Getting to see what Brian and Eric are building at New Christendom Press was a huge source of joy this week. Good men. @Brian_Sauve@Eric_Conn Good work. If your discernment ministry runs on vendor tables and guilt by association, you’re not guarding the faith. You’re just guarding your feelings.
Imagine being Owen Strachan, James White, Eli McGowen, (or part of their group) and constantly being ratioed on almost every post.
Not by leftists but by former colleagues, students, and friends.
All while believing you’re “holding the line” when in reality, you’re an Overton straggler animated more by caution than courage.
As a result, they are bleeding their strongest men. In five years, they will be left largely with effeminates, boomers, and women.
The lesson is this: to not know what time it is, is an incredible ministry-crushing handicap—and sad to see.
Watching the outrage mob invent sins to attack @Eric_Conn and @Brian_Sauve is infuriating. Raising grievances, judgment calls, and personal offenses to the level of “sin” is disrespectful to the very Moral Law it claims to defend. It sullies the Word of God, not protects it.
It is enough to say, “I think that was dumb” or “I disagree” or “that was stupid,” but that gives the other party the chance to correct (if needed) or disagree (if justified). But they don’t want that.
What they want is to raise grievances to the level of egregious sin, so they can break out to accusation of “unrepentance,” and therefore feel justified in the ungodly schism they’re manufacturing and attach the stigma of unrepentance to finish the character assassination they started.
They don’t want “correction.” They want destruction, and they’ll twist the Word of God to do it.
Attention James White:
I know you were upset Stephen Wolfe didn’t denounce Ogden on his latest podcast, but, luckily for you, I have heard rumors that he will address it on his Patreon. So go subscribe, and make sure to turn your notifications on!!!
Pastor Doug, I genuinely love you and your family and everything that has come out of Moscow. I have learned more about marriage and family from you than from anyone outside my own father. My kids are shaped by the logic curriculum from Logos Press we use in Classical Conversations. My older kids attended Called last year. Your pen has marked my family in ways we will carry for generations. We are grateful.
We also attended War for the Normal. It was exactly that. Normal. No nazis. Just hundreds of sweet families finding their people. Church picnics. Family worship. Psalm sings. It was the most encouraging few days our family has had in recent memory. My postmil theology, which you started, got a shot in the arm. It felt like maybe we actually win this thing.
Which is exactly why I’m writing this.
Brian and Eric are not your enemies. The families in that room are your people. And this camp, myself included, could desperately use a grey haired saint who has been down this road before. That serrated edge cuts both ways. Some of that lumber is load bearing.
Build the bridge. You’re too important to this movement to be the reason it fractures.
I believe there are vanishingly few actual "Nazis" out there, but quite a few young men transgressing social/political boundaries out of spite for our current politics and social order—and that this is a classic "fire extinguisher and flood" situation straight out of Lewis. Liberalism is the default software programming of the entirety of our society, save a small rounding error. Much of that rounding error is coterminous with right winger young men.
Because of this, my energy is directed to building real things that defy the liberal spirit of the age as aggressively and practically as possible. As a result of this focus for over a decade now (all in the same church and same community), God has been kind enough to let us see a growing church, hundreds of godly families pursuing Christian piety, a flourishing and growing school, a growing local economy, and an influential Christian publishing house arise in our midst.
I also think many need to work much harder to understand why they're seeing the reaction amongst young men that they are seeing in right wing circles instead of playing cancel games, guilt by association, refusing to accept people's own self-descriptions as an honest portrayal of their positions, etc.
For example, I am *not* an advocate of National Socialism. I'm an American Christian Nationalist. My interest in anything WWII related is—as I have said countless times—an interest born of the understanding of how these events have functioned as a "founding mythology" of the modern liberal order and its fruit. On this point I have been clear, and repeatedly so, for several years.
If anyone listens to my talk at our conference this week, subsequent panel interactions, and my sermon on Sunday, they would see me speaking and behaving consistently with these convictions, especially after the post-conference response we issued.
Discussing why young white men are suddenly much more attracted to wicked ideologies of Nazism and white supremacy no more "legitimizes" or excuses their sins than discussing how the break down of the black family has led to higher rates of black youth crime legitimizes those sins.
Why is it suddenly not allowed to talk about how we got here?
Getting to see what Brian and Eric are building at New Christendom Press was a huge source of joy this week. Good men. @Brian_Sauve@Eric_Conn Good work. If your discernment ministry runs on vendor tables and guilt by association, you’re not guarding the faith. You’re just guarding your feelings.
Your pastor purchased sermons from a Democrat think-tank, Docent Group, and then preached their Cultural Marxism and CRT from the pulpit, while you sat on the front row affirming it - all while cosplaying as a supposed expert on CRT - and then defended him from all criticism on account of it.
Be quiet.