Douglas Wilson responds to SBTS' Slavery and Racism report

Full of strawman arguments. For instance, I’ve never heard or seen any Black conservative evangelical (and I interact with hundreds at different CE conferences across the country) that define or view white privilege as “the sin of simply being white.” If Wilson’s arguments are going to be taken seriously outside his echo chamber and not seen as slanderous nonsense, he needs to give specific examples of the “woke” SBC evangelicals who actually hold to such an extreme view of the term. Also, owning up to the sins of one’s institutional past doesn’t mean that somehow you have embraced “white guilt.” (Hasty Generalization Fallacy).

By the way here is an article from 9Marks’ Jonathan Leeman that pretty much sums up the beliefs of the many SBC folk that I know who are working towards racial reconciliation. Their beliefs on issues such as White Privilege, Identity Politics, White Guilt, and etc are quite different than the straw man caricature that WIlson attempts to create in his article. https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/more-than-mere-equality/

…anything to do with Douglas Wilson. For a multitude of reasons, not the which of least is that he has continually referred to himself as a “Paleo-Confederate” (in his book Black and Tan) and engaged in revisionist history to defend the South and its’ peculiar institution of slavery.

I never cease to be amazed at how many evangelicals buy into his…writings. There’s more than enough garbage around him to warrant separation from all of it and him in particular.

I think that Wilson really misses the point here. The SBC is painfully aware that their denomination split from the Northern Baptists to preserve slavery—the Methodists and Presbyterians had similar splits, for reference—and those who led that split also put in place documents that guided the SBC through the end of slavery and nearly 100 years of Jim Crow.

As such, a good look at the arguments rendered for slavery might well reveal some errors in other places, and hence correcting the errors of today could very well require repentance from the errors of the past. It’s really a theological version of root cause analysis like that used in the popular 8D form. As a rule, a well done 8D will involve management and even quality systems changes, not just “sorry our product didn’t work”.

Or, put in more theological terms, one part of a real apology is to not just say that what you did is wrong, but to clarify how you know it is wrong, and what steps you are going to take to reduce the chances it won’t happen again.

(Wilson hasn’t done this well, IMO, since he accused Boz Tchividjian of being an ambulance chaser)

[Jim]

Huh… weird. My great-grandparents emigrated from Finland in the 1920s. Wilson, you’re scaring me.

I think Doug’s point is that the blame for slavery is being put on people who clearly had nothing to do with slavery (hence, coming from Finland in the 1920s). The sin is in being white, not in being guilty of actual slavery or racism.

[Larry]

Huh… weird. My great-grandparents emigrated from Finland in the 1920s. Wilson, you’re scaring me.

I think Doug’s point is that the blame for slavery is being put on people who clearly had nothing to do with slavery (hence, coming from Finland in the 1920s). The sin is in being white, not in being guilty of actual slavery or racism.

Contrary to some comments here, I think Wilson’s article does not “miss the point” but gets “the point” very well. As far as “ambulance chaser”, based on Wilson’s personal knowledge of the situation he talks about, he is in a position to make that point.

Wilson does bring up an interesting question, though: at what point could we say past grievances have been satisfied?
I was reading an article earlier today, by coincidence, about a former Japanese Prime Minister, Yukio Hatoyama. Commenting on the Nanjing Massacre, Hatoyama said, as I recall, roughly paraphrased, “We will keep apologizing until we are forgiven.”
Forgiveness is the natural (and Christian) endgame for apologies and repentance, and a necessary precondition to full reconciliation. I think questions of 1) how this could be achieved, and 2) how we would know if it happened, are quite reasonable.

Wally, Tchividjian is a full professor (tenured I believe) with extensive experience prosecuting child sex crimes who not only accurately predicted what would happen with the cases in Moscow, but also is one of the preeminent experts in avoiding the same in the church. I’d say he was “providing free and accurate advice that Wilson didn’t want to hear”.

Now if you want to persist in defending Wilson’s slander, feel free, but don’t be surprised when people take that into account.

In this case, what Wilson is doing, really, is the exact same thing he seemed to do with Sitler and Wight; he’s applying cheap grace, an apology but without meaningful change and introspection. “Oh, slavery, yes, sorry about that, will try better next time.” It’s a modus operandi which responded to the rightful furor over Southern Slavery as it was—plagiarism and a remarkable soft-pedaling of the horrors of the “peculiar institution”—by adding the sources to avoid plagiarism and effectively re-releasing the same work.

I read the article that Joel linked to and I believe we should all read it to get a broader perspective on the issue. http://https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/more-than-mere-equality/

One of the things that I thought of as I was reading the 9 Marks article that Joel shared was that some were suggesting that the past sins of others could never be atoned for, but that the best someone with white privilege could do was to vote a certain way. (the author of the article was not suggesting this, he was just pointing out a perspective that some people had).

That got me to wondering if there are a lot of people who tend to be politically conservative who end up reacting with closed ears to this subject simply because they have come to expect that the only thing they will be asked to do is vote or donate in support of a certain political party that they do not support whenever this subject comes up.

Perhaps I have rose colored glasses on, but I wonder what would happen if every time an issue of racial injustice came up, those raising the issue reached out to both political parties and asked them to work together to find a policy solution that would best help those who had been oppressed rather than using it as a campaign rally issue. Perhaps they have and we just have not been aware of it.

I know this was a rabbit trail off the Wilson article, and I am not defending his approach. I’m simply pointing out that sometimes this whole subject gets bogged down in politics to the point that the main issues are missed or worse yet are not even heard.

Wow is me! To the outward appearance I am a white man, whose family came from Arkansas. Following Ancestory.com I discovered that ancestors on my mother’s side were slave owners! O, then I find out that I am 2% African! Wow is me! I don’t know if I am a victim or the abuser. Help!!!

Btw, I do know that I am forgiven through the finished work of Jesus Christ; and I know that I attempt to live by God’s grace with the Spirit’s help to follow the teachings of the New Testament.

But for those who wrestle with making the sins of past generations whole, what New Testament advice can you give to some one like me? Victim or abuser? hmmmmm If I am missing something, I sure would like to make it right!