That is the question asked by Joseph L. Conn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, wanting to know why Colson is scheduled to be the featured speaker at the Association of Classical and Christian Schools annual conference where he’ll be sharing the stage with Douglas Wilson, who believes in exiling gays and executing adulterers:
Now, Colson has taken an even bigger step toward the lunatic fringe. He’s the featured speaker at the June 25-27 “Building on a Firm Foundation” conference of the Association of Classical and Christian Schools (ACCS).
ACCS is the brainchild of the Rev. Douglas Wilson, pastor of Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho. The ACCS approach to private education and homeschooling has spread across the nation in recent years. You may have heard Wilson’s name because of some debates he did with atheist author Christopher Hitchens.
But Wilson is better known in Idaho for his advocacy of outlandish religious and political viewpoints. His “firm foundation” seems to be Christian Reconstructionism, the extreme Religious Right theo-political movement that seeks to take “dominion” over America, scrap democracy and impose biblical law.
Reconstructionists read the Bible literally and think the legal mandates of the Old Testament should apply today, including application of the death penalty for a range of “crimes” running from adultery and homosexuality to witchcraft and worshiping false gods.
In an interview with Christianity Today, Wilson distanced himself from the Reconstructionist label, but not the movement’s harsh views.
Asked if he would execute gays, he replied, “You can’t apply Scripture woodenly. You might exile some homosexuals, depending on the circumstances and the age of the victim. There are circumstances where I’d be in favor of execution for adultery…. I’m not proposing legislation. All I’m doing is refusing to apologize for certain parts of the Bible.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center has more on Wilson:
Still, Colson’s flirtation with dominionism is one thing. The antebellum slavery-defending “paleo-confederacy” advocated by Wilson, his conference host, is quite another. Wilson’s booklet Southern Slavery, As It Was, is an outrageous apologia for the enslavement of black Americans in the Old South. “Slavery as it existed in the South … was a relationship based upon mutual affection and confidence,” wrote Wilson and his co-author Wilkins. “There has never been a multiracial society which has existed with such mutual intimacy and harmony in the history of the world.” Wilson is also a promoter of some of the more draconian tenets of Christian Reconstructionism, a theocratic movement that seeks to demolish American democracy and replace it with the legal code of the Old Testament, which calls for stoning to death adulterers, homosexuals and in some cases, wayward children. In an April 2009 interview with Christianity Today, Wilson distanced himself only ever so slightly from the most hardline reconstructionists. “You can’t apply Scripture woodenly,” said Wilson. “I’m not proposing legislation. All I’m doing is refusing to apologize for certain parts of the Bible.”
