https://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/ngier/wilsonempire.htm
For my own more current assessment of Wilson’s ministry and the Christian Nationalist movement, go here: Captain Wilson.
Starting the Grail Church website in 1999, which continued for over a decade, it became the venue for most of my published material. Much of it was a re-hash from previous decades. But it was still relevant and necessary to my unique view of Christian Reconstruction which was “anti-statist” and then eventually became also “anti-churchist.”
Thinking I was safely insulated from such controversies as Wilson was embroiled in, I continued my writing, using the venue of the grailchurch website to publish such new works such as Hierogamy & The Married Messiah (2004), The House of Bethany book (2007), along with numerous Peshers, a sampling which can be found here from the 2001 to 2004 period:
https://2046ad.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Ash-Wednesday.htm
https://2046ad.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/August6.htm
https://2046ad.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/ignatius03.htm
https://2046ad.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/christmas02.htm
https://2046ad.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/paul.htm
But little did I know that the quiet little country town next to my homestead would soon ensnare me in an unwanted controversy . . .
(to be continued)
