Brian Auten piece at Mere Orthodoxy on evangelical dark web and counterinsurgency reminds me of, well, Mark Driscoll and Mars Hill circa 1998 to 2008, which could be regarded as a case study in "evangelical dark web" the beta version

There's a new and brief piece at Mere Orthodoxy by Brian Auten that discusses an evangelical dark web.  There is a preface from Jake Meador.

Preface from Jake: The “evangelical dark web” is a designation adopted by a group of evangelical social media personalities and bloggers centered around a few various web sites such as For the Christian Intellectual, Pulpit and Pen, Sovereign Nations, and Enemies Within the Church. The movement is a self-proclaimed insurgency meant to combat perceived liberalism in other evangelical organizations and denominations. While it’s own positions are broadly in keeping with the political beliefs of the old guard Religious Right, it’s rhetorical positioning is more in keeping with a neo-fundamentalist stream of evangelicalism.

Auten's piece begins in a pretty straightforward way.  It has reminded me that, as he used to joke from time, Mark Driscoll used to say he wanted to put the "fun" back in fundamentalism.  But let's look at the checklist Auten provides because the range of behaviors might be what some readers would wish to attribute to a Mark Driscoll but they could just as easily be implemented by figures like John Shelby Spong or Nadia Bolz-Weber types and their associated fans. In other words, these techniques are techniques that don't have to be deployed by people because of specific doctrinal, dogmatic or political commitments.  But in this checklist case note the target population of 18 to 30 year old males, that IS a target demography that fits with Mark Driscoll's lifelong mission statement about which people he's wanted to reach and present himself as a role model to.

https://mereorthodoxy.com/evangelical-dark-web/

One could assert that the self-proclaimed “evangelical dark web” is insurgent in character. Its overall aim is institutional takeover. Its intermediate aim is intellectual capture of the “target population” (e.g. 18-30 year old conservative evangelicals, particularly males).

Its strategy is multi-form and typical for insurgencies:

• embarrass the regime in power
• make it [the regime] appear weak and corrupt
• create (online) zones of counter-control
• tempt the regime in power to over-respond in a heavy-handed and/or inept manner
• through expansion of its captured target population over time, overwhelm the regime.

Its primary tactic: the rhetorical hammer.

Granting that characterization, an obvious question for those orthodox Protestant Christians who reject the evangelical dark web is how to run an effective counterinsurgency against the “evangelical dark web?” These are some embryonic thoughts: ...

For those who were at Mars Hill but more particularly between 1996 and 2008, one of Driscoll's methods was to contrast the Mars Hill community with traditional denominations, whether Episcopalians or Baptists or Methodists, which were presented as not taking scripture seriously or as insisting upon regulations, rules and restrictions that Driscoll and the other leaders said were not actually in the Bible.  Driscoll honed the art of the public relational stance within which he presented himself as the sensible centrist.  He wasn't John Macarthur nor was he John Shelby Spong.  But, in summary, embarrassing regimes in power (more traditional denominations) and making them appear weak and corrupt was a fairly steady part of Driscoll's rhetoric in the earlier period of Mars Hill before it went into its second phase of multi-site organization.  The first multi-site phase was around 1999 to 2004 ish when there was Harambee, Ballard and the U-District campus arrangement.  The church consolidated down to a single site around 2004-2005. It was during that period that preaching consolidated around Driscoll more exclusively.  In the earlier multi-site phase Mike Gunn preached at Harambee, Lief Moi preached at the U-District site, and Driscoll preached at Ballard.  

On the matter of creating zones of counter-control, Midrash 1.0 and particularly 2.0 seem relevant.  The earliest Midrash was a php discussion forum that had no moderation and was open to the public.  Midrash 2.0 was a members-only strictly Mars Hill version of the same core idea but it had moderators, well, officially there were moderators but the extent to which it was moderated could be up for debate.  Driscoll would eventually say in the 2013 through the present that the very idea of a php discussion forum was a bad idea but that is, to be terse, a rhetorical hammer move.  Driscoll clearly had no problems with Midrash in its early forum when he was writing as William Wallace II.  

For those who only read about "Pussified Nation" and have never read the whole thing you may need to know that despite reports of Driscoll's denigrating comments about gays and women that he reserved special vitriol for James Dobson and Promise Keepers.  This would seem strange since people would imagine James Dobson to be on the Religious Right and therefore in the same basic wheelhouse as Driscoll.  But ... if we're looking at Mark Driscoll's early activity in terms of a range of dark web activities then the focus we'll want to keep in mind is that it would make sense for Mark Driscoll, in Seattle, in the late 1990s, to emphatically declare that Dobson and Promise Keepers were the real losers.  It was part of brand delineation.  

When William Wallace II writings made headlines there were headlines to the effect that Mars Hill lost members over Driscoll's homophobic and misogynistic rants and that's possible, but that is more in the realm of editorial commentary rather than analysis of what Driscoll was saying and what the social and historical context was for his stunt.  I've written at some length on how Driscoll's agitprop in "Pussified Nation" (which you can read pretty much in full at Wenatchee The Hatchet if you go through the posts with that tag) is probably best thought of as a kind of agitation propaganda to see who would be on board with what would later be called Dead Men, an integration propaganda campaign in which men in the 18-30 range, more or less, were summoned to participate in becoming more active and integral parts of the Mars Hill community.  Extent writings from Mark Driscoll as William Wallace II can be read at Wenatchee The Hatchet by way of a tag, too.  What is striking about that persona is that through WWII Driscoll explained what he intended to do, to rile people up, criticize the way things were done (particularly by the James Dobson/Promise Keepers wing) and see who was with him on his mission to do better. Midrash 1.0, though Driscoll has long since repudiated it, was an essential aspect to William Wallace II's activities.  

I'll go as far as to suggest that the rise of Mark Driscoll is inexplicable without reference to the concept of the "evangelical dark web".  The people at Mars Hill who set up the church website and the php discussion forum circa 1998-2002 may not have realized they were making evangelical dark web, the beta version, but that is in essence what they developed.  That was, per Brian Auten's taxonomy of methods used by participants in the dark web, the formulation of a means of counter-control by younger guys who founded Mars Hill, if we want to discuss what they were doing as a kind of prototype to a "dark web" system before there was a more recent "dark web" to discuss.  

At the risk of casting the net a bit more widely, Driscoll wouldn't even be all that unique in developing a proto dark web system.  Douglas Wilson has arguably done more or less the same thing in his orbit.  What writers on the progressive and left side have noted is the extent to which what they identify as alt-right or new right groups have appropriated the techniques of the left as a way to poke fun at establishments.  It may be the case that the nascent alt right groups have learned enough about left/progressive tactics to turn them around on the left.  Since I've referenced Jacques Ellul in the past I might suggest that the techniques of mass media technocratic cultures for assimilating, agitating and integrating partisans isn't strictly "left" or "right".  

When Auten turns to a practical set of methods to address the evangelical dark web a number of things stick out.

...

Granting that characterization, an obvious question for those orthodox Protestant Christians who reject the evangelical dark web is how to run an effective counterinsurgency against the “evangelical dark web?” These are some embryonic thoughts:

Counterinsurgency has three traditional components: isolate and degrade insurgent activity, build target audience resiliency (e.g. strengthen, defend, and counter-radicalize), and lastly, if and where needed, reform the at-risk regime.

For countering the evangelical dark web particularly, these steps will need to be taken.

[1] Demand citations and evidence for every assertion. Demand context for every pull quote. Fact check every infographic. Force them back to original sources (books, dissertations, etc.) at every possible juncture.

[2] Question all characterizations every time (e.g. if they say someone is a “socialist” or “cultural Marxist,” always make them define the term and support the assertion with evidence).

[3] Interrogate the interrogator: research, write and post accurate stories about the individuals and groups in the “evangelical dark web” (e.g. what things have they been involved with in the past; previous attempts at this type of activity; how do they get their funding?)

...

Having been part of a journalistic process chronicling the Mark Driscoll plagiarism controversy of late 2013 these general observations have substance.  Mark Driscoll was not really "taken out" by secular or progressive or liberal media.  His reputation collapsed when Reformed and evangelical conservative writers began to dig into the allegation that he was a plagiarist and substantial evidence was found that he had used the work of other authors without giving them credit in the first editions of his published books.  Those books have since been revised and updated in second editions.  For those who weren't following the coverage of the time, when Janet Mefferd provided evicence of Mark Driscoll's plagiarism she pointed out that she wasn't even the only or even the first person to have broached the topic of Driscoll and intellectual property, and linked to work I had already done before her.  Of course her materials were taken down and her show did end up off the air but that is more a question for how institutional Christian media platforms handle dissent, which is thematically related to the evolution of an evangelical dark web but not exactly the same as that.

