Dear Pastor Bayly,
That does help, although I’ll admit it still leaves me unsure as to what to think. If I understand the problem you and @jtbayly are driving at, it’s less about high-school level plagiarism, and more about a kind of inappropriate aloofness where there should be open, public concord. To try to summarize, the Revoice struggle is not happening in a vacuum. The reformed world is small, and in an ongoing, hot fight, combatants should recognize the work being done by other allies, especially if those allies were doing that work first (“heat-of-the-midday work”). In that case, you are necessarily building on their work, even if you aren’t using their arguments directly.
So when someone comes along, speaks into an ongoing conversation, does not acknowledge prior work being done by allies, and even casts shade on prior, nameless “critics,” one might suspect something like snubbing or distancing is happening. Is this a fair representation?
Assuming it is, I’ll just admit that I don’t quite know what to make of it. That’s largely due to two things. First, to do a Bookening-style baggage check I probably should have done earlier, I’m probably more inclined to trust Wedgeworth than some. This is not because I’m actually very familiar with him or his work, but because I have friends who think he’s a good man. Thus far that element.
Second, I’m unfamiliar with the politics of the reformed world as a layperson. The argument against him outlined above relies on the assumption that Warhorn Media contributions are a big enough element in the room to be un-ignorable. It’s not too hard (for me) to imagine that he simply isn’t very familiar with or aware of what you all are doing, and so decided not to reference or speak to it.
Mind you, I’m not saying that’s what happened, and I don’t think your suspicions are unreasonable. I just find myself torn between different authorities (some of my friends and y’all), both of whom I’m inclined to trust. On a point like this, someone is right and someone is wrong, but I’ll probably just land on “innocent until proven guilty” applied to both arguments for now.
Finally, I do want to reiterate one point. Throwing nameless allies under the bus, and praising the Revoice folk for being “irenic” in the face of “unreasonable criticism” is objectively lame. Of course the wolves have developed a “much more sophisticated theological and philosophical framework” and have presented an “irenic disposition”- they’re trying to pull a fast one on the church! As Chesterton put it, “To be wrong, and to be carefully wrong, that is the definition of decadence.” In praising them for any of that, Wedgeworth is answering a fool according to his folly and is in real danger of becoming like them himself.
Apologies for that being so ridiculously long as I’m finding this difficult to think through. And also, thanks again for all your work on this front. When the chips are down, academics are a dime a dozen, but your (and other’s) clear, pastoral tone in response to this dumpster fire of lust is what is desperately needed in the larger, spine-challenged church.
God Bless,