The Significance of Doug Wilson's Poetic Pickle
I have heretofore neglected to explain the significance of the pickle.
This is the story of how a botched bulletin for a service I didn’t even attend made me love my church and my pastor even more.
Some things are so extra they can only come from delight.
The Pirate King
To many who know the name Douglas Wilson, perhaps to the majority, he is the bad-ass Idaho pastor who founded a bad-ass publishing house and a bad-ass college, writes bad-ass books and makes bad-ass videos (with flamethrowers). To that majority he is a rebel with a cause, which cause is proclaiming the Gospel, chewing bubble gum, and setting things on fire. And he’s all out of things to set on fire. And now he’s all out of bubble gum! But as he proclaims that hot Gospel, he’s still in that sweet Rules for Reformers leather jacket1 that makes him look like…you guessed it…a bad-ass. Like the New York Times quote from the cover to Rules says, “More like a lumberjack than a pastor, even when he wears a suit.”
Even among those who love Doug Wilson, the imagination fleshes out the robust roguery of his online/published persona until he becomes a bugbear of Christendom, a disturber of Israel; the imaginer’s decision becomes whether to love him for it or not. Canon Press supplies Wilson with the jolly rogers, flamethrowers, and baseball bats, and our imaginations conjure images of a pastor who is as close to a biker gang leader as high Protestantism will allow. The city of Moscow becomes a sort of Sturgis-on-a-hill, into which stream the banners of Reformed rogues of every rite. Pints are poured at first arrival, and leather jackets are handed out to fathers when their families become members of Christ Church.
The trouble with this image of a Harley-riding Doug *vroom! vroom!* Wilson is that it distracts from the pickle. It distracts from the pickle, y’all!
You may think that this song is about riding a motorcycle, but it’s not. It’s about a pickle. And you’ll understand everything better if I explain to you the significance of that pickle.
Again, this piece is not about Motorcycle-Doug. This is about a pastor, one of my pastors, who lives here in town: Pastor Doug.
This piece is not intended as a vindication of Douglas Wilson or his character. Anyway, I consider such a vindication unnecessary. This piece is simply an explanation of the significance of the pickle, and the pickle is a poetic one. Initially, it may seem that the pickle is Douglas Wilson, or represents him. But not so; not really. As Uri Brito often says, congregations take on the character of their pastors, and this poetic pickle of Doug’s is our pickle. It is the poetic pickle of the people, the cucumber of Christ Church, the gherkin that grace is workin’ amongst us.
On second thought, and on the fly, let’s make some adjustments to our pickle metaphor. We’re now going with a whole pickle jar, and one particular pickle from that jar that was served up this week.
The particular single pickle is a sonnet.
This whole thing is about a pickle. I mean a sonnet. I mean, I meeeeeaaaaan…the pickle is a sonnet.
So…I don’t actually attend Christ Church. I’m a member of Christ Church Downtown, a Christ Church plant, also here in Moscow. I haven’t been to Christ Church’s new building since it was completed, although I’m sure the family and I will worship with the saints there soon enough. The session of Christ Church, knowing that lots of people would want to see the new building and worship in it, scheduled two dedication services on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week to facilitate that. The family and I aren’t going to those, as cool as they may be; I won’t wait in line at Disney World, and I’m happy to wait for a normal Sunday a few weeks from now to avoid the crowd.
Anyway, my party-poopiness aside, this is a cool thing, isn’t it? A church has a new edifice, the builders of which took pains to make beautiful. There’s a special service, with special music.
It’s a great celebration for a great occasion! The church musician, Dr. Mark Reagan, has composed a choral piece which the choir has been diligently practicing. The words are printed in your bulletin. The choir bursts into song; the music is beautiful, the voices of the saints waft rafterward and beyond, heavenward. But! Something is off…the words in the bulletin…there’s no verse, but a solid paragraph of text, and it doesn’t seem to match what’s being sung, nor does it seem to make much sense when read. But the confusion bogs no one down; they hear the music and are glad. The service continues.