Auten mentions something in his point 5 that I want to consider.

[5] Fight the temptation to get certain outlets or personalities to do battle on your behalf. A critique of the “evangelical dark web” by the Gospel Coalition, ERLC, the New York Times, Washington Post, or the Southern Poverty Law Center, or a byline by Emma Green, Peter Wehner, John Fea, Warren Throckmorton, et. al. will backfire and easily become ammunition for the next round of attacks.

When one of my relatives wanted to learn about Mars Hill in 1998 he asked if the church could provide a doctrinal statement. What he got was a photocopy of the 1998 Mother Jones article that discussed Mars Hill and other churches.  In hindsight it seemed sketchy but it arguably gets at the heart of Auten's warning, if Mark Driscoll and the early Mars Hill Church could be seen as a forerunner of what is today's evangelical dark web then hostile press from a vetted institution, particularly in the press, will be used as publicity material for the group that received negative coverage.

Within Reformed communities The Gospel Coalition is being regarded more and more as a bad joke.  One of my friends from the Mars Hill days and I were discussing TGC a couple of years ago and he said that he's found that among the ex-MH people we know fewer and fewer take TGC seriously, particularly when the topic is whether they're saying things that could be construed as historically Reformed.  Now folks with an Internet Monk or Boars Head Tavern background might reminisce about the Truly Reformed a bit, but this is to say that Auten's caution has cause.  Even among writers in the progressive and left wing there have been some criticisms about the way the Southern Poverty Law Center has handled things.  Take Nathan V. Robinson's "The Southern Poverty Law Center is Everything That is Wrong with Liberalism".

The Southern Poverty Law Center, the wealthiest civil rights organization in the country, has ousted its founder, Morris Dees, and president, Richard Cohen, amid unspecified allegations of workplace misconduct by Dees. Dees had been with the organization since creating it in 1971, while Cohen had joined in the mid-’80s, and the SPLC’s shake-up can be seen as part of the MeToo reckoning in which conduct that was accepted for years is finally being dealt with appropriately.

But the organization has long been dysfunctional in even deeper ways, and the story of Dees and the SPLC is useful for illustrating some of the worst and most hypocritical tendencies in American liberalism. If we understand the full extent of what went wrong in this organization, we’ll better understand the ways in which a shallow “politics of spectacle” can take hold, and see the kinds of practices that need to be categorically rejected in the pursuit of progressive change.

The Southern Poverty Law Center perfectly shows social change done wrong. It was a top-down organization controlled by an incompetent and venal leadership.* It was hypocritical in the extreme, preaching anti-racism while fostering a racist internal culture and being led by men whose own commitment to equality was questionable. It didn’t care about listening to and incorporating the viewpoints of the people it was supposed to serve. It was obscenely rich in a time of terrible poverty, and squandered much its considerable wealth. Finally, it picked the wrong political targets, and focused on symbolic over substantive change. Each of these practices goes beyond the SPLC, and is endemic to a certain kind of “elite liberalism” that desires “progress” without sacrifice. It is the kind of liberalism recognized by Phil Ochs in 1966, and its chief characteristics are a deep hypocrisy and a lack of willingness to seriously challenge the status quo.

Now having not read much by John Fea I don't have anything to say about Fea, but having read Warren Throckmorton over the years I would say there's a thought experiment to do.  Since Trump has been elected Throckmorton has made reference to the "court evangelicals" who approve of Trump's policies and ignore Trump's conduct.  I didn't want Trump to get the nomination and regarded it as bad that he won ... but I have also written about how as racist presidents go Trump may be bad but he's not necessarily Woodrow Wilson ... or even where Native American concerns are involved a Theodore Roosevelt.  

Here's a thought experiment, imagine that someone were to describe the late Rachel Held Evans as a "court Episcopalian" in the way that Warren Throckmorton makes mention of "court evangelicals" in his more recent writing.  

https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/01/29/president-obama-announces-more-key-administration-posts
Rachel Held Evans, Appointee for Member, President’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships

Rachel Held Evans is a Christian blogger and the author of Faith Unraveled, A Year of Biblical Womanhood, and Searching for Sunday. In addition, Ms. Evans speaks at retreats, conferences, universities, and churches across the country. She has been featured on NPR, Slate, The BBC, The Washington Post,  The Huffington Post, CNN, The View, and The Today Show, and in 2012, she was named one of Christianity Today's “50 Women to Watch.”  Ms. Evans received a B.A. from Bryan College.  

There's no compelling reason to not regard the late Rachel Held Evans as a "court Episcopalian" in the same way that, say, Franklin Graham, could be said to have a "court evangelical" connection with the Trump administration, is there?  That any of these "court" religious leaders may only have a position that is a formality without actual political influence and that referring to them at all is basically a waste of time is where I land, personally, but I recognize that a lot of people will disagree with that position.  Granting that difference of conviction ... 

For denizens of any dark web those kinds of rhetorical flourishes on the part of writers like Throckmorton signal their ultimately institutional loyalties and that is getting at what Brian Auten's warning is about; relying on figures such as Fea or Throckmorton or establishments such as The Gospel Coalition or the SPLC will boomerang in connection to dark web campaigning.  

Within the history of Mars Hill if criticism came from Slice of Laodicea, the Sola Sisters or John Macarthur in general these criticisms were categorically ignored.  These were regarded as anti-charismatic institutional rejection of whatever Mars Hill in general and Mark Driscoll in particular was about.  A similar dynamic happens across the theological and political spectrum where once people are identified as residing in a particular doctrinal or political position they are not to be taken seriously.  Think of it as being akin to people who read AlterNet not going out of their way to read Pat Buchanan and vice versa maybe.

Now, obviously, from the sheer amount of material I've written about Mars Hill Church I believe it's a topic that merits scholarly, historical and journalistic investigation.  Auten's recent piece on the evangelical dark web has reminded me that there's a great deal about the roughly twenty year history of what used to be Mars Hill Fellowship and then Mars Hill Church that could be a case study in a church that helped to pioneer techniques and technologies that helped lay a foundation for what is more recently called the evangelical dark web.  At the moment the only academic monographs that have addressed the history of Mars Hill have come from more progressive or non-Christian writers.  

I recommend Jessica Johnson's Biblical Porn as, so far, the only academic monograph discussing any aspect of Mars Hill that I consider to be worth serious study.  I've got my differences of conviction with Johnson which, if you've read more than a dozen posts here you'll know already, but her work is what I regard as the first serious step toward a chronicle of Mars Hill in academic literature that relies on enough primary source material to be taken seriously.  To go by how evangelicalism as a whole and low church Protestantism in the United States have decided to handle things, there are not likely to be any other academic monographs examining Mars Hill as a case study in theological, technological, social or other developments.  Driscoll himself seems to be leaning toward acting as if those twenty years of his ministry in some sense just didn't happen.  

The rise and demise of Mars Hill Church may be one of the more useful case studies of how a church that in several respects helped create an evangelical dark web has ended, with the spin off churches surviving (with exceptions like the late and dead Mars Hill Portland assimilated into Door of Hope) but as more conventional evangelical church entities.  

http://download.marshill.se/files/unsorted-audio/03.17.01_how_to_take_a_wife_part_1_driscoll1.mp3

"I submit to the elders, and they discipline me I promise you that. There's a few that like to remind me continually of my arrogance and they're very good at it and I thank God for them. There have been certain decisions that I've wanted to make in the church, there's been certain things I've wanted to do and they've said 'no'. And in retrospect every time they have been right, every time they have been right and I have been wrong. And I thank God for that headship because otherwise I would have messed things up. It's good to have Godly wise headship."

-How to Take a Wife part 1, 3/17/2001 00:46:40

Here we are in 2019 and Driscoll seems reluctant to discuss the history of Mars Hill beyond a few general statements about how there was a governance war and how some guys felt he needed to repent but didn't explain what that would entail.  In 2001 Driscoll was willing to say he needed elders to check his arrogance and that when he'd wanted to make certain decisions those decisions got shot down and, in retrospect, every time they had been right.  That's something to bear in mind as a contrast between the Mark Driscoll of 2001 and the Mark Driscoll of 2006-2008.  Based on Driscoll's own account in Confessions of a Reformission Rev the signal change in his thinking about governance, real estate and leadership principles may have happened after a conversation with Larry Osborne and another innovation in the "shoot your dogs" variety happened, apparently, after Driscoll had conversation(s) with Jon Phelps.  

