A Little bit of Douglas Wilson goes a Long Way

I preface this by saying I am not much of a Douglas Wilson fan. His “let’s educate the best and brightest Christian students” model is, in my opinion, unbiblical. (Yes it’s personal. The school under discussion here is a Wilson-model school) and regardless of its merits, his justification of his model demonstrates that he is inept at statistics. (Students who take Latin do better in a second foreign language? Duh! Can you spell “self selected”?) He is a Presbyterian wannabe but his church has no oversight. And he likes to wax nostalgically about the antebellum south and how things weren’t so bad for the African slaves. Then there is Federal Vision, unwarranted arrogance, and general acute, congenital, smugness...

Wilson is not happy that Al Mohler apologized for his public support for C. J. Mahaney. In his article, Wilson performs a bait and switch. Mohler correctly apologizes for his public, boisterous support of Mahaney which is unseemly and potentially harmful. And yes, Mahaney is only accused. Wilson makes a big deal out of this. He charges Mohler with abandoning Mahaney, and makes a ridiculous (fatuous even) comparison to those who abandoned Paul because he was accused of "stuff". Paul was not abandoned because he was accused of "stuff", he was abandoned because some of those who were with him walked away from the faith. Secondly, there is no evidence that Mohler is abandoning Mahaney. Rather, Mohler is apologizing for a misguided over-the-top public exoneration. Mohler would not need to apologize if he privately supported his friend Mahaney, and perhaps he still does. It is the potential affront to real victims that Mohler should have avoided, as much as he may believe Mahaney to be innocent.

If Pastor X or Professor Y is accused of sexual misconduct, and the accusation clearly exceeds (as it does here) the threshold where one can easily dismiss it as obvious extortion or revenge, then your very public support of the accused must respect the potential effect on victims--even if it turns out that there are no actual victims. This is not "believe the victim no matter what" but rather "let's be restrained and publicly cautious until there is an independent investigation."

In my profession (professor), I could be accused. It is not far-fetched. This are my instructions to my friends: by all means talk to me and, if you believe me, give all the private support you can to me and my family. Please don't abandon me. But there is no need for unseemly, dogmatic, public support. I will not be hurt if publicly you say that you do not wish to talk about it until the investigation is complete. I won't like waiting for an investigation--but the bottom line is that there is a protocol here, Mohler violated it, and I applaud him for apologizing.

Wilson, on the other hand, is in his common position of missing the boat.