Serrated Edge for Me but not for Thee
I am not one who enjoys the food fights that pass for Christian discourse in 2025. I remain mystified by people whose apparent sole aim in public discourse is to fight with other Christians, and I have a deep sadness when people seem constitutionally unable to read fellow believers in the best possible light (even when there is real and substantive disagreement). The journey of my own life has led to me having a lot of friends in a lot of different corners of Christianity, and it bothers me not a whit when a fellow believer has a different theological or political view than I have. I love good and even vigorous discussion about areas of disagreement where the people are operating in good faith, but I walked away from the desire to win every argument or persuade everyone to my side of an issue over twenty years ago. That said, I have opinions and convictions, and I share mine frequently, and publicly. I don’t often engage in online argument with those who hold to different views, mostly because it is low impact and basically unsuitable for actual persuasion and edification. I am sure I fail in this every now and then but for the most part I find the rivalries, fights, and accusations (not to mention the soap opera melodrama that goes with it) to be boring and unproductive.
The purpose of this article is to explain why I care about the recent onslaught of criticism (by believers) against Pastor Doug Wilson of Moscow, Idaho. My agenda in writing this is to:
Explain the context of why I care about it
Preemptively address my own areas of cordial disagreement with Doug
Defend Doug against what I felt was an egregiously unfair attack on him by Russell Moore on the recent Christianity Today podcast
Suggest what is ideologically at stake in those ongoing intramural fights
And finally, make an offer to certain stakeholders in all of this
Pastor Wilson is a friend of mine. I do not mean by the word “friend” that I have read some of his books, or like some of his teaching, though that is true, too. I mean we know each other, talk, correspond, and have a relationship. This is a good setting to have for disagreement with a fellow Christian – when you actually know the person and can have a real dialogue. Tweeting at each other or doing the equivalent of a diss rap in a podcast is, shall we say, sub-optimal if the goal is productive and edifying communication. So I am in a fortunate position that if I disagree with Doug Wilson on something, I always have the option of calling him, writing him, and talking to him man-to-man. We have done that multiple times. He is an incredibly pleasant person to privately talk to about disagreements. I should add, anecdotally, that in the thirty years of my adult life since my father died, I could count on one hand how many times a Pastor has offered to pray for me and pray with me, and I would still have fingers available, and none of the fingers used would have been because of my own Pastor. Doug and I spent a couple hours together at one point having a private conversation, and he concluded our time together by doing something that no Pastor has really done in my thirty years of orphaned adult life – asking to pray for me, right then and there. My willingness to defend Doug comes because he is my friend, because on the matters I am defending him against he is worthy of being defended, and because he has shown pastoral cares in a day and age that I believe it is hard to come by.
However, I do have substantial disagreements with him, from time to time. I wish Canon Press had never published Stephen Wolfe’s embarrassing book, The Case for Christian Nationalism. This is both pragmatic and principle-driven. Pragmatically, it associates Doug with something I know he does not deserve to be associated with. As a matter of principle, it is just a sloppy, lazy, and poorly-argued book that goes far outside Doug’s own theological and cultural commitments. Note: This is a different criticism than the one I offer for Doug using the term “Christian Nationalist.” I am keenly aware of how different Doug means this term than the aforementioned author does, and Doug has been a leader in separating himself from the insidious by-products of ethno-nationalism that a certain group of people embraced head over heels. I do not believe Doug is in their camp, and yet I believe Doug has taken on a term that (a) Allows people to falsely accuse him of it, and (b) Does not even mean what Doug uses it to mean. So yes, the CN thing is a source of disagreement on those labeling pragmatics and publishing decisions, even if Doug and I both believe in the idea of Christian nations, and both believe that secular neutrality from the state is a myth (which I do).
I wish Doug had not written his slavery book but that is not because he has not bent over backwards to clarify what he does believe and what he does not believe. He has. And while I think he is still wrong on much of the historical claims he makes about the confederate south, I know there is not an iota of defense of race-based chattel slavery in Doug Wilson. Rather, I believe he took on something that we in finance refer to as “asymmetrical risk/reward.” I am well aware of what the risks are for Doug in taking on this topic, but for the life of me I have never understood what the reward is. The upside is non-existent, and the downside has been far, far too many people turned off by so many other messages they would truly benefit from hearing. This saddens me.
I don’t have any problems with the 19th amendment and believe an entirely Biblical view of family and marriage is still compatible with all adult members of a household voting. I get exactly what Doug is saying on the issue, and yet I think it is an ill-advised way to make the case for a Biblical family unit – by allowing that soundbite to crowd everything out (or worse, to not know that it would). Substantively, I just don’t think women voting remotely violates the principles Doug is after, but even then I am comfortable with reasonable men (and women, of course) agreeing to disagree. And Doug has hardly made this a leading issue or sword-to-fall-on kind of thing. I do not think it comes from misogyny, but I do think it is an unforced error. And that is all I have to say about that.
