This article by my husband will be helpful. One reader said:
*This article provides the wisest, most insightful, and comprehensive biblical analysis I have read on the Moscow Mood—which has influenced and infected many areas of Evangelical Christianity.
Doug Wilson's 'serrated edge' substitutes lampoon for lament and crosses into language Scripture forbids.
mereorthodoxy.com
Brandy, you may want to pass this on to your husband. While you and I have never met, at least not as far as I know, we have a number of mutual friends and acquaintances at Springfield URC/Gospel of Grace Church/Heritage ARP/Heritage OPC, of which I was close to the longest-term member before transferring out when the church joined the OPC earlier this year. I posted this comment on your husband's article. I've held off for a long time on commenting, but I believe a key fact is being missed by others who are responding to the article: being the wife of a former Army officer and former Air Force chaplain, you understand that the debate over "coarse language" isn't just "he's icky" or "that's gross talk." It comes from a personality and blunt approach to things that, in its proper place, is legitimate. In other places, it causes serious problems, and those problems are addressed by Scripture's warning about putting "brawlers" and "strikers" into church office.
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I usually avoid discussions of Doug Wilson for many reasons, among them being that I sympathize with a previous commenter [on Sexton's article in the comments section of "Mere Orthodoxy"] whose pastor said, with regard to one of Wilson's books, "I don't care much for Doug Wilson but when he is right he is right."
In his political fights, Wilson has the right enemies. Less so in his ecclesiastical fights, though on some points other than the Federal Vision and related doctrines, I agree with him. He teaches sovereign grace, and that's more than I can say for most of modern American evangelicalism. People who warmly welcome Piper and MacArthur into the "big tent" version of what it means to be "Reformed" often don't have a good argument for why MacArthur's dispensationalism is tolerable but Wilson's views are "outside the camp," other than that MacArthur was nicer to confessionally Reformed people when he disagreed with them.
However, having seen this article by Jeremy Sexton discussed repeatedly on numerous Reformed message boards, with a lot of attention given to the point of whether it is legitimate for Christians to use strong and even near-profane language, I think a lot of people are missing the relevance of this item from the author's biography: Sexton is a former U.S. Army officer and was later a U.S. Air Force chaplain.
He knows what coarse talk means.
For more than two decades, I have lived and worked outside Fort Leonard Wood in the rural Missouri Ozarks, the home of the US Army Engineer School, Chemical School, and Military Police School. Sexton and I live about an hour and a half apart. We've never met or talked, but Sexton and I both know more than a few things about what it means to live and work in places where coarse talk is normal (at least outside church buildings), and what an "alpha male" personality involves, and how it affects church life.
I could cite other pastors in the Ozarks who are far better equipped than me to explain the differences in dealing with young military personnel who join churches and have a "Type A" personality. Let's just say it's nothing like what people might expect in a rural Southern community in which the churches are usually led by older men who have been around forever, know everybody in their community, whose ancestors founded the church they now serve, and act much more like a grandfather than like the aggressive young men who have become common in the "YRR" and "New Calvinist" movements. There is a huge difference between the "Old Calvinism" of the traditional Reformed denominations and the "New Calvinism," and the differences may have to do more with personality than with doctrine. A good case can be made that the individualism and anti-authoritarianism and lack of respect for older generations found in much of "New Calvinism" has led to a de-emphasis on the Reformed view of a multigenerational covenant and on ecclesiastical accountability beyond the local church, but that goes beyond the point I want to make here.
The "coarse language" issue is a symptom of an underlying issue.
I think both Sexton and I would agree with Wilson on at least one thing: because most Americans today have never worn the uniform and have little understanding of either the military or the police and just how horrible the very real dangers are of criminals inside our country and enemies outside it, most Americans take our safety for granted and fail to understand the truth of the principle that is often wrongly attributed to Orwell, namely, that "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."
Wilson has a real point when he says American culture and the American church have gone weak, and in some quarters, have "gone woke." Recognition of that truth is a major part of why people are attracted to Wilson.
The question is whether, after correctly diagnosing the problem, the offered prescription cures the disease, makes it worse, or addresses some of the problems while creating new ones.
I lean toward the third.
Coarse language, rightly applied, is at least arguably biblical. Wrongly applied, it does great damage.
Luther is often appealed to, and legitimately so, as an example of coarse and even profane language by some of the leading Reformers. It doesn't take much to find things Luther said and wrote which would offend most American evangelicals today. The same is sometimes said of Calvin, though he was far more careful in his targeted use of fiery language. The problem is that on some points Luther was seriously wrong, including his language about the Jewish people, which for centuries now has been picked up and used for flat-out godless purposes going far beyond Luther's beliefs.
Violence and anger are sometimes warranted by God's Word. A violent and angry personality may be one to which the warnings of I Timothy 3:3 apply: "Not given to wine, no striker, not greedy of filthy lucre; but patient, not a brawler, not covetous."
I don't think Wilson can fairly be accused of being greedy or covetous. Perhaps he himself is not a "striker" or a "brawler." It is a matter of fact that Wilson has been quite patient with at least some of those with whom he disagrees when he thinks they are in agreement on majors but disagreement on the minors. But are those who follow Wilson going to be as patient as I know Wilson has sought to be with men who agree with him on many issues but disagree on others?
Wilson is from a generation that due to the wheels of time, with age and illness and death, is beginning to pass off the ecclesiastical scene. When he passes, he will be known not only by his actions but also by the actions of his followers.
Wilson knows that. He's done a lot of good work. But like many other Reformed leaders of earlier eras, he may be known as much by his problems as by -- to cite only two examples -- his commendable work for many decades in promoting Christian education and the need to apply a Christian worldview outside the walls of the church.
Jonathan Edwards is today often appealed to, and correctly so, by Reformed people who reject the stereotype that Calvinists are scholastic bookworms who care nothing about evangelism or personal conversion and merely fight each other over tertiary and quaternary points of doctrine. What we often forget is that Edwards' immediate successors were known for their "downgrade" of Reformed distinctives, picking up what were minor points in Edwards' theology and making them into major problems that troubled Reformed churches for several generations until they died out because they were clearly and obviously contrary to the Reformed confessional consensus. Modern Edwardseans such as Gerstner and his successors at Ligonier rightly reject Edwards' peculiarities and focus on his main points.
Time will tell how Wilson is viewed. My guess is history will see both the good and not-so-good parts of his work. Much of how his legacy gets viewed will depend upon how his successors behave, and what parts of Wilson's work they choose to emphasize.
The "coarse language" debate about Wilson, sadly, is a tip of an iceberg that gets a lot of attention while the underlying issues that give rise to his blunt speaking often get missed. And that goes for both those who appreciate and who attack Wilson.
