I Am Doug Wilson Jr.

Three reasons why I freely & closely identify with Doug Wilson—and why you should, too.

Feb 14, 2024

Introduction

Doug Wilson has become something of a litmus test in the evangelical world—a “dividing line” between the ‘respectable’ evangelical in-crowd, and the rest of us scorn-worthy bottom dwellers. A while back, Amanda and I were eating dinner with a nice couple attending the church I was pastoring in Florida. The meal was delicious, and the company was pleasant, but I knew the small talk had come to an end when the wife blurted out, “So what do you think about Doug Wilson?” Without skipping a beat, I grinned and replied, “I am Doug Wilson Jr.” They stopped attending our church soon after that. Mind you, this couple admitted to reading Doug Wilson, themselves, and to benefiting greatly from his instruction on parenting. Unfortunately, for them, the wife had a close girlfriend who was a member of the ‘Concern Sisters of America,’ (CSOA) and she had been dutifully warned to steer clear of the Bad Man from Moscow.

Doug Wilson has always been a strong drink compared to the watered-down alternative of today’s evangelical preaching, but there was a time, not too many years ago, when you could still admit to reading or listening to Doug Wilson, so long as you qualified it by saying, “I don’t agree with everything he says.” Back then, Doug Wilson was still treated with a modicum of respect by the Evangelical Establishment. In fact, there was a time when Wilson was published by the Big Eva publishers, invited to the Big Eva conferences, featured on the Big Eva panel discussions, and praised by a broad spectrum of Big Eva big shots, including now woke folk like Thabiti Anyabwile and Lecrae. Those days are long past. Due to a pandemic of Doug Derangement Syndrome (DDS), it’s no longer enough to say that you disagree with Doug Wilson, or that you don’t care for his satiric wit. No, in order to not get canceled, yourself, you must denounce Wilson totally and unequivocally for all the egregious things he has been accused of, and then completely distance yourself from him. It doesn’t matter that these accusations are patently false lies drummed up by histrionic women who hate Doug Wilson. Potiphar’s wife has spoken, and just like Joseph, Pastor Doug has been caught with his pants up, so, naturally, off to prison he must go!

If you don’t wish to join him there, as it were; blacklisted in your own circles, then next time someone blurts out, “Hey, aren’t you a Doug Wilson fan(?),” you need to passionately deny any and all association—call down curses, and kick up a dust storm if you must, but do it quickly, before the cock crows, because once a little Doug dirt gets on you, it’s hard to wash off!

So what prompted me to bath myself in mud, so to speak, by professing to be Doug Wilson Jr.? I’ll give you three reasons why I freely and closely identify with Doug Wilson, and with any other faithful man of God being unduly maligned—and why you should, too.

#1 A Debt of Gratitude

In my early 20’s, I was well on my way to becoming another squishy, milquetoast evangelical pastor trained to discharge a politically-correct preaching ministry and maintain a status quo that was “safe for the whole family,”—to borrow a slogan from Christian radio. I was steeped in a Big-Eva approved ‘soft-complementarian’ styled egalitarianism which gave lip-service to male headship in the church and home, while simultaneously subverting the entire paradigm of Biblical Sexuality. I fancied myself as “cutting edge” for adopting a ‘lightly reformed’ soteriology, while remaining woefully ignorant on the comprehensive way in which reformed Christian thought historically applied the full counsel of God’s Word to the full scope of our life.

I was winsome to the core, which made me a very likeable guy. Voted “class favorite” in grade school, “Prom King” in High School, and “Funniest Guy on Campus” at my Baptist University, by the time I entered vocational ministry, I had mastered politeness and diplomacy, and had I chosen, I could have likely ridden that wave of popularity straight through life, which I suspect is what too many pastors and leaders actually do.

Then, I discovered Doug Wilson’s blog, and he really messed my hair up. Wilson sparked a slow and gradual shift in my worldview. Over the past 15-20 years (I’m 43 now), you could say that reading Doug Wilson has “red-pilled” me, in a slow, simmering, ‘extended-release’ kind of way. Wilson became a bridge connecting me to another world filled with robust, historical orthodoxy and good ole common sense.