The history of Mars Hill Church as a potential case study of dark web pioneers suggests that by the time evangelical dark web now gains traction it will most likely turn into the institutional system it has critiqued but with, to go by observations I've been able to make about the late Mars Hill, even more incompetence, graft and cult of personality than the institutions Mars Hill leadership at one point spoke and wrote critically about.  That doesn't mean anyone involved in the earliest years of Mars Hill was insincere, far from it.  That's what makes the self-immolation of Mars Hill seem sad but that's another topic for some other time.  

a postscript to an earlier post on Pussified Nation and Dead Men as agitation and integration propaganda within Ellulian terms

http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2016/02/nearing-10th-anniversary-of-confessions.html

Since we've already looked at how Mark Driscoll's stint as William Wallace II could be interpreted in light of Jacques Ellul's taxonomy of propaganda ad the propaganda of agitation (and how!) while Dead Men could be presented as a propaganda of integration, it seems worth revisiting some very particular posts Mark made as William Wallace II in the notorious Pussified Nation thread.

http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/07/pussified-nation-page-6.html

William Wallace II
posted 12-30-2000 08:20 PM
This string is simply a work in law. [emphasis added] Now that it is beginning to evoke a bit of response we will be moving forward with clarifying further the general roles of men and women as defined principally in Scripture, and practically in our present culture (hence the post for single men on how to get a wife). Our gatherings will deal in greater specificity with accountability and male relationships centered in Scripture, governed by grace, and empowered by the Spirit as one of the multiple means by which we grow up in Christ. This posting site is good for kicking up some interest and laying out some information but simply cannot do the work that a local church was intended to and is therefore limited. [emphasis added] Lastly, in each time and place we must speak in a way that can best penetrate the noise of the present age. While Nathan has been exalted as the example, I would also remind you that most Old Testament prophets, all but one disciple, and the Lord Jesus Christ all died at the hands of religious people. While I would not seek such martyrdom I would suggest that whispering gently in therapeutic tones has been well tried and proven a failure as Promise Keepers and the like have demonstrated. Pelagian theology and psychology are very poor substitutes for law and gospel.later.P.S. irony and sarcasm are our friends. Laugh a little and scale down kids. If you don't get the humor, I promise you it's not because it isn't funny, but because you are way too serious. For therapy you may want to read a couple bits in Ezekiel about cooking a meal and scan the law for how to take a dump in a hole.

asdaf

I would propose that the biggest mistake pretty much almost everyone has made in reading Pussified Nation and the writings of William Wallace II in general (assuming they even really did that) is to focus "just" on the ways in which Mark Driscoll, using the pen name, described men he considered too womanly and gays.  That was all, as they phrase has it, problematic. 

But it seems necessary to bring this up again in light of observations made by Ellul about propaganda of agitation and integration because it seems as though the ONLY way to make sense of what Mark Driscoll THOUGHT he was doing and SAID he was doing, even in character, was to interpret the entire thing as a mostly calculated façade that may have let slip a whole lot more of reality than was intended on the one hand, but on the other hand that was most likely a calculated propaganda campaign, too.  Why would Driscoll express regret about the "how" he went about addressing the young men while still bragging even ten years later in the 2011 fundraising film God's Work, Our Witness about the great results that nonetheless happened if nothing he was aiming for came to pass and he made himself look like a jer in the process?  Sure, ten years ago Driscoll expressed some mild regret that he cussed and sinned a lot but he ultimately concluded that somehow God drew a straight line with a crooked stick.

With a little help from the writings of Ellul on propaganda and some succinct quotes from Driscoll himself under the guise of William Wallace II it seems relatively safe to propose that "Pussified Nation" was firmly in the realm of "agitation propaganda".  The point was to blow things up in cyberspace in a way that could test the waters to see which guys at a local level were responsive.  Driscoll seems, in retrospect, clumsy but clear that it was all a stunt to get attention and then to recruit men to be on mission at Mars Hill locally.  This could be a potential explanation for why Driscoll felt so embarrassed that it ever managed to stay or return to the public sphere.  It wasn't intended, necessarily, that "Pussified Nation" or "Using Your Penis" would become part of his long-term legacy. 

The Evolution of Markulinity: 2000, the eruption of William Wallace II and the formalization of Markulinity

http://www.christianitytoday.com/gleanings/2014/august/mark-driscoll-crude-comments-william-wallace-mars-hill.html

Ruth Moon [ posted 8/1/2014 05:08PM ]

...

In Mars Hill's Midrash forum, posts from which resurfaced and circulated this week, Driscoll posted blunt and emotional comments critical of feminism, same-sex sexual behavior, and "sensitive emasculated" men, all under the pseudonym "William Wallace II."

 

"While the discussion board itself was a bad idea, my decision to attack critics who were posting there (I did so by posting under the character 'William Wallace II') was an even worse idea," Driscoll said in his letter Friday, provided to CT. "I was wrong to respond to people the way I did, using the language I used, and I am sorry for it and remain embarrassed by it." 

Curiously, notice that Mark Driscoll declared that the discussion board itself was a bad idea. He never gave a reason why, just asserted that the board was a bad idea.  It was arguably not a bad idea. In fact if you were to go revisit what the stated reason was for having a Midrash in the first place you might see something like this:

http://web.archive.org/web/20001109161500/http://www.marshill.fm/midrash/index.htm

Throughout the history of ideas, two primary methods of teaching have dominated. The first was popularized by Greek and Roman societies, and still maintains a strong presence throughout the western world. This method assumes that the learned teacher has information that the student needs. Therefore, the student is expected to sit quietly under the teacher and learn what is taught. The second method was popularized by the Hebrews, and still maintains a strong presence throughout much of the eastern world. Called Midrash, this method assumes that both the student and teacher have significant contributions to make to one another's lives. Therefore, learning is conducted in conversational community, with disagreement and penetrating challenge directed at both student and teacher in an effort to discover the truth together.

Midrash is a collaborative effort to stimulate the discussion of topics relevant in our lives. This site is designed to be fueled by your thoughts and ideas and is open for your comments and questions. Feel free to post your thoughts, comments, questions and observations.

And you’d then see a disclaimer.

Disclaimer: The content posted on this site does not necessarily indicate its theological endorsement by the church or its leadership. We are a diverse community with strong convictions that also appreciates friendly dialogue and interaction with people of differing views.

Oh, so a church setting up a publicly accessible discussion board where collaborative discussion and promoting friendly dialogue with people of differing views was a bad idea? If Mark Driscoll would now wish to claim that the Greco-Roman methodology in which the student quietly learns from the master … well, Driscoll doesn’t even seem to grasp that this isn’t the most accurate depiction of Greco-Roman pedagogy but … it turned out that Driscoll’s preferred form of teaching was to have a week delay for a video-taped performance in which he’d expound upon ideas without anyone being able to interact with him in any fashion. 

That Driscoll claimed Midrash was a bad idea to begin with was a smokescreen.  What was bad about Midrash was not that it was open to everyone or that people with contrasting views disagreed, it was how Mark Driscoll conducted himself that was problematic.  But, at the time, Mark Driscoll believed his actions and words were necessary.

As we're about to see, he also came back more than once to the idea that even if his methods were bad the results he got were still worth bragging about even a decade later. While it may theoretically be possible to find out what specific events Mark Driscoll was reacting to that he took inspiration from when formulating his persona that's not something for this series to consider.  We'll shift to two significant retrospective moments in which Driscoll would look back on his WW2 days and conclude he, basically, had the right heart and the results were worthwhile.

William Vanderbloemen has a captain obvious op-ed on "3 reasons why Mark Driscoll's resignation changes everything", which won't change things

William Vanderbloemen has an op-ed piece in the New York Observer that has a few Captain Obvious axioms that seem to traffic in some ignorance of the history of Mars Hill Church and some of the public discussion about it.

http://observer.com/2014/10/three-reasons-why-mark-driscolls-resignation-changes-everything/

Let's take the first Captain Obvious bromide.

1. Social media is a powerful, dual-edged sword.

... Daily blogs from across the country criticized the church, the board, and/or Pastor Driscoll. Some of the most popular posts were from people who have never even attended Mars Hill.

Yes, social media is a powerful dual-edged sword.  The problem in the case of Mars Hill is not necessarily that "critics" made a point of using social media to criticize Mars Hill and Mark Driscoll.  It was never that simple.  Mars Hill Church was filled with leaders and members who managed to tweet and blog away any shred of privacy they could have had that allowed Wenatchee The Hatchet, a ten year veteran of the culture of Mars Hill, to assemble the data to identify that Andrew Lamb and the Noriega family were close to or at the center of the 2012 disciplinary controversy based not just on social media activity but on Mark Driscoll's own sermons.