Last but not least, I do not believe that Christians should use sarcasm and “serrated edge” with each other, and I do not think the arguments Doug uses for such are persuasive. I understand the case for a [prudently-used] serrated edge with unbelievers, not Christians, and I also think that the sharp elbows of people who have used a serrated edge over the years (in the Biblical text and in church history) were of a vastly different maturity profile than today’s young, Reformed men. I think this is the least controversial thing I will say in this piece. This is mostly a prudential disagreement in that I simply assess the audience of serrated edge, speaking in admitted generalities, as too eager for it – and though I am not a Pastor, and though I do not play one on TV, I confess to being highly desirous of less abrasiveness from those who claim Christ, and more wisdom.
Okay, so there we go – I have not started my article yet, but I have gone public with various disagreements with Pastor Wilson, my friend, over the Christian Nationalism label (he and I have both discussed this difference publicly), the slavery subject, the 19th amendment, and the serrated edge. So anyone who takes what I am about to say as unqualified endorsement of Pastor Wilson will be violating the ninth commandment, which in today’s proudly antinomian church might be the default expectation. But I can only control what I can control, which is not much.
I found Russell Moore’s comments on the CT Bulletin podcast absolutely outrageous – like, stunningly rude, belligerent, unfair, false, defamatory, and unhelpful. On that last adjective, I want to be clear – they were extremely unhelpful to the cause of Russell Moore. Unlike many of Moore’s post-Trump, post-COVID critics, I do not believe he is my enemy. I disagree with a lot of what he has said, but I am at peace with the disagreements and have benefitted from what he has to say on multiple occassions. His podcast co-host, Mike Cosper, is a good friend and a prolific author. I guess I just don’t find it that hard to benefit from some of the things I see come out of Christianity Today and at the same time benefit from some of what I see out of Doug Wilson. I could use other Paul/Apollos examples in today’s church if you want, but my point is that the basic instinct of liking things you agree with and not liking things you don’t agree with, and not feeling the need to alter those likes or those agreements based on other things people have said is not complicated to me. I happen to think that though we are not the leading warriors of Twitter and other paradigmatic venues of intellect and courage, there are a lot more people like me than those who feel the need to exclusively wear one uniform, no matter how incoherent their tribalism becomes. But when Russell Moore uses the adjective “Satanic” to describe what he identifies as a Doug Wilson teaching, and refers to Doug’s message as “of the antichrist,” and someone who “denies the gospel” – he is destroying any chance of people seeing his often credible contributions to the Kingdom as, well, credible. These are completely, totally unacceptable things to say, and he owes Pastor Wilson a public apology.
If it were just a case of Russell using his own “serrated edge,” falling into the safety of “podcast courage” to say some hyperbolic things, I would probably be less appalled. First, my gratuitously excessive need for clarity … If Russell doesn’t like Doug, I don’t care. Russell is not for everyone. Doug is not for everyone. Fine. And if Russell disagrees with Doug on certain components of family, or of the aforementioned issues I brought up, I get it. These are not essential issues, but they are important, and I do not believe everyone needs to see eye-to-eye on all of these things. I wish everyone would read each other in a more favorable light (and I think most of Mike Cosper’s comments on the podcast were more aligned with doing just that), but I do not take exception to Russell having different views than Doug on any of the cultural or even theological matters that were brought up. There are three things I think need to be said about Russell’s comments beyond the outrageously excessive things I cite above (“antichrist” and “satanic” and “denial of the gospel”).
The insinuations made about Pastor Wilson and pedophilia because of the Sitler matter were grotesque, unfair, and lacking foundation. I am not getting into the specifics of it here because the Proverbs tell me not to, but also because Doug has elaborated a thousand times on that entire affair. I have absolutely no problem with anyone disagreeing with the way Christ Church dealt with it, but using it as a blunt instrument to impugn Doug, knowing the obvious emotional weight of the subject, is indefensible. I can’t even imagine dealing with a situation like that myself, but Russell has to know deep down that Doug was dealing with a situation pastorally. He may very well believe Doug handled it poorly, or that he would have handled it differently, but Russell was not making a prudential critique – he was using it to poison the well, knowing that the mere appearance of the loaded topic would load the deck against Doug. It was a cheap shot, done on purpose, that lacked the fairness and nuance. Believe Doug handled a pastoral matter wrongly if you wish, but insinuating a soft spot for pedophilia (“relative to the sin of empathy”) was dishonest and unfair, period (and also an inaccurate depiction of what Doug has said about empathy, but I digress).