Over the years, as Wilson’s sage writing has percolated in my mind, I’ve learned a more faithful way to see the world, and to read the times. This has imbued me with a profound since of hope and duty. I’ve also jumped on the Classical Christian Education (CCE) train, taken up writing again, and learned to use words like, “embued.” For that, I owe Doug Wilson a debt of gratitude.

Plato wrote that, “No one is more hated than he who speaks the truth.” If you want to know who is speaking the most truth these days, start by looking around to see who is hated the most. In regards to cultural commentary, from a Christian worldview, Doug Wilson is the tip of the spear. Nobody is hated more. Nobody is slandered more. Nobody is cancelled more. And that’s because nobody is writing with more penetrating insight and piercing conviction.

Doug Wilson exemplifies the courage to tell it like it is. Naturally, there isn’t a lot of that going around these days, which means, courageous truth-telling, in its scarcity, is at a premium. As George Orwell is said to have said, “In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” When the truth is hated and scorned and outlawed, as it is in our day, then telling such truth takes immense courage; a willingness to be hated, reviled, and falsely accused. We should all be profoundly grateful to Doug Wilson for loving us enough to tell us the truth, even as he’s hated for it. At 43, I can unapologetically say that I hope to become more like Doug Wilson when I grow up; to be ‘scorn-proof,’ as he puts it; free to speak the truth, in love, even as the ‘haters’ falsely accuse such as being hateful. As Charles Spurgeon put it, “Bold-hearted men are always called mean-spirited by cowards.”

In his day, Spurgeon was hated and despised (much like Doug Wilson), by the fashionable Christian establishment of 19^th Century Victorian England. Censured by his own Baptist denomination, maligned in the press, and ridiculed by the leading pastors of his day, Spurgeon stood stalwart against a pernicious theological ‘downgrade’ corrupting the church. Spurgeon wrote, “I am quite willing to be eaten of dogs for the next fifty years, but the more distant future shall vindicate me.” He was right. History has vindicated him. Today, Charles Spurgeon is arguably the most oft quoted source in contemporary preaching. He is justly called, “The Prince of Preachers.”

It would be a travesty, for this generation, if we judged ourselves unworthy of mining the gold of great and godly wisdom on account of some cackling concern sisters working overtime to tarnish the reputations of courageous, counter-cultural voices like Doug Wilson.

In Luke 6:40, Jesus tells us that, “every student, when fully trained, will become like their teacher.” Spend time with me, and you’ll recognize a number of influences coursing through my veins; some are long dead, some still living. It’s inevitable that we become like our teachers. I’ve never met Pastor Doug Wilson, but my wife jokes all the time that I am “Doug Wilson Jr.” If the people closest to you can see it, then there’s no use denying it. In some small way, I am, and hope to become more like Doug Wilson. I’m not alone. There are tens of thousands of young men, young pastors, and young leaders reading Blog And Mablog (here), subscribing to Canon Press (here), and becoming Doug Wilson Jr. every day. The world is better for it.

#2 A Show of Gospel Solidarity

There’s another reason why I choose to associate with Doug Wilson, and that’s in order to show solidarity with a man contending faithfully for the gospel.

As I’ve written before (here): “Whenever a particular pastor is being effective in preaching the gospel and confronting the idols of the day, a favorite strategy of the world is to single out the ‘troublemaker,’ smear him with mud, and cause his name to become a stench in the community. This ‘divide and conquer’ strategy presses respectable people to distance themselves from the ‘troublemaker’ so as to preserve their reputation within the community. The Pharisees ran this play on Paul (and Jesus, as well). They had Paul arrested, imprisoned, and branded as a rebel-rouser. It was effective, as Paul wrote to the Philippians, “…not one church shared with me in the matter of giving and receiving, except you only…” The ‘Respectable’ Christians left Paul to rot in prison.”

Acting ashamed of faithful gospel preachers, to save your own hide, is adjacent to being ashamed of the gospel itself. In 2 Timothy 1:8 Paul tells a timid Timothy “…do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner. Rather, join with me in suffering for the gospel, by the power of God.” Later in that same chapter, in verse 16, we read of Paul’s gratitude to a man named Onesiphorus for standing with him: “May the Lord show mercy to the household of Onesiphorus, because he often refreshed me and was not ashamed of my chains.”