Wenatchee The Hatchet seems to have gotten a reputation as being a Mark Driscoll critic but this would be to misunderstand what Wenatchee The Hatchet does.  Preserving for the public record a history of Mars Hill according to leaders while the history has been adjusted and updated is not always the same as being a "critic".  If quoting Driscoll accurately, in context, and in a way that reveals that Mark Driscoll has changed or betrayed the basic principles he articulated about pastoral ministry from the pulpit ten years ago constitutes being a "critic" then Mark Driscoll has lowered the bar by betraying everything he once stood for.  That's not Wenatchee The Hatchet's problem as such. 

Now it is true that the vast majority who have seen fit to opine on Mars Hill are frequently ill-informed and have not even participated in life at Mars Hill.  That's not in doubt. 

Vanderbloemen correctly points out that Mars Hill dove headfirst into using and embracing social media and internet communication.  Wenatchee The Hatchet has already written about how what Mars Hill culture did was essentially idolize social media and that what an idol promises is given in exchange for some kid of sacrifice. 
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2013/06/mars-hill-church-and-idol-of-social.html

The sacrifice offered to social media to expand and promote a brand is what ... ?  We get to point 2.

2. Privacy is dead and words live forever.

... In the digital age, there is little or no privacy, and words live on forever and everywhere. The fishbowl is no longer the local community. It is the entire world.

No one says you have to opt in to this.  Those that don't opt in and haven't opted in except in a limited way might be seen as reclusive.  But Wenatchee The Hatchet suggests that Bill Watterson is not  a recluse. Bill Watterson has simply retained a pre-internet conception of the individual having a private life.

The problem here is that Mars Hill culture so saturated itself with social media and broadcast media that they didn't realize in the midst of all this that there aren't exactly take-backs in this kingdom. And yet paradoxically this new kingdom of internet literacy seems full of people who don't know how to read and can't remember things that were said or how they were said.  Take this, for instance.

...
Much of the criticism Pastor Driscoll has faced centers around comments he made nearly 15 years ago, which he apologized for in a book and before his church. Yet in the digital age, words live forever, and even if they have been retracted by the author, they can be resurrected to create new friction for pastors and leaders.

No, the plagiarism controversy was not about the writings of William Wallace II.  The Result Source Inc. controversy was not about the writings of Mark Driscoll in 2000, either.  The criticism about the lack of transparency and honesty surrounding the nature of Mars Hill Global and how monies donated to it and through it were actually spent is also irrelevant to the rants of William Wallace II.  Anyone who attempts to frame the criticisms of Mark Driscoll in the last two and a half years as "much of the criticism ... centers around comments he made nearly 15 years ago" is a complete idiot at best or a duplicitous tool at worst. 

What is more, as Wenatchee The Hatchet has discussed at some length Mark Driscoll presented his writings as William Wallace II as a rant against emergent and liberals. 

CONFESSIONS OF A REFORMISSION REV
Mark Driscoll,  Zondervan
copyright (c) 2006 by Mark Driscoll
ISBN-13: 978-0-310-27016-4
ISBN-10:0-310-27016-2
CHAPTER FIVE: JESUS, WHY AM I GETTING FATTER AND MEANER?
350-1,000 people
At this time, our church also started an unmoderated discussion board on our website, called Midrash, and it was being inundated with postings by emerging-church type feminists and liberals. I went onto the site and posted as William Wallace II, after the great Scottish man portrayed in the movie Braveheart, and attacked those who were posting. [emphasis added] It got insane, and thousands of posts were being made each day until it was discovered that it was me raging like a madman under the guise of a movie character. One guy got so mad that he actually showed up at my house to fight me one night around 3 a.m.
Driscoll's own words stated that he saw Midrash inundated with postings by emerging-church type feminists and liberals and that Driscoll went on and posted as William Wallace II, attacking those who were posting.  Okay, and one guy got so mad he showed up at the house wanting to fight at 3.am.  But let's go back and look at what the opening fusillade of "Pussified Nation" started with.
This not only wasn't the case, the rants of WW2 were most vitriolic against fellow evangelicals such as James Dobson or the Promise Keepers set.  Let's revisit the opening salvo of Pussified Nation.

James Dobson instantly springs to everyone's mind as an emergent church feminist type, right?
Ditto for Promise Keepers?

Wenatchee The Hatchet has already written extensively on the historical, social and economic background of Mark Driscoll taking up the pen name William Wallace II and publishing "Pussified Nation".  Here.  And here. And here. And here.  And here.  The most important thing to state for those who actually know what Mark Driscoll did and did not write in his 2006 book is that he expressed regret about some unspecified things he did and said in anger but that he did not actually explicitly repudiate the substance of what he said as William Wallace II.  In fact the substance of what he said as William Wallace II in "Pussified Nation" was pretty much the same message he had for Justin Brierley in 2012.  Driscoll expressing regret about doing something and saying something in a stupid and ill-advised way simply raises anew the question of what he was sorry about.  In the 2006 book he stated he developed the pen name.  If he couldn't even keep straight who he was attacking on Midrash and why six years after the fact what reason is there to trust that Driscoll saying he's apologized for stuff from fourteen years ago means much now?  After all, in the last year it seems Driscoll can't even seem to recall that there were kids in the earliest years of Mars Hill these days and has managed to inadvertently testify against his own accuracy.

Vanderbloemen can assert if he likes that Mark Driscoll said he apologized for William Wallace II rantings in the 2006 book.  The apology came later, more like 2014. 

Privacy isn't dead in the same way all across the board and if you choose to use social media you need to come to grips with the reality of what you're doing, committing things to a broadcast medium for the public record that will stick around.  You would think that this should be the easiest thing in the world for a pastor to consider since pastors have been instructed on how the words they say and preach speak of eternal things and of a life to come and the ever-living Christ.  But there are men in ministry who apparently didn't get the memo about how by your words you will be acquitted and by your words condemned or didn't read that part that carefully. 

Matthew 12:33-37 (NIV)
“Make a tree good and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is recognized by its fruit. You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of. A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him. But I tell you that everyone will have to give account on the day of judgment for every empty word they have spoken. For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned.”

So maybe thanks to the internet some of that age to come stuff has shown up a bit early.  But wouldn't a Christian pastor, before ever embarking on a life of ministry, have some awareness of the gravity of this warning before taking up the pen name William Wallace II to begin with?

As Wenatchee The Hatchet has been pointing out over the last few months the reason republishing the sum of Mark Driscoll's writings as William Wallace II is because informing the public about what Driscoll actually wrote is a journalistic service to the public.  What is more, doing so permits people to read what Mark Driscoll actually wrote and assess for themselves how persuasive his enumerated public apologies might seem.  But there is a more important reason to publish what Mark Driscoll wrote in 2000 and to compare it to things Driscoll has said and done in the 2011 to 2013 period.

http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/07/sex-as-god-gross-or-gift-mark-driscoll.html

It gives us an opportunity to see whether the substance of Mark Driscoll's ideas about men, women, gender, sex and marriage have actually matured, grown or changed.  The substance of Mark Driscoll's ideas remained steady between 2000 and 2012.  Driscoll has expressed regret about his "tone" plenty but has not repudiated the substance of his views and even for conservative evangelicals the substance of a number of things he has taught can be considered problematic.  He's confessed that what he did as William Wallace II was wrong but critics have objected not just to the tone in which he's said his more famous ideas but also the substance.  It won't cut it any longer now that Acts 29 has shown him the door and evangelicals like Heath Lambert have critiqued Real Marriage to claim that Driscoll critics are uniformly secular/left. 

The reason merely quoting Mark Driscoll accurately and in context in 2000 could create a stir in 2014 is because the substance of Mark Driscoll's views on sex, genders and marriage haven't changed.  When a person expresses regret, has a change of heart, and proceeds to live and speak a life in which they walk a new path we get, you know, the apostle Paul writing epistles to churches.  Darth Vader revealed his change of heart by throwing the Emperor over a precipice.  John the Baptist said something about bearing fruits as evidence of repentance.  If Driscoll had actually borne the fruit of repentance on any of these issues about what he said as William Wallace II compared to the Justin Brierley interview then we'd have a more convincing case for "Mark repented" or "Mark apologized".  Mark Driscoll told Brierley that maybe he went too far but everyone else didn't go far enough, which sounds curiously self-rationalizing to Wenatchee The Hatchet.

Let's spell this out again, if you've repented of what you said in the past and it's clear to everyone then reviving what was said in the past shouldn't even necessitate a renewal of an apology.  If Driscoll had made a point of leaving everything of William Wallace II up AND ALSO issued a more specific apology for what he said republishing the writings of Driscoll under the pen name wouldn't have created any stir. 

