https://heidelblog.net/2023/10/three-congregations-that-grew-during-the-covid-lockdown/
Three congregations that reportedly grew during the
Covid lockdowns in 2020: Christ Church in Moscow, ID; Grace Community Church in
Sun Valley, CA; and Trinity Church in Scottsdale, AZ. These three congregations
have a few things in common. Each is led by a powerful personality: Doug
Wilson, John MacArthur, and Mark Driscoll respectively. Each of these pastors
has been controversial in one way or another, some of which have been
chronicled in this space. All of them, to one degree or another, generated controversy
over their reaction to the Covid mandates. All of them too took a very public
stand in defiance of public health regulations. Comments in a recent article on
Driscoll’s congregation in Scottsdale capture well what happened: …
…
We are to live quietly
because, Paul says, God desires that all people be saved and come to the
knowledge of the truth. The Jews had engaged in rebellions before Jesus. Many
of them, Judas among them, expected Jesus to lead a political rebellion against
the empire. Bar-Kochbah led a rebellion against Rome in the AD 130s. Paul
wanted nothing of it. Paul, like Peter, wants the congregations to be good
citizens, but to mind their business so as to do nothing that interferes with
the advance of the Kingdom of God.
I have been thinking about
something that Clark does not necessarily mention but which seems more than
tangential to his topic, the influence Doug Wilson and John Macarthur had on a
young Mark Driscoll, and a pair of questions that linger over bids by Mark
Driscoll and Doug Wilson to stump for some variation of Christian nationalism,
questions that, ironically, center on whether or not either of these men have coherent
and cohesive exousiologies (not quite the same thing as demonologies). First, let’s get to Wilson, who has been
contending that real men have been shown the door by the pussified society
whether or not he’s willing to use Driscollian wording to make the point:
https://dougwils.com/books-and-culture/s7-engaging-the-culture/little-old-ladies-of-both-sexes.html
...
The problem has been a dearth of biblical
masculinity, and the solution is naturally going to require a restoration of
biblical masculinity.
...
Men will always be dominant, in the very nature of
the case. They are capable of being dominant in incredibly constructive ways,
in ways that are a true marvel. But we, in the grip of a very peculiar frenzy
that has a death grip on our little lizard brains, have decided to outlaw
constructive dominance.
...
Would
this be the kind of biblical masculinity where King David had eight wives and
ten concubines? Between 2 Samuel 3 and 1
Chronicles 3 we get the names of David’s wives, not counting the first:
