A few more Warhorn notes.

I see that I missed a snarky tweet from Warhorn the other day:

It is true that I have said I haven’t listened to the podcast yet (although I did make it somewhere between 5 and 10 min in last night).  But as I explained in the very post Warhorn is referencing, at that point I had already read Nathan Alberson’s email to me telling me about the podcast.  I published that email and others on a subsequent post, but I’ll re post it here for reference:

Nathan Alberson

7:29 AM (11 hours ago)

to me
Our podcast came out today: https://simplecast.com/s/793c8cb6

It’s brutal, as you’ll see. But after much thought and prayer, we decided what you’re doing is not just misguided but harmful, and we wanted to inoculate people against it.

I hope you don’t think yourself ill-used. I did ask the questions in good faith, despite what your followers say about me. And then we took a long time to weigh our options and craft a response.

And I hope you consider seriously what we say in the podcast. I hope you stop or radically change your method of operation. I hope you really are the considerate and thoughtful man you present yourself as.

I have my doubts, for the reasons enumerated in the podcast. And because your followers are thoroughly nasty people. The way they treated me in the comments was without charity, dignity, or kindness. Yes, I’m generalizing. And no, I’m not personally offended. But I do want you to see that, no matter how reasonably you present yourself, a man like me is not going to take you seriously. Not with a rabble like that validating you.

So consider this a personal exhortation: drop the pseudonym, and place yourself under the authority of men who can discipline what your write and help you discipline your followers. That or get out of the business altogether.

Your followers who validate you are are not really loving you.

I am.

Sincerely,

Nathan

So yes, I feel very comfortable assuming the podcast is brutal.  And yes, I was ill used by Nathan, as he publicly admitted he went against what he had assured me multiple times in private.  I don’t need to listen to the podcast to know that Nathan and Warhorn were duplicitous.  They told me they were.  And the closest I’ve received to an apology to date from Pastor Tim Bayly is his outrage at me upon finding out the men of his team were communicating with me behind his back for a month and a half.  How was I to know his team had gone rogue if he didn’t?  Their greatest point of pride is that everything they do at Warhorn is under his authority!  And given all of their boasting about his authority, why has Pastor Bayly still not taken responsibility for the dumpster fire at Warhorn?  The world wonders.

Another Warhorn tweet that makes me wonder who is in charge of the show over there is this thoughtful entry:

While I’m rounding up odds and ends, part of Pastor Bayly’s complaint was that I didn’t give him credit for saying “no” to a woman in his church who wanted to become a naval officer:

That said, at the same time as I was writing, a student at IU decided to go into the Navy as an officer responsible for nuclear reactors. I loved her and told her she should not do so. We’re still friends and she’s always known I think she was not obeying God in this. Full stop.

This is just one of many, many examples of my fulfilling my responsibility as husband, father, and pastor to say “no” to women, and rebuke them. That Mr. Anonymous spreads his false accusations otherwise is disgusting to me. False charge after false charge after false charge. Long ago I decided not to answer him, and then I find out Warhorn is providing him a platform, so now I’m having to do what I determined wasn’t worthwhile, or even right.

One commenter asked how I was supposed to know Bayly had told her no, since he hadn’t to their knowledge written about the incident.  However, I actually had read what I believe is his account of the same incident in his 2011 blog post Would I support our daughters enlisting in the military… (emphasis mine):

But that begs the question whether today’s Armed Forces are a place any man, let alone a Christian man, wants his daughters to serve, and I say “no.” I don’t want my own son serving in the military, let alone my daughter. We have a bunch of men in our congregation who are in the military and one officer in the Navy from our congregation who is a woman. We tried to discourage most of these men (and certainly the woman) from enlisting, but they chose to proceed and we’re proud of them and support their work, praying for them when they are deployed and loving them when they get home.

Why then to did we oppose their enlistment?

Because of many factors, including the gross immorality that permeates the military bases, the purposes Washington’s pols make of our Armed Forces which often are not only unconstitutional, but contrary to historic Christian just war criteria (NB Vern Poythress’ footnoted comment in our report); because of the continuing degradation of the distinction between soldiers and civilians in modern warfare; and on it goes.

The majority of our men serve in the Marines, and if I had to acquiesce to one of my sons going into the military (which I don’t ever want to do), I would hope it’s the Marines since they’re the branch of the military least corrupted by sexual perversions and the loss of military discipline that is its inevitable result.

There’s much more to be said, but I’m off and running, dear sisters. The long and short of it is that I don’t’ want my sons to go into the military because historic just war criteria have been trampled by our Armed Forces this past century, and one criteria still hanging on is almost dead: namely, that men should bear arms in defense of their mothers because those mothers shed blood to give birth to their children.

Please read the full post at the link and correct me if I’ve overlooked it, but I can’t find any reference to him telling her she was sinning.  I see him saying that he is proud of and supports the work of his church members in the military, and I don’t see this as excluding the woman who joined the Navy.  I also see him closing with a reference to the canard of men not being willing to serve forcing women to do so in their place, even while explaining in the same breath that he discourages the men in his church from serving.

One final miscellaneous bit (for today at least). 

As you may recall Bayly was outraged at my characterizing the PCA resolution he chaired as failing to call women serving in combat sinful.  This was the manufactured outrage from the underhanded Warhorn Media team.  Part of why I didn’t expect him to be outraged was his description of the process in his post Republican candidates want their daughters drafted…

Fifteen years ago, even the feminist pastors on the Ad Interim Study Committee on Women in the Military of the PCA’s General Assembly were opposed to women being drafted. They were in favor of women serving as combatants and they ridiculed committee members who were opposed, saying our view of women was to keep them “barefoot and pregnant.” Still, none of them wanted their daughters drafted.