The Kirk

You need to listen to some music while reading this page, which you can find here. This performance does not come close to the Kirk’s version, but it will have to do.

O ’twas a joyful sound to hear,

Our tribes de – voutly say:

Up Is – rael! to the tem – ple haste,

And keep your fes – tal day.

At Sa – lem’s courts we must ap – pear,

With our as – sem – bled powers,

In strong and beau – teous or – der ranged;

Like her u – nit – ed towers.

O pray we then for Sa – lem’s peace;

For they shall pros – perous be,

Thou ho – ly ci – ty of our God,

Who bear true love to thee.

May peace with – in thy sa – cred walls

A con – stant guest be found,

With plen – ty and pros – per – i – ty

Thy pal – ac – es be crowned.

For my dear breth – ren’s sake, and friends

No less than breth – ren dear,

I’ll pray – May peace in Sa – lem’s tow’rs

A constant guest ap – pear.

But most of all I’ll seek they good,

And ev – er wish thee well,

For Si – on and the tem – ple’s sake,

Where God vouch – safes to dwell.

It was within these sacred walls of Israel, surrounded by brethren dear, that Pooh’s Think was given birth. This distinctive narrative place, this new Israel, is also known as ‘the Kirk’.

The Kirk is geographically rooted in the city of Moscow, a small university and farm town in the panhandle of Idaho, nestled against the Washington border not too far south of the resort town Coeur d’ Alene. Moscow is surrounded by rolling wheat fields struck through by small mountain forests. The farming of the surrounding land follows the rhythm of the weather cycle. It is a world with a story of decay and renewal: dormancy and hibernation give way to plowing and seeding; plowing and seeding give way to life, green and waving in the wind. Finally, golden wheat and harvest gives way to a celebration for the fruit of the earth and of the work of human hands.

Most of the year, however, seems to linger somewhere between Summer and Winter and then somewhere between Winter and Summer. All four seasons make their presence known. Summers are short, hot, sunny, and dry. But winter is the defining season: cold, damp, frozen or else muddy, dark, snowy or else drizzly, and windy. As C.S. Lewis would say, Moscow has a good deal of ‘weather’. And oh, the mud, if it is even worthy to be called that; as one local once put it, it is the “worst thing in the world.” I built homes in Moscow, and therefore had my fair share of that particular poetic experience.

During my early days in the Kirk, we had a sufficient dose of this northerness – and then some – resulting in cozy worlds of tobacco haze surrounding an inside fire. The otherworldly, spiritual uniqueness of Moscow became most apparent when the sun set at 4 pm after a day of wind, drizzle, and thick dark clouds, seen only through patches of cleared fog. It is just the sort of place one might find a small portal to the spiritual realm, leaking a bit of mysterious glory into American agrarian life.

But ‘the Kirk’ refers to more than a place; it also refers to what was rooted in this place: a story, a people, a liturgy, an educational tradition, and, with certainty, a leader. The leader is Douglas Wilson, (co-) founder of Christ Church, New St. Andrews, Credenda Agenda, Canon Press, Confederation of Reformed Evangelicals and so on and so forth (Wilson knows how to multiply these sorts of entities). Wilson is a popular writer, pastor, and controversialist, and he and the Kirk have been a popular subject for journalism, including the New York Times Magazine, World Magazine, the University of Idaho’s student magazine, and the Southern Poverty Law Center. We now await a documentary of Wilson’s tour with anti-theist Christopher Hitchens.

It is not hard for me to conjure a full picture of Wilson in the early days, when he was busy fashioning the Kirk from the dust of the earth. He was a just and jolly man, tirelessly working for the good of his family and the Kirk. Tall, with large nose, thick beard, and round belly, he had the appearance of a “lumber jack,” as Molly Worthen put it. His deep loud voice bellowed above the congregation’s when we sung the war songs of David; yet he was able to respond to fierce confrontation with a high pitched chuckle, at times, a giggle.

