The New Unpardonable Sin
The gravest sin in 2022 wouldn't be recognized as such for most of church history
In the list of sins in the Christian faith, a few have always been more prominent than others. In the Catholic tradition there are what are commonly called the Seven Deadly Sins: pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony and sloth. These are not necessarily spelled out in the Bible but there are clear connections that can be made from Biblical teaching to support the list. Whether you accept the Bible as authoritative or not, the “seven deadly sins” are all things that are generally bad.
Something that should go without saying is that Christianity didn’t originate last week. It’s been around for nearly 2000 years. During that time some very smart men have wrestled with lots of issues. You don’t have to agree with them but you cannot deny that many of these men were simply brilliant.
What is odd is that in 2022, and really for the last decade or so (longer in “mainline” denominations), there appears to be a new list of deadly sins that have no relationship to the sins that the church has understood for two millennia. Chief among these sins is “racism” and all associated specific forms, like “White supremacy” and “kinism“. What is kinism you might ask? On Wiktionary it says:
From Infogalactic linked above:
Kinism is the belief, or promotion of the belief, that the social order for humanity is tribal and ethnic, and focuses on a duty to love one’s own people, or kin. Kinists advocate the idea that extended families should live together in large groups segregated by race or ethnicity. They believe the ideal and normative social order for families – and by extension communities, states and nations – is an exclusionary one defined by race and blood, not propositions or borders, and that this natural order forms the proper and lasting bonds of affection and loyalty for society.
A statement like that would have been utterly unremarkable for virtually all of Christian history. Christians have cheerfully warred against other Christians from different nationalities and ethnic groups for most of the last 2000 years, especially in Europe. Caring for your own family or kin, even extended out, is commended throughout the Bible. The Israelites slaughtered other non-Jewish people all over the place and one of the greatest sins committed by The Tribe in the OT was whoring after false gods from other races. Paul commands that Christians provide for their relatives:
But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. (1 Timothy 5:8 ESV)
What is especially noteworthy in these definitions of “kinism” is that they are not specific to any one race but you will be shocked, stunned and dismayed to discover that only White clergy and theologians are accused of being “kinists”. This would seem odd in a normal world. Take a look at the public statements and the webpages for prominent black clergy. You will see an awful lot of overt hostility toward White people and “Whiteness” and very clear preference for the concerns of blacks. Does anyone call “Bishop” Talbert Swan a “kinist”? Or Obama’s “pastor” Jeremiah Wright? Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson? Of course not. Just as only White people can be “racist”, only White Christians that have a deep and special affinity for their own people can be “kinists”.
Sure, I don’t have a dog in this fight anymore but because of my prior association with the “Reformed” Protestant tradition and the simple fact that many of my longer term social media friends still fall into that category I keep tabs on the latest news from that world. Sadly almost all of the news is pretty awful. Wokeism, a code word for normies that mostly means “anti-White”, has infested most Christian institutions and prominent Christian voices (other than John MacArthur). There seems to be precious little fight left in most of them, the general sense is a hunkering down to keep from being noticed and targeted. Even the Mormons, not a Christian group under any definition of the term but generally a conservative religious outfit, came out in support of a Federal bill to “protect gay marriage”.
The latest kerfuffle involves a guy named Thomas Achord and a different guy named Stephen Wolfe. Both are guys I have had contact with on various social media platforms over the years. Stephen recently published a book titled “The Case for Christian Nationalism” and his book sits currently as the #1 Amazon seller in the “Social Issues & Christianity” and #3 in general the general Political Science category so it clearly is getting some attention. When you start to get attention in today’s Christianity and especially when you speak positively about Something Awful like “nationalism”, it upsets the mealy mouthed evangelical gatekeepers. Wolfe has wisely made himself difficult to “cancel” but that didn’t stop the Soyboy Stasi from trying to find ways to get to him through others.
The other in this case is Thomas Achord. Another writer and the co-host of the Ars Politica podcast with Stephen Wolfe. As they are friends and Stephen is a designated WrongThinker for his views on nationalism and Christianity, the Soyboy Stasi decided to go after Achord and they got the scalp they were after.
I’ll take a moment to say this: I don’t really know Thomas Achord. We have interacted on social media periodically for a number of years but have never met or directly corresponded apart from a handful of comments on social media posts. I doubt he would affirm much of what I believe and proclaim. He doesn’t need me nor did he ask me to come to his defense. He’s a pretty smart guy and a responsible family man.
Anyway, Achord was the headmaster at a private classical Christian school, Sequitur Classical Academy. From what I can tell it was an academically rigorous, faithfully and genuinely Christian school. But Achord is friends with Stephen Wolfe and engaged in his own public WrongThink so the Soyboy Stasi went after him with a vengeance. Some tweets that were published under pseudonyms came to light, there is some confusion because he initially denied they were his and later appears to have taken credit/responsibility for them. I haven’t seen the tweets in question and don’t have any interest in doing so because it is really irrelevant. What is relevant is that the Soyboy Stasi went after his personal life and his place of employment. Thomas recounts what happened next in a post on Medium:
Nevertheless, the outrage has gone so far that my place of employment heard of it and called to discuss the matter. I had a cordial and mutual conversation with the board and we agreed that it would be best for me to resign this past Wednesday evening. I love my (now former) school and everyone there. I want the best for them, which truly is to be free of the storm of slander and accusation. I think it is the duty of a leader to shield his people from possible harm or trouble, even if it may stem from himself.