But republishing the writings of Mark Driscoll as William Wallace II wasn't just about the words themselves but about what they signaled.  They gave people an opportunity to retroactively consider doubts about Mark Driscoll's basic fitness and competence for Christian ministry. 

As for the popular posts including work by people who never attended Mars Hill, well, yes, that's pretty unfortunate.  But talking about social media should not be limited to just those posts or those blogs.  Wenatchee The Hatchet was at Mars Hill for about a decade as an attender and a member.  Wenatchee was recruited to a number of ministries and helped start a couple but without any particular interest in running those ministries.  Wenatchee was recruited to field theological questions on behalf of Mars Hill elders so it couldn't be said that Wenatchee The Hatchet wasn't on the same page as the Mars Hill pastors if the pastors recruited him to field questions on their behalf.  Wenatchee The Hatchet is still a moderately conservative evangelical with a Calvinistic soteriology and an interest in ecumenical discussions.  It would be possible to dismiss a lot of blogs and bloggers as those who have never been part of Mars Hill but that can't be said about Wenatchee The Hatchet. 

And it can't be said about Wendy Alsup.  It can't be said about a number of blogs and websites.  As Jared Wilson's open letter to Driscoll more or less showed

http://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/gospeldrivenchurch/2013/12/18/re-mark-driscoll/

the problem in the last year is that Mark Driscoll's speech and conduct has not just offended secularists or progressives but also his own former base. 

So while there may not be any privacy as we used to define it on the internet let's remember that you can't use broadcast and social media without having an understanding that what you say for the record stays out there.  This is not just a problem facing some recently resigned megachurch pastors.  Take the celebrity nude selfie hack news , though in the case of nude selfie photographs on a networked mobile device that connects to a cloud the problem there is not the same as a Mark Driscoll writing as William Wallace II.  While Christians in the spring of 2014 might have read about Result Source and while some concluded that sales rigging is normal in the secular world and that the plagiarism was no big deal we're in a cultural moment that's a bit larger where there is such a thing as revenge porn.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/05/how-to-fight-revenge-porn/275759/?single_page=true
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/node/9355

Mark Driscoll's controversies about what he probably should never have put up on the net to begin with may differ from a celebrity who took nude selfies on a networked device chiefly on the matter of a Christian pastor with a communications degree and a wife with professional training in public relations seem like someone who ought to have known better fourteen years ago.  Only so much could have been done about a blunt force hack on a cloud.   There's no particular reason to feel sorry for Mark Driscoll having ranted as William Wallace II.  Compared to Mark Driscoll standing before God to explain why William Wallace II seemed like a great idea when he was doing it a stew on the internet is nothing.  Or as Mark Driscoll once tweeted, "You deserve Hell. Everything else is a gift."  Okay then ... Mark Driscoll has a chance to take his own bromides to heart.  He really deserves Hell and everything else is a gift, right?

Finally, in light of Driscoll's unanticipated quitter moment of throwing in the towel .... Vanderbloemen writes the third lesson.

3. Every pastor needs to realize that he or she is an interim pastor.

It remains to be seen whether Mark Driscoll's resignation changes anything apart from the corporation known as Mars Hill Church. A lifelong ministry at one church is not a more fragile prospect than ever if you go into it with an understanding of the significance of what a pastoral ministry is.  And for that matter in the internet age the use of the internet is not necessarily some freak-out inspiring thing if you keep in mind a simple axiom, don't publish things on the internet to begin with unless you'd be willing to stand by what you said as what you meant at the time while expecting it to stay up there indefinitely. 

Avoid libel and slander, avoid saying things you think you might regret.  Don't react out of anger.  Be patient.  Be thoughtful.  Resist the temptation to type up the witty retort you think would make you look smart and your conversant/opponent look stupid.  Think like a pastor.  Or, no, wait, just think like a Christian or a reasonable human being if you don't subscribe to Christianity or other religious beliefs.  And if you change your mind and regret what you said say so, say you're sorry and show how and why you've changed.  This is conceptually not very difficult.  These were instructions for how best to love one's neighbor preserved in the Bible and other literary and religious works for millennia before anyone got the idea of inventing something called the internet. 

Perhaps Wenatchee The Hatchet could have a better attitude about Vanderbloemen's op-ed piece but in the end it reads like a trio of Captain Obvious bromides with additional flourishes that suggest a lack of familiarity with the history of Mars Hill and of its culture use of social media.

The reason Mark Driscoll's resignation won't change anything is because the dynamics that let him become a pastor to begin with and stay a pastor for as long as he did haven't changed.  Most of the key controversies surrounding Driscoll in the last year from Result Source Inc to the plagiarism to Mars Hill Global are too unique to Mars Hill on the one hand and too harsh a peek into problems that may plague the Christian broadcast/media empires on the other to get any serious attention.  The only way Mark Driscoll's resignation "might" change anything is if concern about the financial transparency and ethics of Mars Hill reached such a pitch there were some kind of government probe into fiscal ethics. 

Meanwhile, all the publishers and editors and promoters who have profited from making Mark Driscoll into a star and/or being in the industries that made him a star may just get to opine on Mark Driscoll's resignation as though it changes anything while they get to keep their jobs. 

That's not likely to happen but by now atheists could propose that the ministry of Mark Driscoll and the activity of Mars Hill Church could raise some questions as to why churches have tax exempt status in light of everything that seems to be burbling up to the surface in the last two years. 

William Wallace II and "Pussified Nation" as partial background to the sum of events in the "Hardest Part of Ministry", Mark Driscoll's 10-26-2013 post about the safety of his family

William Wallace IIMember
posted 01-06-2001 09:01 PM            

---

I love to fight. It's good to fight. Fighting is what we used to do before we all became pussified. Fighting is a lost art form. Fighting is cheaper than medication and more effective than counseling. Fighting always wins over compromise. Fighting is what passionate people do instead of killing. So log on, fight away. And if you are reading this and talking to yourself log on you coward and get in the ring.

Much of this material was published back around June 22, 2014 and is being republished in light of the substantial evidence that Mark Driscoll wrote under the pseudonym William Wallace II.

Before Janet Mefferd made her on-air accusation that Mark Driscoll was a plagiarist Driscoll shared what was for him the most soul-aching part of ministry. 

http://theresurgence.com/2013/10/26/the-hardest-part-of-ministry
The hardest part of ministry
October 26, 2013
Mark Driscoll
The hardest part of ministry
Mark Driscoll   » Church Leadership Heart Culture Suffering 
...

Upon occasion, I like to answer questions that leaders (often young) ask about ministry. One that often comes up: What part of your ministry is the most difficult? Nearly everyone who asks this question is someone who is new to ministry and seeking to anticipate a possible landmine in front of them.

The most soul-aching concern I face

For me, the answer is simple: family safety. By far and away, this is the most constant, soul-aching concern that I deal with. Those ministering in more family-friendly suburban communities that welcome megachurches and gated neighborhoods may not understand the complexities of a ministry that is more urban and the dangers it can pose.

In 1 Corinthians 7:32–35, the Apostle Paul speaks about how a family, though a blessing, can also be a burden. I used to assume that he merely meant that someone who was single would have more time for ministry, but now I know the issue is much deeper.

Paul worked mainly in hostile, urban contexts where the backlash against the gospel was so strong that he faced very real danger. Having a family in such circumstances would have been even more difficult and dangerous. It’s one thing if opponents seek to harm or kill a single man, but a husband and father holding hands with his wife and little girl prompts an entirely different level of concern.

The Mark Driscoll of late 2013 may be a mellower one than the one of 2004 who published Radical Reformission (recently republished as just Reformission, which might signal a lack of radicalness)

Radical Reformission
ISBN 0-310-25659-3Mark Driscoll
Zondervan
copyright 2004 by Mars Hill Church
page 14

... So I married Grace, began studying Scripture with the enthusiasm of a glutton at a buffet, and started preparing myself to become a pastor who does not go to jail for doing something stupid. To pay the bills, I edited the opinions section of the campus newspaper, writing inflammatory columns that led to debates, radio interviews, and even a few bomb threats--which was wonderful, because the only thing worse than dying is living a boring life. [emphasis added]

Yet the Apostle Paul famously wrote that it is better for the unmarried to remain unmarried, an idea that Driscoll has never shown any significant public record of agreeing with.  If opponents (of what?) seek to kill a single man that's one thing (what is it?) but it's another level of concern if opponents seek to harm or kill a father holding hands with his wife and little girl and ... ?

