Even conservative complementarian evangelicals should be speaking out against Doug Wilson, according to historian and author Kristin DuMez.
In an Aug. 16 column on her Substack, the professor at Calvin University addressed the issue in light of the latest national media coverage of Wilson on CNN that prompted a positive response from U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
“Conservatives who know better have stayed silent. They have been negligent. Some have been cowardly. Many have been complicit,” she wrote.
Kristin Du Mez
“Whether they realize it or not, they have been bullied into silence. They’ve watched what happens to people who do speak out. But they justify their silence by telling themselves they’re focusing on ministry, they’re avoiding conflict and distraction, they’re tending to their flocks, whom they wouldn’t want to alienate or offend, because then they wouldn’t be able to pastor them anymore, would they? They ease their consciences by telling themselves they’re focused on the gospel, not contentious political issues. They massage their egos by telling themselves they’re above the fray.”
Once considered a fringe extremist, Wilson is an Idaho pastor whose profile has increased through the Trump administration and Hegseth in particular. His views against women’s rights, for theocracy and against the LGBTQ community — among others — are so extreme Southern Baptist leaders and other evangelical leaders stay away from him.
Du Mez pushes back against those who say merely talking about Wilson gives him credibility and therefore people like her should remain silent.
“When I wrote Jesus and John Wayne, I situated Wilson not as a typical evangelical, but as a case study in how what counts as ‘mainstream’ shifts over time. … It’s important to understand how someone like Wilson maneuvered himself into a position where CNN travels out to Moscow to interview him. He didn’t get there without a little help from his friends.”
In Jesus and John Wayne, Du Mez wrote: “When he published Future Men in 2001, Wilson certainly wouldn’t have located himself at the center of evangelicalism. In fact, he was a stalwart critic of mainstream evangelicalism. Although his views on gender and authority aligned in many ways with those of other conservative evangelicals at the time, Wilson often carried those views to extreme, or perhaps logical, conclusions. A woman wearing a man’s clothing was ‘an abomination.’ If a wife was not properly submissive, it was a husband’s duty to correct her. For instance, if dirty dishes lingered in the sink, he must immediately sit her down and remind her of her duty; if she rebelled, he was to call the elders of the church to intervene. In terms of child-rearing, ‘discipline must be painful.’ God required the infliction of pain on those dear to us. Homosexuality must be suppressed, not excluding the possibility of the death penalty, though banishment was also an option. Wilson endorsed the concept of ‘biblical hatred,’ a form of militant masculine faithfulness exhibited by one of his heroes of the faith, Scottish minister John Knox.”
Likewise, Wilson’s views on race were documented by the author as extreme in her book.
“Wilson’s ‘extremism’ is extreme, ideologically. But it’s becoming increasingly mainstream.”
“In the 1990s, Wilson had coauthored Southern Slavery: As It Was, which questioned the supposed ‘brutalities, immoralities, and cruelties’ of slavery. The slave trade might have been unbiblical, he allowed, but slavery most certainly was not. To the contrary, the radical abolitionists were the ones ‘driven by a zealous hatred of the word of God.’ Horrific descriptions of slavery were nothing more than abolitionist propaganda.”
Then she issues this warning for today: “The truth is, Wilson’s ‘extremism’ is extreme, ideologically. But it’s becoming increasingly mainstream. And it was never quite as fringe as people made it out to be. This explains, too, why even today, few pastors are speaking out against him.”
Du Mez then issues a challenge “to well-intentioned, good-hearted conservatives”: “Say something. Do you disagree with Wilson’s views on race? Say so. Be specific. Call out the harm. Get out your Bibles. Do your exegesis. This is what you’ve trained for. Do you think taking away women’s right to vote is a bad thing? Say so. Be specific. Do you believe in male headship, but not that kind of male headship? Say so. Talk to your brothers. Will you get hit from both sides? Sure, you will. But isn’t it your job to speak truth? This is what you signed up for.”
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CNN interviews Doug Wilson, and Pete Hegseth likes it | Analysis by Mark Wingfield
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Why these Christian men believe women shouldn’t have the right to vote | Analysis by Mallory Challis