Responding to Andrew Wilson’s Criticisms of Me

In this episode Trent responds to Andrew Wilson’s criticisms.

Transcript:

Recently Eastern Orthodox cultural commenter Andrew Wilson criticized me as a virtue signaler who is too critical of “political Christians” that are actually trying to fix the culture.

So in today’s episode I’ll talk about where I agree and disagree with Andrew and the difference between being a strong, assertive Christian, and a bad, overly aggressive one. And to make sure I didn’t misunderstand anything, I messaged Andrew and showed him this script so my reply incorporates some of what he wrote to me in that exchange.

First, let’s take a look at Andrew’s comments on the Patrick Bet David show:

Andrew may be speaking of critics more generally here, but I don’t have a problem with drinking beer or smoking. I have a hard time justifying habitual smoking, but if other Christians want to smoke or drink, I’m not going to say their sinning. I do think smoking can come off as an embarrassing LARP when people lean into it as part of their identity as a Christian influencer.

And I think Andrew would agree that no one is above criticism. In a previous video, which I’ll link to below, I praised Wilson for using shrewd debate tactics that resulted in matt Dillahunty rage quitting their debate.

In that debate Andrew playfully kept calm and got Dillahunty to flip out by bringing up stuff that was personal to him, like Dillahunty being in a de facto gay relationship, and so he won the exchange. But on the Whatever podcast Andrew was generally seen as losing this part of his exchange with a feminist who used the same tactic on him. She calmly brought up a legal fact about Andrew’s wife and then Andrew aggressively responded to her:

Now, in a five hour discussion with people insulting you, it’s not uncommon to lose your cool. We are all only human. But this kind of aggressive behavior isn’t uncommon for Andrew and other people in his orbit, so it’s fair to point out and discuss the merits of acting like this.

Like any public proponent of Christianity, there’s good and not so good elements to Andrew’s approach. In our email exchange Andrew said, “Sewing circle Christians tend to focus on why the person who is moving policy and people’s minds on policy isn’t acting in a pure enough way and often will actually side with the critics of that person effecting change in order to purity signal.”

I agree it’s cringey when some Christians do everything they can to please non-Christian critics, even by taking unnecessary pot shots at fellow Christians. It’s a kind of ideological simping similar to male feminists throwing all men under the bus to appease women. But my criticisms aren’t because of how other people complain, it’s because God’s revelation has said we shouldn’t engage in these behaviors and I definitely care about appeasing God.

I agree with Andrew that being overly puritanical about language, i.e. what I’d call true tone policing, is lame. I cover this in my episode on Christians swearing where I said profanity, in itself, isn’t wrong and could be justified. I used the example of Stephen Colbert engaging Philip Zimbardo who said God was wrong and the Devil was right. When Colbert gave him the correct theology on the matter, Zimbardo said, “You learned well in Sunday school” to which Colbert epically replied, “I teach Sunday school, mother effer.”

But that’s different than just dropping an F-bomb to just insult somebody, like Andrew does in this clip.

St. Paul repeatedly says overseers in the Church must be gentle and not quarrelsome or violent and that all Christians must put away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and foul talk from their mouth. “ Jesus said in Matthew 5:22, “whoever insults his brother shall be liable to the council, and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ shall be liable to the hell of fire.” And 2 Timothy 2 says, “the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kindly to every one, an apt teacher, forbearing, correcting his opponents with gentleness.”

Now, if I were to just tell people this without citing scripture, they’d probably say I was effeminately “tone policing”, so I appreciate when Nick Fuentes admits he thinks this way about the Bible itself:

But that’s only true if you think masculinity is raw power that doesn’t give an F about anything instead of seeing true masculinity as controlled strength that submits to God and patiently endures hardship. In 1 Corinthians 16:13 Paul even says to be strong and andrizethe, literally “act like men” because men are the standard of strength.