So perhaps Mark Driscoll has over time begun to discover that if you ever revel in writing inflammatory columns and making provocative statements in broadcast and social media that you might get a few bomb threats.  In 2004 Driscoll said this was a wonderful thing because the only thing worse than dying is living a boring life.  Others who subscribe to the idea of living a quiet boring life being productive rather than catalyzing bomb threats may find this notion of the earlier Driscoll juvenile not simply on its own merits but because no one who starts a family can keep on that path without, at length, embroiling their family in the risks associated with being a deliberately and willfully provocative public figure.

Driscoll went on to list the dangers he has faced in his time in ministry.  Two are particularly noteworthy.  No, not the two knife incidents.  Let's consider this one.

• On one occasion, a man tried to get into my home in the middle of the night. Demanding to meet with me, he woke up and frightened my family. The police arrested him and put him in a mental health facility. The man escaped and started walking back to my home in his underwear. The police intercepted him when he was not far away.

Driscoll has mentioned someone wanting to meet with him in the past. 

CONFESSIONS OF A REFORMISSION REV
Mark Driscoll,  Zondervan
copyright (c) 2006 by Mark Driscoll
ISBN-13: 978-0-310-27016-4
ISBN-10:0-310-27016-2
CHAPTER FIVE: JESUS, WHY AM I GETTING FATTER AND MEANER?
350-1,000 people

At this time, our church also started an unmoderated discussion board on our website, called Midrash, and it was being inundated with postings by emerging-church type feminists and liberals. I went onto the site and posted as William Wallace II, after the great Scottish man portrayed in the movie Braveheart, and attacked those who were posting. It got insane, and thousands of posts were being made each day until it was discovered that it was me raging like a madman under the guise of a movie character. One guy got so mad that he actually showed up at my house to fight me one night around 3 a.m. [emphasis added]

As for the certainty that Driscoll posted as William Wallace II, there's no doubt about that lately.

What's striking about the narrative is that while there are a few words expressing some regret about sinning and cussing a lot God was described by Mark Driscoll as drawing a straight line with a crooked stick, and part of the evidence for that was evidently gay guys going straight, as described in the continuing account from Confessions of a Reformission Rev quoted below:
Things were starting to get out of hand with the men, so I called a meeting and demanded that all of the men in our church attend. I preached for more than two hours about manhood and basically gave the dad talk to my men for looking at porno, sleeping with young women, not serving Christ, not working hard at their jobs, and so on. I demanded that the men who were with me on our mission to change the city stay and that the rest leave the church and stop getting in the way because you can't charge hell with your pants around your ankles, a bottle of lotion in one hand, and a Kleenex in the other.

On their way out of that meeting, I handed each man two stones and told them that on this day God was giving them their balls back to get the courage to do kingdom work. Guys put them on their monitors at work or glued them to the dash of their truck and kept them. The stones of remembrances from the Old Testament. The next week the offering doubled and the men caught fire. It was a surreal time, since I was basically fathering guys my own age and treating them more like a military unit than a church.

The life change was unreal. We had guys getting saved. We had gay guys going straight. We had guys tossing out porn, getting jobs, tithing, taking wives, buying homes, making babies, and repenting of the sins of their fathers. We had guys who had divorced their wives remarrying them. We had men adopting children so they would have a Christian father. It was a lot like Acts because the whole city seemed to be abuzz.

This season was messy and I sinned and cussed a lot., but God somehow drew a straight line with my crooked Philistine stick.  I had a good mission, but some of my tactics were born out of anger and burnout, and I did a lot of harm and damage while attracting a lot of attention.

"Things were starting to get out of hand with the men" almost comes across like Mark Driscoll was somehow not included in that.  Nor was the 2006 account even the only one in which Mark Driscoll, joined by other voices of other members and staff from 2011, in mentioning the effectiveness of the yelling from that time.  Per the previously cited fundraising/documentary film God's Work, Our Witness:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hfu-cjd1Nlc
http://marshill.com/media/gods-work-our-witness/gods-work-our-witness
http://marshill.com/media/gods-work-our-witness/gods-work-our-witness/ajax_transcript?lang=en
http://download.marshill.com/files/2011/12/04/20111204_god-is-faithful_sd_audio.mp3
http://download.marshill.com/files/2011/12/04/20111204_gods-work-our-witness_tv_sd_progressive.m4v


The Men and Two Stones

Pastor AJ: There was an event at the Paradox, and Pastor Mark’s getting all the guys together.
‘Cause guys would repent of sin, and then they want to meet and they’d be talking, “Oh, I’m sleeping with my girlfriend.” “Oh, I’m looking at porn.” “Oh, I can’t get a job.” “Oh, I don’t know what I want to do with my life.”

[Driscoll] And it got to the point where I couldn’t have that many counseling meetings, so I just decided to bring all the guys together and absolutely yell at all of them at one time. And so I called an all-men’s church meeting.

Jason: People actually flew in to attend.

Pastor AJ: The instructions are, “Grab two stones. Read 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus. And when you finish, read them again. And when you finish, read them again.”

Jeff: And we all show up and they hand us a pair of rocks.
We literally filled up every single seat. I met every guy at the door and I told them, “I want you to shut up. You’re not allowed to talk. Nobody is allowed to speak. You guys all just sit down and shut up until I’m ready to yell at you.”

Pastor AJ: And you just keep reading 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus; 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, wondering, “Why do I have these two stones?”

Jason: I think half the people probably thought he was going to apologize for some of his harsher rants that he’d posted online and then say, you know, “You without sin, cast the first stone.”

Pastor Phil: And that silence was just so palatable, just like, “What’s going to happen?” Like you’re waiting for an earthquake, like, “When’s it going to hit?”

Pastor Matt: And Driscoll had just had it and he was losing his mind.

Pastor AJ: Pastor Mark then goes off on the guys.

Jeff: Pastor Mark gets up onstage and just starts yelling!

Pastor AJ: It seemed like a couple of hours, just yelling at us about all of our perversion, all of our laziness, all of our lack of drive and ambition, all of our ungodly living.
“You belong to Jesus. I’m giving you your stones back. It’s your church. We’ve got to fix this building. We’ve got to raise the money. We’ve got to do this thing. This is what God told us to do.”
So I got up there and I preached a sermon on what it means to be a man. I literally think the sermon went about three hours, screamed and yelled at all of the guys.

Pastor AJ: All of us just completely, like, laid open, and he says, “You guys are men, and until you find your own stones, use these.”
And then closed in prayer and told them to shut up and leave.

Pastor Matt: And for a lot of us, this is the first time we heard this kind of stuff.

Jeff: Hearing the truth that we needed to man-up and that God had something better for us, and we weren’t seeing clearly—

Pastor AJ: Guys glued those things to their dashboards. They kept them in their pockets all the time. It was just this reminder of God has made us men, and we will be men. Who does that stuff?

Jeff: We kept hearing that over and over and over again, sermon after sermon after sermon addressed towards men, specifically young men, specifically, taking initiative to lead and love well like Jesus. And that was life changing, life changing.

There were maybe 100 to 120 guys at that time. Probably the average age was maybe early twenties, twenty years old. You’re talking college guys. But a lot of those guys, to this very day, they did it, man. They’re running companies. They’re deacons, elders. They’re starting churches. They’ve gotten married. They’re having kids. Their lives are changed and they are still, you know, hands up, chin down, feet forward, getting it done. And it’s just really cool what God did in this place.

So to return to the bullet point incident:

• On one occasion, a man tried to get into my home in the middle of the night. Demanding to meet with me, he woke up and frightened my family. The police arrested him and put him in a mental health facility. The man escaped and started walking back to my home in his underwear. The police intercepted him when he was not far away.

Back in 2006 Mark Driscoll documented that one guy who insisted on confronting Driscoll at 3am did so because he was angry when it was discovered that it was Mark Driscoll who was posting as William Wallace II.  While in the October 2013 Resurgence post Mark Driscoll took time to explain how a mentally unstable person sought a confrontation with him at no point in his litany of threats and incidents brought upon his family did Driscoll ever allude to his own history of inflammatory rhetoric, let alone allude to his earlier recounted story of how his antics as William Wallace II played a role in someone attempting to confront him at his home. 

The problem was not that a discussion forum was a bad idea.  It wasn't a bad idea at all but Mars Hill was a new and inexperienced Christian community emerging in the Puget Sound area during the dot-com craze, founded by a group of idealistic men who were interested in and willing to encourage a church's engagement with burgeoning social media. That Mars Hill more generally and Mark Driscoll in particular had possibly not thought through the long-term consequences of setting up an online discussion forum is not entirely surprising. Indeed, the only thing that might really make setting up such a forum seem like a bad idea could simply be that anyone has been able and willing to preserve the contents fourteen years later for any public consideration.