Maybe the most unfair part of Russell’s tirade was his claim that those men who have sat under Doug’s teachings are “losers who are finding a way to blame women for their own lack of responsibility … the results are terrifying and awful.” I am sure Russell has come across men who have done that. I have. And I understand he may say his line there was merely anecdotal, but the context was clearly Russell responding to Mike Cosper’s discussion of the appeal Doug has to many anti-progressive Christian men. The context was not anecdotal but sweeping, and if it were anecdotal it was, again, unfair and uncharitable. Why should Doug Wilson be penalized for a small number of bad actors? I have come across men who reacted to the Trump moment by favorably leaning into a progressive view of culture, a compromised view of church, and a weak-kneed approach to dealing with secular assaults on the gospel. Many of the men I know who have done this are big Russell Moore fans. Would it be fair to move to the generalization that Russell is responsible for this, or that these men are “losers” who are mere creatures of Russell’s teaching? I would not do that because it is not true, because such hasty generalizations are both moral and journalistic malpractice, and because there are counter-factuals that disprove it as a systemic claim. And there are counter-factuals in the tens of thousands that disprove what Russell claimed. If he wants to encourage more sobriety and Christian wisdom in the men who listen to Doug, is calling them “losers” and implying they are misogynists the way to get through? Or is having an impact in the sanctification of impressionable and teachable people not actually the point, at all? Is it really just a matter of dunking on the other side, the same thing Russell and his band of friends critique in others all the time?
Russell says he is very bothered by some of what Doug says about Dearborn, Michigan, and that he somehow believes Doug was suggesting that people can be Jews in a Christianized America or Muslims in a Christianized America, as long as they don’t act like it. He seemed to get the most animated in dealing with the implications of Doug’s belief that a civil magistrate that feigns neutrality is not a good thing. And here we may be getting to some real substance that goes beyond calling people racists, sexists, and implying they have a soft spot for pedophilia. I truly believe Doug and Russell have legitimate and substantive disagreements on what it means to make truth claims in the public square. My belief is that this topic of disagreement is one of the most important subjects in the moment in which we find ourselves. What I would say to Russell is that you are impeding the cause of clarity in this debate with accusations of “Satanic” and “gospel-denying” … And I would say to Doug, as one sympathetic with the cause of Christ’s Lordship in all spheres, that distractions with antebellum slavery, the 19th amendment, and the label Christian Nationalism, do the same.
This last point is where I want to make some closing comments. I am defensive of Doug Wilson about accusations that he wants to use the state to coerce Christianity because I have had to listen to the same false accusation against my late father my entire life. I understand the significant impulse many have to dramatically resist what may sound like state-imposed Christianity. It is a repugnant concept. But my friends, arguing against compulsion does not, in any way, lead to the claim that the state is a secular-neutral institution. Believing in structural pluralism (as I do), even while rejecting ideological pluralism (as I do), is not inconsistent. And wanting all of Dearborn, Michigan to become converted (from the preaching of the gospel) is not authoritarian or statist or racist or any other silly accusation en vogue today … it is Christian! You know what is not Christian? Not wanting all of Dearborn, MI to become Christian. Now, if someone out there believes that we could see all of Dearborn, Michigan converted and it what would make no difference in their public or civic life, be my guest, but you believe something that is utterly fantastical.
I want nothing more than for a large group of reasonable, Godly, faithful, gentle, sober-minded people (men and women) to get together and hash out what it means for Christians to live in the public square with truth claims that are not compatible with the lies of neutrality that the unbelieving world gets to hide behind. This discussion has to happen. And we may not ever get to perfect agreement on this side of glory. But we are not even going to start until the deck is cleared of the animosity and unfairness Russell exhibited in this podcast. As a general observation, Christians continue to allow intramural food fights to prevent the more substantive conversations we need to have. How could this not upset me?
No one needs to care what I think and I am not kidding when I say that I have worked for most of my adult life to be at peace with liking so many people who do not like me and liking so many people who do not like each other. I recommend this approach to Christian interactions for many of you – it has resulted in a much more faithful peace in my inner-self. But I do care that Christians avoid the distractions that impede our witness. And the things I have written about in this piece are unhealthy distractions, they are impeding our witness, and they are damaging our testimony in the public square. We can do better. We must do better.
I am offering to fully, completely sponsor at any time, at any place, with any rules of engagement both sides work out, a rendezvous between Doug Wilson and anyone from Christianity Today. The same offer stands for a few other public critics of Wilson who have never met him in person. I’ll host in Newport Beach or New York City. I tend to favor pretty nice restaurants. I’ll cover travel for a group to go to Moscow, Idaho. Being with their community in person (as I have now done several times) went a long way in clarifying misconceptions. I don’t care where or when – I am willing to do whatever it takes to get reasonable men and women whose views of one another have deteriorated to the point of me having to write this article in the same room. My expectation for such a meeting is not perfect agreement, and perhaps not even marginal movement towards greater agreement. Sometimes people see things differently and remain unpersuaded, even after personal relationships take hold.
But now pretend we are not talking about Wilson, or Moscow, or Russell, or Christianity Today, or any of the other online rifts that will take over people’s consciousness by this weekend. No matter who the people may be, or what the subjects may be, my suggestion is that there are a lot of people out there in the Christian community we of our faith call “the church” who would benefit immensely from breaking bread together, walking and talking together, and perhaps agreeing to disagree. Or you never know - maybe even finding more agreement than previously thought possible.
“Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification.”
~ Romans 14:19