Now I’m sympathetic to some of Andrew’s criticism. For example, I’ll get people who criticize how I debate non-Catholics like Gavin ortlund or Alex O’Connor and say I’m too nice or I’m not blunt enough. To which I say, “Okay, then why don’t you debate the best defenders of Protestantism or atheism and show us how it’s done.”

Andrew’s criticism is similar, “Don’t critique how I engage people unless you’re willing to engage them.” But I don’t see how this criticism applies to me in particular. I used to do debates surrounded by college students and now I focus on just engaging the best defenders of other worldviews in one-on-one debates.

I’ve applied to be on Jubilee and I’m open to being on panels with hostile opponents, but I don’t want to engage in a fruitless shouting match. I’m also not sure if I want to do something like a Whatever podcast discussion because one of its main effects is giving free publicity to Only Fans pornographers, thought it can be a good place to evangelize these people.

But even in environments like the Whatever podcast or Jubilee, there are political Christians like Charlie Kirk or Michael Knowles who have done well without resorting to the more aggressive tactics Wilson uses.

When it comes to culture war issues, I’m not sure what Andrew means. I did a discussion with Alex at playing with fire on premarital sex, which was fruitful, and I debated Pearl on men and marriage, which felt like banging my head against a wall.

In our message exchange Wilson said Christian apologists don’t focus on “Dating, culture, world affairs, policy, politics, and prescriptions”.

In many cases that’s because our own audience and critics tell us to “stay in our lane” and not talk about those things. Although, I do talk about some of those things and I think Christians should engage man-o-sphere content, but I’m not going to do formal debates or discussions on fringe topics, silly issues, or prudential judgements we can reasonably disagree about. 2 Tim. 2:23 says, “Have nothing to do with stupid, senseless controversies; you know that they breed quarrels.”

I don’t think there is a big difference between the “political arm” and the “apologetics branch” Andrew references. To me, they are too sides of the same coin.

Apologetics shows people Christianity is true, and politics works to influence people to enact various policies that should reflect the truth. But in many cases, to convince people to do something like vote against abortion, you need to convince them the Christian position is true, or you need to engage in apologetics.

And I agree that, to change culture, you have to do political things like lobby, campaign for candidates, and argue for policy changes and prudential actions among individuals and communities. These things are outside my wheelhouse so I’m grateful for Christians who do this work. One example I’d mention would be Virginia House of Delegates member Nick Freitas whose show I went on earlier this year. Nick is a great example of how to be tough and masculine (I certainly wouldn’t want to get in a fight with the guy), how to advance God’s kingdom through politics, and how to be charitable while doing that.

In fact, the most masculine men I know, the guys who could legit kill you with their bare hands, don’t go around puffing out their chests and verbally abusing people. The guys who do that are usually overcompensating for some insecurity. True masculinity reveals itself in being assertive without being unnecessarily aggressive.

For example, in William Albrecht’s debate with Ryan from NeedGod.net, Albrecht exposed how Ryan used a fake quote from the Church fathers in a previous video that he probably got from a lazy Google search and he was assertive about it to not let Ryan weasel out of this revelation.

Christians shouldn’t be pushovers, but we also shouldn’t, as Andrew says, do *everything* we can to maintain political power. After all, Christians can’t do evil so that good may come, as Paul says in Romans 3:8.

In our exchange Andrew said, “Politics is ugly, dirty, brutal. There is doxxing, swatting, assassination attempts, reputational destruction, slander and rumor mongering.”

That’s true, but Christians shouldn’t use those tactics against their opponents even if they are used against Christians. We shouldn’t dox people knowing this could lead to them being harmed. Or spread lies and we definitely shouldn’t assassinate people, even if they talk about killing us. In our exchange Andrew said he agrees we shouldn’t do those things either, but I would add on to the list that we shouldn’t even be verbally abusive when we are mocked. We should instead imitate our Lord who endured abuse without striking his abusers.

That’s why I agree with what Joel Berry from the Babylon Bee said on Tim Pool’s podcast about how Christians are handicapped in fighting evil because we have principles and our opponents don’t.