But that's only a bad thing for those who would like to write something one day and forget about it the next.  For a group of Christians who are eager to understand the eternal scope and impact of words and actions Mars Hill history on the internet may become an object lesson for other churches to consider now.  We had a lot of people who were caught up in the moment, perhaps one of those most caught up in the moment was Mark Driscoll, and it's not likely at the time he formulated the character through which to express the substance of ideas that, as yet, he's never repudiated, that the line between fantasy and reality might be more permeable than he initially imagined.  Perhaps in the long run that has been one of the harder parts of ministry. But teachers have to remember at all times that someone named Jesus is credited with saying words about this responsibility.

Matthew 12:34b-37 (NIV)

For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil.  I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak,  for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.”

on the seminal and continuing thematic link between Mark Driscoll's concerns about men and masculinity and those of Doug Wilson, an overview ranging from Pussified Nation to 2011.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/gleanings/2014/august/mark-driscoll-crude-comments-william-wallace-mars-hill.html

There's something of note in the statements made by Mark Driscoll published by Christianity Today on Friday August 1, 2014.

"The content of my postings to that discussion board does not reflect how I feel, or how I would conduct myself today," he told his church members Friday. "Over the past 14 years I have changed, and, by God's grace, hope to continue to change. I also hope people I have offended and disappointed will forgive me."
The content of the postings on the discussion board made by Mark Driscoll under the name of William Wallace II may not reflect what Mark Driscoll feels now or how he would conduct himself today. 

Fair enough, but the point Wenatchee The Hatchet has been discussing and presenting Driscoll material regarding throughout this week has not been about Mark Driscoll's feelings, as though in the history of Driscollian discourse feelings were even something for a guy to discuss to begin with.  No, to reframe these recent statements in terms that Driscoll himself might likely insist on doing for others, it doesn't particularly matter how Mark Driscoll feels differently now on the subject of masculinity and femininity compared to fourteen years ago.  The question that is far more relevant is what did Mark Driscoll THINK in 2000 and is there any observable evidence that what Mark Driscoll THOUGHT about men and women and sexuality fourteen years ago is observably different in substance now.  It's not as though Mark Driscoll hasn't made a career of making fun of guys talking about their feelings. 

So, for instance, let's take the opening salvo of "Pussified Nation" itself. 

We live in a completely pussified nation. We could get every man, real man as opposed to pussified James Dobson knock-off crying Promise Keeping homoerotic worship loving mama's boy sensitive emasculated neutered exact male replica evangellyfish ...

What's interesting about this opening salvo is that it so quickly tips off a reader familiar with seminal influences on Mark Driscoll's thought which author's jargon and jocularity may most resemble William Wallace II's initial post on "Pussified Nation". That last word in the italicized quote, "evangellyfish" where else can we find that?  How about the title of a book, a novel, published by Pastor Doug Wilson?

http://www.amazon.com/Evangellyfish-Douglas-Wilson/dp/1591280982/ref=la_B001JP1R0C_1_7_title_0_main?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1407038648&sr=1-7

And let's consider whether Doug Wilson's work got reference by William Wallace II in "Pussified Nation". How about this?

William Wallace II
Member
posted 01-20-2001 01:34 PM
Good question.
One, don't spend all your time with single people. Get some good married couple friends to observe and dialogue with. This is one of the biggest problems with segmented ministry in churches, married and unmarried people are separated. Two, spend some considerable time in Scripture about marital matters so that you know  why, how, and what a wife and children are for. A good place to start may be in the Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, and Proverbs. Three, some good books are helpful. On male sexuality I'd recommend "Fidelity" by Douglas Wilson. On male headship I'd suggest "Recovering Biblical Manhood & Womanhood" by John  Piper. "The War on Boys" and "Fatherless In
America" are great works by non-Christians. Four, be in a good solid church with qualified male elders who can have frank biblical  discussions about male issues without blushing.

Is there any indication of a continuity of ideas and themes between the Mark Driscoll of 2000 as William Wallace II and the Mark Driscoll of the latest decade? 

http://theresurgence.com/authors/douglas-Wilson

cue up the Bjork song "Possibly Maybe" if you're so inclined

If Doug Wilson is a featured guest author at Resurgence that "might" suggest that since the days of "Pussified Nation" that whatever different feelings Mark Driscoll might have these days his thoughts about gender and marriage are sufficiently congruent with those of Doug Wilson, whose writing Driscoll referenced as quoted above, that Wilson has a space on the Resurgence website to this very day.  That is more than can be said for John Catanzaro these days.

For that matter, back in 2011 Mark Driscoll mentioned the following at Pastor Mark TV.

http://pastormark.tv/2011/10/04/grace-agenda-a-conversation-with-doug-wilson-on-spiritual-gifts
On September 16 - 17, 2011, I had the opportunity to speak at the Grace Agenda hosted by Doug Wilson. As part of the conference, Doug interviewed me on a number of topics. Over the coming weeks, I'll post up some of those interviews. The following is a conversation Doug and I had regarding spiritual gifts and cessationism.

Should you want to go buy the whole set of conference discussions ...

http://www.canonpress.org/store/pc/viewPrd.asp?idproduct=562
Masculinity and the Gospel | Mark Driscoll

Modern society is in the midst of a fatherhood and masculinity crisis and getting the Gospel right on this point is the only solution to the crisis. To do this we must understand the Gospel as the sort of message that demands that those who receive and present it be people who have a spine and understand its potency. This is a fundamental issue and affects everything from the integrity of our political leaders to the growth of modern atheism to the effectiveness of our evangelistic mission. Not to mention the health of our families.
That synopsis doesn't look particularly different in its essential concerns from anything broadly articulated in the opening of "Pussified Nation".

Now to be sure Driscoll probably still differs significantly with Wilson on the antebellum South but Driscoll has not made a point of contesting Wilson's ideas about the South, though if the two ever decided to debate that set of issues that could be a potentially interesting debate.  But on gender and masculinity Driscoll and Wilson have shared enough core ideas (regardless of whatever Mark Driscoll's feelings might have been this week) that they have continued to interact with each other and Wilson's works are still mentioned at Resurgence.

If you are familiar with the polemical writings of Doug Wilson you might say that "Pussified Nation" could be described as Mark Driscoll taking Wilson's polemical approach, pumping it up with steroids and amphetamines, and letting it loose to see what happened. 

It's not really enough to have just published "Pussified Nation" as a stand-alone exemplar of Driscollian polemic from 2000.  It's necessary to ground not merely the rhetoric and sentiment but also the ideas in time and place.  Driscoll clearly could not have gotten his ideas in a vacuum and as the plagiarism controversy surrounding how many of his books made use of the ideas of others without citation the recurring reference by Mark Driscoll to Wilson's works might just make it all the more salient to remind the general public that Driscoll found Wilson's ideas about gender important enough to both mention them in the body of "Pussified Nation" and to even participate in a conference with Wilson in 2011. 

While Driscoll can express regret about how he said what he said the substance of his ideas seems to have remained steady.  If he wants to persuade the world he's changed a few sermons extolling the beauty and value of stay-at-home dads might be a great move to convince outsiders he's changed.

Christianity Today: Mark Driscoll Addresses Crude Comments Made Trolling as William Wallace II

http://www.christianitytoday.com/gleanings/2014/august/mark-driscoll-crude-comments-william-wallace-mars-hill.html

It's a little too bad CT didn't published the letter.   Since CT linked to the post here at WtH that provided a historical background for the development of the pen name William Wallace II it's helpful to reiterate what was in the post published earlier this week.

http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-historical-and-social-setting-for.html

Driscoll has a lengthy history of expressing regret about the "tone" of what he says, how he has said things, and how people have reacted to things he has said.  What he has not shown much history of doing is apologizing for what he says, for the substance in his more inflammatory remarks over the last twelve years, and as noted in the post mentioned above, in 2011 Mark Driscoll responded to the 2011 Facebook scuffle in which he was criticized for inviting readers to share stories of effeminate anatomically male worship leaders by doing two things: 1) stating that the issue under a lot of issues was the debate about whether gender was a social construct or a God-given identity.  2) that his executive pastors wanted him to address real issues in a real way with real substance and this was a transition into not apologizing for anything he'd said on Facebook as such but a promotion of both the forthcoming book Real Marriage and what turned out to be Pastor Mark TV.

If Driscoll is willing to express regret in a way that is conveyed to Christianity Today about William Wallace II perhaps Driscoll would be willing to address the number of books in which he used the works of others without citation; or perhaps the times where he presented inaccurate claims about historic Christian doctrine and figures; or perhaps could finally address that Joyful Exiles exists. 