Thomas Achord is now unemployed after what appeared to be dedicated service at his school, with a family of small children and another on the way. What is especially revolting is that the people who managed to ruin his life claim to be Christians but apparently didn’t bother to treat Thomas as a fellow believer, as there are very specific patterns for dealing with people that are in sin within the church. Hint, slandering them online is not one of those remedies. In a world full of actual degeneracy and actual evil, these people made it their mission to ruin someone because of some social media comments that hurt their feelings. Many of them look like this guy, one Joseph Elijah McGowan.
McGowan just oozes masculinity, doesn’t he? Unfortunately he is the sort of “men without chests” that C.S. Lewis wrote of in his 1943 book The Abolition of Man.
We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.
These sorts of “men” fill evangelical churches today and worse they fill many pulpits and academic offices at seminaries where future ministers are trained. When compared to men like Johnathan Edwards or Charles Spurgeon, or the martyrs of the Christian faith, they are exposed as small, vicious and ignorant despite their boasting of academic achievements. Is it any wonder that fewer men attend Christian services with each passing year when intellectual purse dogs like that guy are yipping at better men, all for the sake of a few upvotes on social media? I left a snarky comment on one of his clout-chasing Facebook posts and he responded like Pavlov’s dog with the “LITERAL NAHTZEE!” comments until I pointed out that calling me a racist or Nazi or whatever didn’t bother me in the least, especially from a little bitch in his 20s who doesn’t know shit about shit. Anyway, it provided a few moments of amusement for me and probably put little Joe there into a frothy mess of self-righteous arousal.
What is done is done. Thomas didn’t ask for my opinion or advice so I won’t offer it. However there are some important lessons to be learned here.
First and foremost, I’ll say again that there is no true anonymity on the internet. You can mostly hide your tracks if you are careful but there will always be ways to track you down. If you say it online, you had better be prepared to deal with the consequences.
Second, this is another reason why you need to cancel-proof your career as best you can. A year ago you might have thought someone who was at a small, private and very conservative Christian school would be insulated from being cancelled but in 2022 that isn’t the case.
Third, own up to what you say and never, ever apologize to the mob. In his second post when he sort of admits that the tweets were his, Achord wrote this:
After some deep reflection and consultation, I believe this period of my life was a spiritually dark time marked by pessimism and anger and strained relationships. The twitter account reflects a despairing man angry with the whole world….I maintain that I have trouble recollecting tweets (and the entire account) in this period, and I think this helps explain why.
Maybe, maybe not. I don’t remember everything I have tweeted over the years or wrote on my blog but if I wrote it, I take full credit/blame for it. What is worse is that he attributes what he wrote to “spiritual darkness”. That is not going to appease the Soyboy Stasi and will simply embolden them to go after others. At the end of his first post he wrote:
An addendum: I will not be following up with anyone to defend or explain further accusations, “evidences”, or claims against me. The people who are doing this seem to have infinite time and resources on hand. They seem honestly to enjoy digging up, making up, slandering, and harming. They are good at it. My name is already defiled; I am already jobless; and my wife and children and unborn child’s lives are all now in jeopardy. What else do they seek at this point? Is it not enough? Must they beat a bloody corpse? I appeal to you, if not as Christians, then at least as fellow humans: you have accomplished your objective. Please now leave me be.
That is like chum in the water for these people. They are petty people who delight in petty torments, lacking the intellectual chops to confront an opponent on the merits of his argument, and they certainly lack the testicular fortitude to confront someone man to man, face to face, in real life. Instead they hide on social media, sniping from the margins, but when they get a “win”? Come on man, asking for these hyaenas to treat you with human dignity, much less Christian charity, is like asking Joe Biden to not sniff a room full of 9 year old girls. The sheer joy of smiting a “racist” is the closest thing to paradise they will ever experience.
It is a tough place to be these days. If you hold any attitude regarding race that isn’t within the ever-shifting guidelines dictated to you by the same people that hate you and desire your extermination, you are in danger of losing your job, your friends and even your family. When you are a Christian it is perhaps even more dangerous, because the Christian church in 2022 is riddled with the cancer of wokeness, Cultural Marxism, critical race theory, and White self-loathing. If you aren’t safe from these parasites at a place like Sequitur Classical Academy, then you aren’t safe anywhere in your own church.
Using my real name on social media for over 18 years has taught me to cautious about what I say but to also stand by my statements. While I have modified my positions and admitted when I was wrong, I don’t apologize or regret anything I wrote. My blogs have always been a way for me to work out what I am thinking in a public way, and that makes you take a bit more care. When anyone in the world can take a peek into your thought process, it makes you consider what you saying before you press “submit”. More food for thought for you, my readers. Be sure you mean it and are willing to stand by it before you publish it. There is no propitiation for the unpardonable sin of not hating your own race.