And One of those things we can’t do as Christians is abusively attack or insult those we disagree with. You can use blunt language to call someone out for being dumb, evil, or both but there are clear cases where the language goes too far and just makes Christians look bad.

Catholic philosopher Trent Dougherty has profanely lashed out at his opponents

And even threatened to beat them up

When Jay Dyer was on Piers Morgan, he repeatedly mocked Pentecostal prelate Talbert Swan by calling him Tilda Swinton, the name of a Hollywood actress.

Sam Shamoun has also frequently insulted his critics:

Thankfully in November Sam asked for prayers to stop swearing and claimed the insult your mother is a whore was a metaphor for them being children of the whore of Babylon, not statement about their mother’s sexual history. It seems like Sam won’t use that language in the future and I hope he doesn’t, because most people would take that as a literal insult and not a metaphor about their own sinfulness

When Jesus insulted people, he accurately described them as hypocrites or evil. He was exposing their sin to lead them to repentance. Jesus didn’t just abuse them for his own amusement or to get clicks. However, some terminally online people will say you can be a good Christian and still go scorched earth on your opponents since Jesus whipped the moneychangers in the temple But the Bible doesn’t say Jesus whipped people. John 2:14-15 says

In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers at their business. And making a whip of cords, he drove them all, with the sheep and oxen, out of the temple; and he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables.

Jesus is described as overturning the tables after the moneychangers left the Temple, not throwing tables on top of them. And the clause, “he drove them all, with the sheep and oxen, out of the temple” isn’t the best translation of this passage. That’s because the common Greek words for “with” are not in this part of the passage. It literally says:

“And having made a whip of cords all he drove out from the temple both sheep and oxen, and of the money changers he poured out the coins and the tables he overthrew.”

Before the Council of Nicaea, only Origen commented on this verse and he said the whipping was a spiritual lesson and not an historical event since if Jesus really did whip people it would reveal a reckless lawless spirit incompatible with Christ’s virtue. An early medieval source records the following story about Theodore of Mopuestia rebuking a bishop named Rabbula of Edessa for hitting someone at the Constantinople synod in 394. The text says

[When rabbula] was accused of hitting priests, he replied that our Lord also struck [people] when he entered the temple. The Interpreter (Theodore of Mopuestia) stood up and rebuked him, saying: “Our Lord did not do that; he only spoke words to the people, saying, ‘Take that from here,’ and overturned the tables. But he drove out the bulls and sheep with the blows of his whip.

This is why N. Clayton Croy has argued in the Journal of Biblical Literature that the Greek grammar of John 2:15 refers to Jesus using a whip to make the cattle leave, not the people. This conclusion is also reached in the article, “Violence, Nonviolence and the Temple Incident in John 2:13-15” which notes that verse 16 reveals Jesus didn’t recklessly overturn tables but was measured so as not to harm the caged doves, which he ordered to be taken away.

Jesus also didn’t hurt the cattle since a makeshift rope would have simply gotten them to move and the animal’s movement would have caused the moneychangers to follow them out of the Temple to not lose their merchandise.

Jesus expressed zeal for his father’s house, but he didn’t express his zeal through violence against living creatures. And when Christians engage in debates they should do the same thing, be zealous but not verbally violent.

Andrew did that very well in a debate with a Muslim on how Islamic societies promote physically unhealthy practices like widespread cousin marriage. Which caused his opponent to say this:

And I appreciate that Andrew recently labeled me as a top-tier apologist, but with the caveat that I appeal to a particular “ned Flanders” audience.

First, the Simpsons has really betrayed Ned Flanders because in the first seasons he was just a good father and neighbor. His Christianity said more about Homer’s sub-par lifestyle than Ned’s problems. It was only in later seasons that Flanders became a scrupulous weirdo. In fact, this process happens to lots of sitcom characters where they get exaggerated to the point of caricature and is called Flanderization.

In our exchange Wilson said, “The ned flanders thing refers to the irony of Ned flanders being the only decent person in Springfield and everybody else being horrible basically…those arent the people I try to reach but the mr. burns types instead.”

