A Response to Doug Wilson's Response to Kevin DeYoung

As readers of this Substack might expect, I have paid close attention to Kevin DeYoung’s recent blog post, On Culture War, Doug Wilson, and the Moscow Mood, and its resulting fallout. Though I have a forthcoming article on conservative Christian personalities holding each other accountable—really the gross lack of such—I have been waiting for Wilson’s response to DeYoung before publicly weighing in. That Blog & Mablog post arrived today and, while I was planning on focusing on DeYoung’s purposeful sidestepping of Wilson’s myriad theological and ecclesial controversies to focus on “mood,” what I consider to be a major tactical error that Wilson capitalized upon, his response is of a nature that warrants me joining DeYoung in “tone policing.”

I have the privilege of speaking with many gifted Christian writers, and the subject of Wilson regularly comes up. One of the most common sentiments shared with me is his gift for rhetoric. “Yes, he has all of these wildly heterodox theological opinions. Yes he has highly questionable opinions on human sexuality, and his response to people within his sphere of influence engaged in egregious sexual sin is extremely troublesome. But he has a gift for the written word—he channels Wodehouse and Chesterton.”

I beg to differ.

Truly talented authors have more than one mode. They know when satire and pugnaciousness are in order, and they also know when it’s time to turn off that stream of thought and to get serious. Putting the standards of Christian discourse aside, I agree that (when the situation warrants it) Wilson’s modus operandi of jovially poking the bear can be quite entertaining. Responding to DeYoung’s criticisms was most certainly not one of those moments. DeYoung was metered and charitable in his criticisms of “the Moscow mood” and, above all else, he was very serious about his concerns with Wilson’s behavior. A truly serious thinker, as anyone who follows Wilson can tell he fashions himself, would know it was time to respond in kind. What we received was the same old Doug Wilson. He proved himself to be a one trick pony.

I’m not going to go into the details of the fairly long piece—the unserious, cheeky turns of phrase to open sections, the ad hominems flung at his detractors, the wholly unnecessary self-promotion of one of his for-profit initiatives to open the post—one of DeYoung’s most pointed criticisms is that Moscow, by existing in a perpetual state of mockery, “undermines the seriousness of the issue they are trying to address,” and it would seem that Wilson is determined to prove him correct. All of the qualifying sentences about how DeYoung is a good Christian and serious thinker are completely undermined by Wilson’s seeming inability to, just for one article, not engage in the type of derision of others he has made his brand. He is unable to return the respect DeYoung afforded him, through giving him an equally adult-like response.

Doug Wilson is not a serious, gifted author who employs satire and mockery in an era that regularly calls for it. Rather, it would seem he is simply a terribly troublesome, controversial pastor who just enjoys being a jerk to people.