Murray Campbell has written recently about people in Australia beginning to get interested in Doug Wilson. I want to pick up here on one specific thing he says in the article:
As a quick aside, the Doug Wilson who was preaching and teaching some useful and valuable ideas a decade ago is quite different from the problematic man and his movement today. Whether he always held the positions he is now propagating and kept them quiet, or whether he’s shifted over the decade, I don’t know which is the case. Either way, the Moscow vibe, as I call it (Wilson lives in Moscow, Idaho) brings a chill that we do not need in our churches or country.”
My concern is this. A decade ago takes us back to 2015. That is more than 10 years after the Federal Vision had first emerged as a theology and movement, 8 years after a group of people had gathered together to make a declaration on the matter, a significant time since Presbyterians in the US has started to get twitchy and five years after the issues at Oak Hill relating to Federal Vision had come to a head. Regarding Christian Nationalism and slavery, Wilson has been writing about those kinds of things back in the 1990s. Similar some of the other seriously concerning issues including the Stephen Sitler case go back a decade earlier.
Now, it is fair to say that for some time, Wilson, like others such as Mark Driscoll was accepted by the US reformed mainstream as a shoot from the hip maverick but basically okay. And to be sure, he did and presumably still does have things to say that are interesting or even helpful ( he actually gets one positive citation in my 2010 MTh dissertation).
However, it is important to recognise that the house that Doug Wilson built, not just it’s foundations but the entire house, walls, windows, doors, roof and furnishings was completed many years ago.
If we think that there wasn’t a problem back in 2015, 2010 or 2005, then my concern is that we might not grasp the seriousness of the issue now. We are right to be concerned about Christian Nationalism and indeed about the MAGA movement’s links to this. However, Wilson and Federal Vision are about more than Christian Nationalism. Further, the particular forms of Christian Nationalism that are flourishing with links back to Wilson are rooted in the overall theology that was being propagated 20 years ago, never mind 10.
Faithroots 