And that’s fair. Most people are lukewarm about the truth, they aren’t like psychos on the Internet. I want to share the Faith with the greatest number of people who are the furthest away from Christ. So, if my approach isn’t attractive to a minority of people online, but it is attractive to a larger number of average people on and offline, then that’s okay with me. I doubt my book Why We’re Catholic would have reached such a large and wide variety of people if it was an aggressive, profanity laced tirade.

Finally, I agree with Andrew that Christians shouldn’t needlessly attack one another. Given the wide variety of people who need to hear the Gospel, the population of evangelists and apologists needs to be diverse. That way that there is always someone in the Body of Christ that appeals to every social group that exists outside the body of Christ, within limits. For example, we don’t need polygamous Christians to evangelize polygamous pagans.

Some people engage in these attacks because they want to virtue signal or feel superior. And some people on the Right attack ideological fellows for a more sinister reason that Daniel Darling notes in his book on Christian Patriotism:

Here is a dirty little secret that I’ve learned after a career in advocacy: Most of the nastiest underhanded opposition doesn’t come from the Left, though the Left opposes much of what conservative Christians believe on every level; most of it comes from people who agree with you but are fighting for attention, for turf, for funds, for tribal affirmation. Many of them have a Bible verse in their social media profile and profess to be Christian. The narcissism of small differences flares up easily. A perceived traitor is far worse than a true enemy, our gut tells us. We should be careful of this instinct.

Christians who agree on major moral issues should stand up for one another and see ourselves as being on the same team, but that doesn’t mean we should give each other a free pass so we can to “win.” It’s fair to point out how a fellow Christian is using an ineffective method, a bad method, or an evil method to try and accomplish some good end. And we can as Christians point that out without our disagreement becoming an “attack” on the other person that invites a vicious counterattack.

One way to do that is to either privately reach out to a person we disagree with, or ask the person to review our public criticism of him, as I did with Andrew for this episode.

Brian Holdsworth was a great model of this recently when instead of attacking a Catholic woman on Tik Tok with a bad take on the liturgy, he privately reached out to her and then critiqued her position without publicly identifying her.

In contrast, Timothy Gordon and Joe Enders recently critiqued my colleague Joe Heschmeyer and accused him of incompetently missing or deliberately hiding a papal quote they claimed refuted his position on biblical headship in marriage.

But in Joe’s response he noted that he did include the full quote in the episode and showed clips of Gordon admitting he didn’t even watch Joe’s entire 12-minute episode before launching into an hour-long critique of it.

No Joe, it doesn’t sound like that all. And really, a lot of this drama could have been avoided if Gordon and Enders had just sent a script or even a detailed outline of their critique to Joe before recording this episode. I’m glad I do this now for my rebuttal videos and there are videos in the past where if I had done that, I could have avoided basic mistakes in the argument I presented.

And even for regular people, there are many cases where you may have a better chance of changing someone’s mind by privately reaching out to them to avoid the messiness of other commenters dogpiling on them. Although, in some cases, if they put forward a serious error or a bad attitude, a charitable public correction can be warranted.

In our email exchange Andrew stressed that he and I agree on far more than we disagree and are on the same team, and I agree. And I would say he, and any of you watching, are free to point out problems in how I approach renewing our culture and I am free to do the same towards other Christians with a public platform. Once again, Darling puts it well:

Politics, as we know, is a rough-and-tumble sport. It always has been. I’m not naive. Yet while we can strongly disagree, even in public, with other Christians when it comes to the application of our faith to public policy, we should treat one another with love and respect instead of trying to “own,” destroy, and defame people with whom we will share eternity.

So I hope this episode was helpful for you and if Andrew Wilson would like to help me get on some of these more notable panels to engage people on the most important moral issues of our time, I’d be happy to for the assistance. And if you’d like to learn more about this subject I recommend Fr. Gregory Pines new book Training the Tongue and Growing Beyond Sins of Speech.

Thanks for watching and I hope you have a very blessed day.