Preliminary success was the only kind of fuel this young preacher would need to press on with his enormous task of social engineering, and he had plenty of it. His Rediscovering the Lost Tools of Learning had already become a hit with American Christians and he had already (co-) founded an academically successful private primary school in Moscow, which was to help spawn a large association of Christian Classical schools. He set forth what he claimed was the rediscovery of medieval methods of learning that our nation had abandoned to its own peril. The entire public educational system was on the brink of total collapse, and when comparing a young child of the Kirk with one from a typical public school, this was a story easy to accept.

A Classical Christian college was also getting off the ground, soon to procure a hundred well groomed, Christian men and women. They would learn Greek and Latin and savor classical works from Thucydides, Herodotus, Augustine, Aquinas, John Calvin, C.S. Lewis, and Flannery O’Conner. They would learn the protections of Christian Courtship, and come together, dressed in formal black robe, for Friday liturgies that were filled with singing, poetry reading, and formal debate. A formidable faculty was under construction, including a bearded PhD from Cambridge. The president of the college, a former professor of Moscow’s secular university, prophesied of the college becoming the New Harvard, complimenting the preacher’s prophecy that the walls of Moscow’s Jerusalem would one day be fully rebuilt. The local university was in shambles and would one day give rise to some doable real estate (actually zoned for schools). The study of music and vocal performance were weekly drills, and at any moments notice the student body could produce enchanting four-part harmony. The Kirk’s musician, funded by both the church and the school, labored tirelessly producing a unique Kirk Psalter, filled with majestic and earthy tunes, meticulously gathered from ages past.

The Kirk community as a whole could enjoy regular dances, or as they were called, “balls”. Special southern dances were resurrected to the tunes of live Irish bands. The women remained virgins, dressing and acting with modesty. And yet Wilson preached against the church’s past errors about sexuality and he labored day and night counseling and encouraging both young and old to pursue passionate love-making with their spouses. The wedding bed was esteemed beyond all else in the Kirk, signifying an act that was self-justifying and self-glorifying, an act that needed no rational basis outside of its own existence. The Kirk’s marriages protected this act and this act protected the Kirk’s marriages. The divorce rate hovered at about 6%. Successful and educated families moved from all over the US to partake in this new civilization.

And whether it was the ancient proclamation of King Jesus as the new Emperor, the fashioning of a local ecclesia, or the triumphant vision of the cosmic future dominion of the Church, Wilson had what was in his greatest favor: that of sounding very Pauline.

After such a quick success with so little original resources, the momentum could only continue. The small community lived a narrative of dominion and boldness. The Kirk came with a full worldview in tact, and there were confident answers to almost any question, whether about politics, law, philosophy, theology, or marriage. A cultural journal was off the ground, in which Wilson, his son Nate, and his right-hand man Douglas Jones could ridicule both unbelievers and sentimentalist Christians alike.

The preaching was creative and confident. Sunday liturgy was the ultimate act of warfare against the surrounding unbelieving world. Each Sunday morning was a ‘covenant renewal’ such as happened at the foot of Sinai, and sent a spiritual shock-wave through the surrounding area. Unbelievers become more fearful and timid after each convening – evidenced by the preacher’s fast footwork while in debate with the carefully selected atheists. (I do not recall an invitation to Christopher Hitchens in those days.)

The theme of the Kirk and the school was essentially the same: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. Christian piety was now comfortable with wine, women, song, fine architecture, wool sweater vests, and the plight of one’s enemies. As a young man smoked his pipe and sipped his port by his shelf lined with Lobe classics, he could dream about the day when he would know what it is like to gloat over the demise of his cultural enemies, as well as the feeling of a Kirk virgin’s bosom.