If Driscoll is sorry about his writings as William Wallace II that's easy enough to understand.  The cumulative case in the posts this week is that if you read past the tone and look at the substance of what he's had to say about men and women and sex and sexuality over the last twelve to fourteen years the substance of what he wrote in the thread "Using your penis" still has a significant degree of thematic continuity with the chapter "Can We ____?" from the 2012 book Real Marriage. If anything from 1998 to 2008 Mark Driscoll escalated his propensity to dismiss allegorical interpretations of the Song of Songs by Christian thinkers with gay panic jokes compared to his late 1990s series "Sacred Romance". 

Back in 2012 when Driscoll discussed ways of interpreting the book of Esther he mentioned that one option is to interpret the book as being about Esther being godly from start to finish.  This is a straw man formulation of the idea that Esther, though flawed, was still potentially a righteous person.  Christians would keep saying David was a man after man's own heart in spite of everything actually in the books of Samuel and Kings and if one were to propose that the David who emerges in the Psalms seems like a narcissistic whiner people will throw down the kid gloves and fight.

But what did Driscoll say about his simplified option 1 for interpreting Esther?
http://marshill.com/media/esther/jesus-is-a-better-savior#transcript

Well, then that’s a worthless Book. If the story is, “God loves and uses good people and he doesn’t love and use bad people,” that’s a worthless Book. If that’s the story, that I have to be my own savior, I have to be my own hero, I’ve got to straighten out all that I made crooked. Or worse yet, if you’ve made it crooked, it can’t be straightened out at all, because you’re a bad person and God doesn’t love bad people, and you’ve done bad things and God doesn’t use people who’ve done bad things.

This is something Wenatchee The Hatchet has addressed in the past but it is worth revisiting.  The problem in the excerpt quoted above is in the series of rhetorical moves Mark Driscoll made with respect to the biblical text of Esther itself by of commenting broadly on the way some interpret it.  He sets up a straw man form of the proposal that Esther could be seen as a primarily heroic figure in spite of her flaws and the next move is more troubling, "Well, then that's a worthless book."  What Driscoll has done here is say that "if" someone interprets Esther as a narrative in which a heroic figure serves God and God's people then the book itself is worthless. 

Given all those years in which Mark Driscoll enjoined everyone to place themselves UNDER Scripture here is a slippery slope that no pastor should ever introduce into the pulpit, the proposal that if one has a view of the scriptures you find problematic that you declare the book itself becomes "worthless".  When a pastor is willing to say that if you endorse a view about a biblical text he finds untenable that the biblical text itself is rendered worthless the gravity of that rhetorical ploy on the part of a man professing to be a pastor and making this move from the pulpit is a bit more than Wenatchee The Hatchet can find the right words for.  It's one thing to suggest that an interpretive approach makes light of certain themes in a text (someone could suggest, as has been done recently that N. T. Wright has made the mistake of making the subsidiary theme in Paul the primary theme while downplaying Paul's primary literary theme) without disparaging the text itself if the other view holds true.  Driscoll would never make the rhetorical move of saying that the Pauline epistles are completely worthless of New Perspective ideas are true, would he?  Even if they were somehow "true" Driscoll wouldn't stop appreciating that the Pauline epistles are in the Bible. 

If Driscoll states that he has grown and changed not all of that growth and change may necessarily be positive.  Back in 2004 he warned members of the God Box and the dynamics of remote denominational executive fiat. By 2014 Mars Hill has reached a point where the local campus pastors are not capable of making decisions about real estate.  This was evinced years ago when Mars Hill executive leadership announced the closing of the Lake City campus.   In 2009 he said he didn't start a side company to manage book royalties and in 2011 he set one up.  What the publication of Real Marriage in 2012 revealed was that in spite of years and years of publicly sharing how much he loved his wife and how good things were this turned out to be, well, not entirely true.  The problematic trajectory Mars Hill has taken and that Mark Driscoll in particular has moved in is a direction in which the things he warned members against from the pulpit a decade ago have become the things that executive leadership at Mars Hill has been doing for a few years now. 

The culmination of many of these turnarounds could be found in Real Marriage.  This was the pivotal point at which Driscoll was not preaching through a book of the Bible, nor was he preaching through a topical series of doctrinal ideas or theological questions.  Instead Real Marriage constituted a series built around a book written by Mark and Grace Driscoll which now turns out to have featured content taken from the works of others without adequate citation and which was bought a place on the NYT bestseller list and this last point was admitted to by none other than the BOAA itself.  The Mark Driscoll circa 2000-2004 may be a source of embarrassment to Mark Driscoll circa 2014 but that Mark Driscoll of late has done things and said things that the Mark Driscoll of 2000-2004 warned us were characteristic of out-of-touch denominational systems and problematic pastors might just be something Mark Driscoll and the other leaders at Mars Hill may need to be reminded of. 

And, as we've noted here at Wenatchee The Hatchet, however sorry Mark Driscoll may be about his tone the substance of his ideas have not necessarily changed.  Mars Hill purging a decade worth of Driscoll's sermons and scrubbing away materials a week or so after it has been quoted at Wenatchee the Hatchet is not the most encouraging sign that Mars Hill leadership is listening or open to a public presentation of ways they have changed that run counter to the early ideals of the community. 

What is most striking about the narrative of the Driscoll marriage in Real Marriage is that during the William Wallace II days this was apparently a bitter and depressive period for the Driscolls in which Mark Driscoll might write "using your penis" under the pen name William Wallace II while the private reality was that he wasn't having as much sex or sex that was good as he wanted and he was bitter about this.  The bloggers and authors who have zeroed in just on "Pussified Nation" without grasping its historic context are going to be missing the significance of the thread and related content.  It is not possible or wise to separate the writings of William Wallace II from the Mark Driscoll who recounted in Real Marriage that in the earlier years of the church he did counseling with young couples and sexually ravenous single women just made him resent his wife a bit more.  (discussed on pages 14 and 15 of the 2012 book, and seems to refer to around the year 1998, a couple of years before "Pussified Nation"). At no point did Mark Driscoll seem to have any epiphany that if he was tending toward viewing sex as a god that he might not have ever been in the best position to rebuke other men in the church for having similar problems. 

What is most striking and least-discussed about the William Wallace II period in this week's journalism and blogging so far is to ask when or how soon or if Mark Driscoll's elders or pastors knew he was writing under this pen name and if they approved.  It is not clear whether or not Mark Driscoll did what he did as William Wallace II with the knowledge and approval of the other elders at the church that was Mars Hill or not.  To go by the stories shared in the 2011 film God's Work, Our Witness a viewer might get the impression that whatever Mark Driscoll's public remorse now in the production of the 2011 film everyone seemed eager to praise Driscoll for how he conducted himself in the period in which he was writing as William Wallace II and even Driscoll himself has not just said he cussed and yelled a lot but that God drew a straight line with a crooked stick and, particularly in the 2011 film, members and staff praised Mark Driscoll for what he did. 

If Mark Driscoll really regretted everything about that time how did that narrative element get into the 2011 film when he could have and should have rejected that entire episode as inappropriate to God's Work, Our Witness?  Driscoll said he sinned and cussed a lot during his William  Wallace II days but go back and read that account again and you may find that the predominant tone and theme in that section is Mark Driscoll talking about how the men were really getting out of hand and he was frustrated at them, took up the pen name William Wallace II along the way, and that in the end the "life change was unreal".  In other words, if there's nothing about the substance of what he said and did in that period of Mark Driscoll's life why would he ascribe the results of what he did to divine providence at any level?  Why not say, rather, that there was nothing good whatever that came from that period of his ministry when he wrote about it in 2006 or talked about it in the 2011 film? 

As discussed earlier this week, Mark Driscoll looked back on the Dead Men days in the following way in 2011.

There were maybe 100 to 120 guys at that time. Probably the average age was maybe early twenties, twenty years old. You’re talking college guys. But a lot of those guys, to this very day, they did it, man. They’re running companies. They’re deacons, elders. They’re starting churches. They’ve gotten married. They’re having kids. Their lives are changed and they are still, you know, hands up, chin down, feet forward, getting it done. And it’s just really cool what God did in this place.

Think about that for a moment "And it's just really cool what God did in this place."  Mark Driscoll has credited God with doing things through him in his William Wallace II/Dead Men stage in print and in film.  If Mark Driscoll has changed and has stopped embracing the ideas he presented as William Wallace II then the contrast between the tone and substance of "Using your Penis" and "Can We _____?" should be considerable.  Is it?