Dr B. B. Warfield once held the chair of Polemical Theology at Princeton Seminary. There is a great need for holy polemics--the will and skill to hammer the ruling prejudices and reigning vanities of Unbelief.
Douglas Wilson is one such warrior. He responds to some of his facile critics:
. . . But did Isaiah hate women?
“Moreover the Lord saith, Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, And walk with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, Walking and mincing as they go, And making a tinkling with their feet . . .” (Is. 3:16).
When I say that some women are biddies, this is not because they differ with me. It is because they are biddies. If I say a woman is a harridan, it is not because she disagrees with me about something. Other factors are in play, one of them being that she is a harridan.
This is one of the central reasons why a certain kind of feminist mind is not capable of engaging with serious thought. Were I to describe a man coming out of his apartment in a wife-beater tee, gold chain nestled in his chest hairs, would I be attacking men? Or would I be attacking a particular version of little coxcomb men?
Suppose a group of feral feminist females organize a slut walk. Bear with me — I am reproducing yet another instance of the problem.
When I set it up this way, and I am attacked for despising women, why does no one notice that I am actually attacking the women involved for perpetrating such an outrage upon femininity, for despising womanhood? These are the bacchae. They will tear you. The whole point is to tear you. Going back to Isaiah, woe to those who call the defense of women an attack on women (Is. 5:20
They intend to tear you apart, but before they do it, they must tear femininity apart. And before they can do that, they must tear language apart. That is why the profoundest insults against femininity are necessarily called feminism.
Progressives have been dismantling the West for several centuries now, block by block, brick by brick, column by column, and if I dare point it out, they wheel on me and blame me for living in a ruin. They have wanted to introduce the universal corrosive of egalitarianism, and they have wanted the end result — magically — to come out as respect for women.
But as Anthony Esolen has cogently pointed out, you can’t have “half a jungle.” You can’t throw down all the walls and then wonder why there is no shelter any more. You cannot demand that everyone treat women as though they were men, and then cry foul because they are doing so.
And of course, C.S. Lewis nailed it:
“In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”
When Nate was in high school, playing football, there was one other team that used to suit up a girl. We had to work through what to do if she ever took the field. You let her run on by, and do not touch her. Taking a stand like that could easily have been turned into yet another instance of Wilson bigotries in play, when it was actually respect for the work of Christianity over centuries, building that fragile edifice called respect for women.
Some of the women who despise femininity know that they do. Others who despise it are not yet aware of the consequences of the platitudes they mindlessly repeat. When I engage with any women, and the treatment seems rough to you, remember that this treatment is not because they are differing with me. It is not because they are attacking my dignity or position. It is because feminism is the suicide bomber of femininity.
What Goes On Then?
So then, all these assembled reasons cannot be why some folks like me. Not one of them seems to ring true. I am admittedly something of a partial observer, but I am in a unique position to respond to the question. People do sometimes tell me why they like to read what I write. Let me see if I can reduce it to two factors.
I will state it simply first, and then expand on it. I believe that many people like to read what I write because I am clear, and because I fight.
Many dear Christians are fighting for all the right things, but they have been taught poorly, and their strategic plans are a muddle. They think they are in the run-up to Armageddon or something. Other Christians, academics mostly, are clear about the issues at stake, but they don’t fight. Still others, the trahison des clercs contingent, are unclear and they won’t fight. Or, if they fight at all, it is surreptitiously for the wrong side. And there are a handful of evangelical leaders who know what is happening and why, and who fight. I believe that I am one of them. Many people believe that this is what is most necessary.
When you do this, battle is joined. Don’t be unsettled — that’s just the sound of guns. Perhaps you were thinking of sending your kid to New St. Andrews, but all the smoke and controversy has you spooked. But look — our mission as a school is to train up young men and women to be culture-shapers and to do so despite much opposition. We teach them actually to engage with the principalities and powers. We do not instruct anybody in the arts of playing spiritual paint ball.
What my upcoming documentary (early November) describes as a “free speech apocalypse” is coming down on us. Think of that as the general election. Right now we are in primary season — conservatives are deciding who will represent us when everything comes to a battlehead. Shall we be led by Denethors or Striders? By those who fight or those who will not?
If you have read this far, you are probably one of the good guys and so let me share something, just between us girls. Don’t tell anybody. Although there have always been ups and downs, taking the last 30 days, compared to this same period last year, my blog traffic has quadrupled. This is not due to the controversies about Sitler, et al. It is the other way around. The reheated pastoral controversies — resurrected from a decade ago — were urgently brought up and in as a way of dealing with the problem of my growing influence. Beginning this last summer, because of things like Bruce Jenner, abortion and race, the Obergefell decision, and the CMP videos, the impact of Mablog grew dramatically, and something needed to be done about it. It is a dirty primary, in other words. But don’t get distracted by that — if the primary is like this, what will the general be like?
The response to this will no doubt be something like “you poor, persecuted buddy.” But actually, I don’t feel that way at all. I actually think that this is what I am built for.
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