But there was more to this community than heroic warfare and merriness. There was also a good deal of Tolkein, C.S. Lewis, and the childhood imagination. The preacher was a believer of real dragons, and the resident Homeric scholar was a believer of living breathing fairies. But more important than fairy tales making visual incarnation here on earth was their revelations of the non-visual world in which we live, move, and have our being. Fairy tales were truer than they were untrue, perhaps even truer than non-fiction facts. Through some grand mystery, the future would bring both the increase of mystery and the scientific eradication of cancer.

The Kirk was an alternative to reformed Christianity, that typically austere, confessional form of Christianity still well entrenched in America. Wilson claimed membership in the reformed tradition early on and began winning the allegiance of laymen in other reformed congregations through the publishing of practical books, books of wisdom explaining how one could be a man. Given the breakup of family both outside and within conservative reformed congregations, it was not hard to win the affection of congregants of other churches who could not find a role model even within their own ‘eldership’, the prized ruling class of males. The holiness of the preacher was only confirmed by the resulting criticism from the jealous and offended elders on the outside.

The Kirk quickly networked with fringe reformed scholars and created an alternative brand of reformed theology, dubbed by the majority opposition as the ‘Federal Vision’. This networked think-tank, comprised primarily of courageous pastors, challenged the anemic and static state of reformed thinking that clung to old modernist notions of propositional truth and systematics. Traditional reformed thinkers had become dry and uncreative, and often down right cranky when their interpretations of their own confessional standards – almost always unreflective– were challenged. The Federal Vision offered visionary vibrancy, and approached theology more like the early reformers – in contrast to the popish clinging to tradition of their opponents, sometimes self-described as ‘truly reformed’. For outsiders, the situation was comical. In the name of being ‘reformed’ the traditionalists played the part of censorious papists, stamping out creative and subtle reflection on the language of scripture in order to protect the contemporary leadership’s interpretation of non-scriptural church standards.

And so the Kirk grew in psychological and spiritual momentum. While the reformed papists where clinching fists over the visionary’s crowd-winning efforts, Wilson would just poke fun of the opposition with a chuckle; and the Kirk just rolled on towards the postmillennial cultural vision.

The preacher began a small training program for future pastors and teachers, a genuine alternative to seminary and accredited graduate degrees; after all, the kingdom of heaven did not come by way of prestigious titles or the pleasing of tenured men. Whatever could be said about the preacher’s band of disciples (usually about 12 in number), it was clear to everyone that it looked and smelled a lot more like the Son of God’s chosen pedagogy 2000 years ago than did the typical, contemporary seminary. A network of daughter and sister churches was established and a new denomination was born. Dozens of Christian Classical schools and churches throughout the nation grew eager for the next batch of graduates from Wilson’s college and band of disciples.

The immediate family unit was the primary cultural focus in this community. The bond between a husband and wife was sacred, and one of the main reasons for this bond was the raising of many children. An unspoken truth that sometimes made an appearance in explicit utterance was the fact that the community was to grow primarily through a high birth rate, each child receiving the Kirk’s enculturation from infancy.

Wilson held a ‘men’s forum’ almost each week where men could come and discuss and debate almost anything with him. Fresh ideas that would work their way into the community typically started at this weekly meeting; men would therefore know what was particularly coming down the road and had the opportunity to voice their opinions and arguments. In the early days, the dialog was free and argumentative; everything was rooted in rigorous and judicial thought.

The elders sat with gravity and dignity, knights at a round table; Wilson was pleased with the accountability that came with such “independent thinking men.”

The community was sabbitarian. Each Sunday was a special day of rest, mandated by God and rooted in the first 7 days of creation. At the dawning of the Sunday sun one entered a new world, shared with the larger Kirk community; all entered rest together. Work or errands could never be an excuse for not meeting some friends down at the park – perhaps for a barbecue, beer, and cigars.

There is nothing in the world like a congregation meeting on the Sabbath, within a basketball court in a small town in north Idaho, without choir and without an urban center of musical training, all singing loudly in complicated and beautiful four part harmony: