Pastor Pruitt has made it a habit of publicly and privately attacking my character for years due to my opposition to Rachel Green Miller and Aimee Byrd, so I have had the misfortune of learning the methods he uses to distract from actual issues, stake out his place as the conservative apologist for the new feminists, and make sure that critics are silenced. He’s called me vile and nasty more times than I can count, accused me of all sort of unseemly things, but never provides any evidence to back up his claim or allow me the privilege of defending my name
It’s an effective tactic.
Pastors of large, influential congregations who are at the same time sheltered and paid by parachurch organizations, can play a useful role for those in power. They can quickly enforce the unspoken rules about what is going to be allowed in our online discourse: Jules Diner, the most prolific post-complementarian RPCNA twitter personality who also happens to be a habitual liar and gossip? Fine. Never addressed. An article comes out from an OPC minister against feminism? Quick write a blog that makes all critics of this new post-complementarianism into ghouls.
His role in the whole conflict is very important. He never has to contribute anything of substance. He just has to be an attack dog for anyone to his right on this issue, and if he takes other stands that make conservatives happy that just reinforces that his attacks on those of us who are actually opposing feminism must be fair.
I’ll briefly discuss a couple of things from his latest post for Reformation 21.
Todd mockingly notes what is sort-of the case: “I am a squishy, moderate complementarian who is in league with radical feminists to destroy the church.” Actually, Pruitt plays a much more important role. He is the “conservative edge”, he is the line on the right edge of what is to be allowed, and anyone who actually corrects the feminists or sees the new NAPARC advocates of feminism as actual threats is called “extreme” or “hyper”. Our beliefs and lives could be very similar to Pruitt, but because we are willing to say that it is actually, objectively stupid for a married man to give his “intimate spiritual” lady friend a ride in his car late at night to her hotel, we’re “bad actors.”
He also says we have a “penchant for heavy handed patriarchy” —this is just simply a lie. I’m actually pretty moderate compared to all our Reformed forefathers. But, hey, what’s new? ACE writers have often lied about people and wronged the little guy to protect the powerful men and women who run the Reformed mafia. And by the way, Pastor Pruitt, we all know that you realize that Aimee has specifically taught that anything a man does, which would include pink cardigans, is definitionally masculine and he should not be told to pursue more masculine behavior. But wait, if you didn’t just make it into a joke you’d have to engage the actual issue instead of just punching down to your right.
His list contains many fine ideas, but more and more insinuations of bad guys who do things like “berating and mocking women within your own denomination.” That’s garbage. And if I call a garbage accusation “garbage” it isn’t “berating” though it could be called “mocking.” But there is a big difference in tearing down a person and trying to oppose their ideas. I have not attacked Mrs. Byrd as a person, and have often in fact prayed for her, but I do oppose her ideas and her tactics. And for all the years of her cronies spying on me, they have yet to find evidence of that which they accuse me. Because of that, she and many others are trying to make sure I shut up.
I wish pastors and people who could actually make a difference would start standing up more. But obviously, from recent experience, there is no way to actually do that. Ask gentle questions like Master? Nope, not acceptable. Write a gentle critique like Jones? Nope, he’s been a friend of monsters. Even Deyoung doesn’t have enough political clout to directly correct Byrd’s book.
The bottom line: critics of the new feminism are not allowed online.