Warhorn Blog Posts

Excerpt:
Seventeen years before President Buswell was hired, Wheaton College had suffered a scandal that reached national proportions. This scandal started with President Charles Blanchard accepting a Black female applicant for mid-year matriculation, Winter/Spring Semester of 1909.

This young woman's name was Nellie Bryant, and her application to Wheaton was the result of her being expelled from Berea College in southeast Kentucky.

Berea College had expelled Bryant because she was Black...

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Music is Rise Up, O Lord, a recording of Psalm 10 by My Soul Among Lions.

Excerpt:
Kevin DeYoung recently wrote a piece critical of Doug Wilson and the “mood” in Moscow, Idaho, center of Doug’s burgeoning movement. Kevin’s piece has fallen flat, leading (if Twitter responses constitute a representative sample) to more criticism of Kevin than Doug.

I suspect Kevin, essentially an irenicist and a generally reasonable guy, can’t comprehend why his criticisms of Doug and the Moscow movement have been so poorly received.

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Music is Rise Up, O Lord, a recording of Psalm 10 by My Soul Among Lions.

Excerpt:
There are a host of circumstances that may complicate the presbytery's debate and vote on the termination of a pastor's call:

• Does the congregation want the pastor's call terminated or not?
• Does the session want the pastor's call terminated or not?
• Does the pastor want his call terminated or not?
• Is there sin or violation of proper process on the part of any or all three of the parties—the congregation, session, and pastor?

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Music is Rise Up, O Lord, a recording of Psalm 10 by My Soul Among Lions.

Excerpt:
Irony is mentioned here in connection with the explosion of our usage of "authentic" because an ironic age is an age lacking in directness, truthfulness, and courage. It winks rather than smiling. It crosses its fingers behind its back. If you catch a man lying and point it out, he responds that he was being ironic.

The ironic man extends by just a few seconds the moment when he has to commit himself.

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Music is Rise Up, O Lord, a recording of Psalm 10 by My Soul Among Lions.

Excerpt:
The Task Force did not review any Wheaton-related activity after the year 2,000. President Ryken and the Board directed the Task Force to review the years 1860 through 2000, but I consider the year 2000 an arbitrary cutoff date. There is no legitimate reason to exempt President Ryken or the Trustees from examination and criticism.

President Ryken's actions in 2015-2016 in the Dr. Hawkins matter provide an interesting contrast to Wheaton's 2023 decision to denounce President Buswell.

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Music is Rise Up, O Lord, a recording of Psalm 10 by My Soul Among Lions.

Excerpt:
The good scholar anticipates lines of argument contrary to his thesis, raising them himself, then responding to them in a way that defends his own conclusions. The good scholar improves his opponent’s arguments for him, demonstrating his commitment to the pursuit of truth. This is “steel-manning,” the opposite of “straw-manning.”

No one familiar with the Report is surprised that the anti-segregation and anti-racism convictions and publications of Buswell the Son aren’t mentioned by the Task Force in defense of his father.

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Music is Rise Up, O Lord, a recording of Psalm 10 by My Soul Among Lions.

Excerpt:
It’s good never to respond to criticism by email or letter if you can do so in person (or, if they live at a distance from you, by a phone call). It’s also important never to respond without waiting at least a couple days to cool off and get your wife or your trusted elder’s advice. Let me reiterate this: never but never send a text, email, or letter responding to criticism or dealing with conflict without waiting at least two days, during which you run by your wife or trusted elder or outside wise friend what you have written or intend to say, asking them to give you their counsel and editing advice.

Let me add: after you have finished spending hours writing out the perfect response, always keep as a live option filing that response in a file folder on your computer or drawer labelled, “God’s file.”

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Music is Rise Up, O Lord, a recording of Psalm 10 by My Soul Among Lions.

Excerpt:
Five centuries ago, the Protestant reformers surveyed what we today call "Christendom," and they mourned over the harassed and helpless sheep being milked by the Pope and his minions. Rome sold her spiritual wares so the Pope would have the money to continue paying those constructing St. Peter's Basilica (as well as Michelangelo painting the Pope's Sistine Chapel).

Surveying this idolatry, the Reformers loved God and grieved that the sheep their Lord had purchased with His Own precious blood were being fattened up and eaten by their shepherds. No one preached to them the good news of the love of God recorded in Scripture.

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Music is Rise Up, O Lord, a recording of Psalm 10 by My Soul Among Lions.

Excerpt:
Wheaton's Trustees also limited their Task Force's "historical review" to Wheaton's history "with respect to race relations."

Not injustice, oppression, or bloodshed.

Just "race relations."

This assumes a common understanding of "race," but what is the definition of this politically charged word?

Cambridge Dictionary defines "race" as "the idea that people can be divided into different groups based on physical characteristics that they are perceived to share such as skin color, eye shape, etc., or the dividing of people in this way."

Given their shared physical characteristics, preborn babies are a "race." Concerning "relations," their mothers are often hostile against them—to the point of bloodshed. It is incontrovertible the slaughter of this race of persons properly lies within the purview of the Trustee's Historical Review Task Force.

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Music is Rise Up, O Lord, a recording of Psalm 10 by My Soul Among Lions.

Excerpt:
Here's a list and frequency of some of their hedge or weasel words/roots and phrases:

• may; "may suggest," "such documentation may have existed," "subsequent research may nuance some of the following findings," etc.
• would; "would be hard-pressed to prove," would be expected," would be an oversimplification," "would be natural to assume," etc.
• might; "Buswell might well have made good on this recommendation," "might suggest," "might give the impression," etc.
• seems; "seems likely"
• assume; "it would be natural to assume"
• perhaps; "interracial relationships were... perhaps discouraged," "perhaps prompted by"
• indicate; "the Record indicates that," "our records... indicate that," "one response indicated that," etc.
• unlikely; "it unlikely [sic] that undergraduates of non-European descent ever comprised as much as 2 percent of undergraduates," "it is highly unlikely that"
• possible; "it would be impossible to determine," "as meticulously as possible," "exactly when he did so is impossible to determine," "makes it impossible... to effectively evaluate race relations," "it is impossible to confirm," etc.
• suggest (23); "a single source with no corroborating or clarifying details... suggests an incident of race-based discrimination supported by the College's President," "may suggest," "evidence suggests that," "HRTF research suggests that," "In sum, the evidence suggests that no black students were enrolled at Wheaton College between the departure of Clarence Morris in 1929 and the matriculation of Lewis McGee in 1940," etc.

Such equivocations are spread across the Report.

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Music is Rise Up, O Lord, a recording of Psalm 10 by My Soul Among Lions.