One thing the Doug Wilson “dividing line” has revealed is that a large number of professing Christians are easily dissuaded from standing in solidarity with faithful gospel preachers, and that, for fear of losing their social standing; which means a large number of Christians are just a cock crow away from denying the gospel itself.

To their shame, masses of modern evangelicals have been duped into thumbing their noses at one of the great gospel defenders of our day, and that, by a gaggle of gossiping biddies, who do the devil’s bidding. The rampant accusations against Doug Wilson of slavery apologist, abuse cover up, potty mouth, denial of justification by faith alone, and whatever smears they cook up next are all, by and large, proxy wars. They want Doug Wilson to be a stench in your nostrils, no matter which direction you’re coming from. Yet, the real, underlying reason for all the vitriolic slander against Doug Wilson is because these women are ideologically feminist to the core, and they hate Doug Wilson, with the heat of a thousand suns, for preaching a Biblical sexuality that exposes their naked feminist rebellion.

Doug Derangement Syndrome (DDS) is like the photo negative of the Hans Christian Anderson folktale, “The Emperor’s New Clothes”—it’s a clown parade of lies and slander aimed at stripping a good and godly man of his reputation, when even a child can see that Pastor Doug Wilson is fully-clothed and in his right mind.

If you’ve been misled by the mob, and want to genuinely discern the truth on Doug Wilson, you can start by remembering the golden rule. Would you want to be condemned in the kangaroo court of public opinion? Viciously maligned by folks with an anti-Christ agenda? Constantly have your words taken out of context and used against you? I didn’t think so. Once you’re thinking straight on that, you can go here and here for the truth.

If you’re one of the Concern Sisters smearing Wilson’s good name, then you should know that God hates, “A false witness who speaks lies, And one who sows discord among brethren.” (Proverbs 16:19) The place for you to start is with repentance.

#3 An Understanding of the Times

Doug Wilson was recently disinvited from speaking at a conference in my wife’s home country of Brazil. Evidently, the Concern Sisters of America teamed of with the Concern Sisters of Brazil who then teamed up with the radical left to help put the word out that the Bad Man from Moscow was coming for a visit.

Wilson ended up as front-page news in the Brazilian Intercept; a radical leftist smut rag, read by millions, which brazenly smeared Wilson as a pro-slavery white supremacist, an alt-right extremist, and a dangerous “Christian Nationalist,” which is suddenly the new bogeyman, and, according to the communists, “the greatest threat to democracy in the United States”

As intended, the hit piece caused a huge outcry, which led to calls for violence, and prompted the conference organizers to cancel Wilson over safety concerns. Not to be shown up, a group of ostensibly “conservative” Christian thought leaders in Brazil piled on accusations of sexism and sex abuse cover up, which they imported from the U.S.

In Wilson’s response to the good people of Brazil, he wrote, “…you need to recognize what the actual strategy is. You need to understand, if you are a follower of Christ, that you and your family are next. Winston Churchill once defined an appeaser as a person who throws others to the alligators, hoping to be the last one eaten.”

Perhaps the main reason I have referred to myself as Doug Wilson Jr. is because my wife and I have both gotten the “Doug Wilson” treatment ourselves; we’ve both been thrown to the alligators in some remarkably similar ways. Despite my being a ‘no name’ preacher hiding out in rural, small town America, they still came for us. I think that’s the lesson, here—the ‘no names’ are next.

Wilson has been maligned by major publications like Vice, Slate, The Guardian. Oddly enough, I, too, have been maligned and ridiculed by Relevant Magazine and libeled by the NY Post. Wilson has a “fan club” (“fan” being short for fanatic) which, apparently, reports him to the FBI. Oddly enough, his “fans” have been encouraged to report me, too.

Despite our best and earnest efforts, Pastor Wilson and I both have wives who outshine us in the controversy department, and they make it look easy! (When I say we have “wives,” I mean He has one, and I have one ;) It seems like nothing triggers radical feminists like happy wives supporting the patriarchy.

This past year, in what has since been dubbed “Spanking Gate,” Nancy Wilson melted the internet (here) by instructing parents on spanking their children. Three years ago, my wife also showed me up, and that, with one arm tied behind her back. She made one too many Instagram posts, from her sick bed, while battling cancer, on the topic of Biblical femininity.

And like Pastor Doug, she found herself a target of the Brazilian Intercept. It would seem that Doug Wilson & Amanda Durham are two of the most dangerous threats to communism in Brazil. The Intercept bizarrely featured Amanda in a hit piece aimed at trashing Biblical femininity. They published Amanda’s testimony about being sexually abused as a girl and used it to push a false narrative that Biblical femininity promotes domestic violence against women, effectively arguing that Amanda promotes the very thing which led to her abuse. Talk about blaming the victim! And talk about lying; Amanda was not even in the church as a girl, nor was the creep. That’s what they do; they lie, and seemingly without repercussion. As Solzhenitsyn put it, “We know they are lying, they know they are lying, they know we know they are lying, we know they know we know they are lying, but they are still lying.”

One of the most notorious liars out there; and, hands down, the most rabid Doug Wilson defamer of all, is the psychopathic social media page called, “Examining Doug Wilson.” Hiding behind a mask of anonymity, they have relentlessly fomented Doug Derangement Syndrome (DDS) and were one of the groups importing it to Brazil, by translating their smear campaigns into Portuguese. The defamation has gotten so bad that this past month Doug Wilson & Christ Church were compelled to hire a defamation law firm to defend against the onslaught.

Three years ago, this same group set their sights on me in a major way. My crime?—Launching a Christian dating site, based on biblical convictions, to help Christian singles find godly spouses. For such a criminal trespass, these accusers-of-the-brethren published a series of defamatory lies about me. They falsely accused me of ‘black face’ and maliciously branded me as a child sex trafficker. Try overcoming that stigma in any context, let alone, just 3 months after becoming the new pastor at the most historic church in town where nobody knew me from Adam. My ministry was over before it even started, as a group of prominent leaders, and closet sexual revolutionaries, used those lies in a concerted effort to destroy my reputation and try to run me out of town. I’ve addressed all of that here, here, and here.

Nearly three years later, these patently false and defamatory accusations are still plastered all over the internet. At this point, it might as well be on my resume, as it’s one of the first things to show up when you search for “Pastor Brandon Durham.” These vicious wolves have effectively made it all but impossible for me to ever seek a new pastorate.

And so, Amanda and I have learned, first hand, that if you follow Christ, and stand against the evils of our time, then you, too, will get the “Doug Wilson” treatment, and it can be pretty severe.

Carl Trueman understood this when he wrote, “You really do kid only yourselves if you think you can be an orthodox Christian and be at the same time cool enough and hip enough to cut it in the wider world. Frankly, in a couple of years it will not matter how much urban ink you sport, how much fair trade coffee you drink,..or how much money you divert from gospel preaching to social justice: maintaining biblical sexual ethics will be the equivalent in our culture of being a white supremacist.”

We saw this play out last year, when Jake Meador (pictured above), who writes for Mere Orthodoxy and the Gospel Coalition, published a piece (here) in the Atlantic attempting to make Christianity more palatable to the “de-churched.” In his uber winsome appeal, Meador hat-tipped his affinity for Marxism, lamented church abuse, and decried the shallowness of American churches, but none of that stopped popular ‘progressive’ outlet, Salon, from styling Meador (here) as both a fascist and a misogynist. As far as they're concerned, he, too, is Doug Wilson Jr.

So go ahead and grovel; play the appeasement game—feed the “Bad Man from Moscow” to the alligators. Feed your politically-incorrect preachers to the sharks. Just know that you’re next. And when they drag your good name to the bottom, rip it to shreds, and cancel you, no amount of winsome virtue signaling will save you, and there will be no one left to come to your defense.

In closing

Spurgeon once preached, “We admire a man who was firm in the faith, say four hundred years ago...but such a man today is a nuisance, and must be put down. Call him a narrow-minded bigot, or give him a worse name if you can think of one.”

Spurgeon ended that sermon with a mighty call for men of courage and conviction to rise up—thundering out: “Here is the day for the man, where is the man for the day?”

Doug Wilson is such a man; standing firm in the faith all these decades, and so are his many sons in the faith. We are Doug Wilson Jr.