The next day Pastor Douglas Wilson sends an email to explain the significance of the pickle, i.e. what did those words mean? For the high holy occasion of the church dedication service, he had composed a sonnet, which Dr. Reagan had put to music, and the choir sung. There had been some sort of miscommunication with the making of the bulletin, with the lines coming out in prose and out of order (womp-womp). Pastor Wilson wishes to reassure the congregation that he is, in fact “not on drugs”, fully compos menti. He then shares the sonnet in its proper order and versification.
I won’t print it here, since it was in a church email and I don’t know how he’d actually like to see it published and shared. But know simply this: the sonnet is a pickle out of the jar, which is a jar of poetry and poetics.
What is the significance of having a pastor who rides rhetorical Harleys into battle? Does that significance change if the pastor likes to write sonnets? If he cares what happens with those sonnets? And what is the real significance of the pickle?
The Poet King
I’m an audiobook narrator over at Canon Press. Although Pastor Wilson records most of his books for the publisher, I’ve had the opportunity to be the voice of much of his older material (back into the 80s!), and some random bits like his excellent New Testament commentaries. I think of these titles as his “B sides”. Not the greatest hits or singles like Future Men or Reforming Marriage, nor even the tracks known to the aficionados, theological stuff like Mere Christendom or Mother Kirk. I’m talking about the truly obscure bits, like the historical presentation on speculative angelology and cosmology he gave in the eighties with some of his local buddies, or the collection that made me remember oh yeah! he used to write a column for Ligonier twenty years ago.
A particular standout was Let the Stones Cry Out, a collection of pastoral emails he’d sent to his people preparing them for having a big nice building instead of a high school gym. I’d never read it, since…um…I don’t read all the church emails. Anyway, it was awesome. I’m more careful to read church emails now. But the point is that in this book Pastor Wilson’s aesthetics came much more to the fore; they’re always there, the beauty right alongside the truth and goodness, but with this book, the beauty was the first thing you read about, his angle of approach.
I’d read a lot of Doug Wilson books in my day, but never these truly deep cuts. And throughout my reading of these “B sides”, I kept returning to the thought that here was a man who little resembled the motorcycle pirate of so many imaginations. The subjects addressed in these writings were often outside of what he usually emphasizes in his more popular works, but of course, it was the same man, with the same frankness, the same direct speech. Making allowances for some changes in thought with the passing of the years, there was a deep consistency to his thought and writing. But there were also other angles, unusual perspectives or unexpected sides to things.
Well…unexpected to those who only know motorcycle Doug Wilson.
Over the years and through our travels the wife and I have often been asked “What’s Douglas Wilson like?” We’re not personal friends of Pastor Doug’s, so wifey and I don’t speak with the authority of intimacy, but the word we’ve most often used is kind. Believe me or not, he’s kind, and quiet, and tender, and meek. If you know that, you see it in all his writings, in all his videos. The great things about the “B sides” I was reading is that the kindness and tenderness was often front and center, obvious and unignorable, even to those who have not personally experienced his kindness.
But that’s not quite the pickle. That’s pickle-adjacent. The pickle, remember, is a poem. The jar of pickles is poetics.
What have we determined so far? That there’s a pastor in northern Idaho who’s kind and tender and writes sonnets, to whom it matters that his people understand what the poem he’d composed for God, and them, meant to say.
Doug Wilson is our pastor. He writes sonnets. He writes about those sonnets in pastoral emails. On Sundays he thunders from the pulpit. This is quite a pickle. What does it mean?
A Man in Full
Substack is great. Today I had a brief exchange of comments on this platform about the science fiction writer Robert Heinlein. One of the commenters, a friend of mine, mentioned a quote that comes up nearly every time we talk. He’s an educator, I’m an educator; we are obsessed with human formation. He’s a speaker, I’m a speaker; we are obsessed with human oration. So it’s no surprise that this Heinlein quote is one we often put under the light, turning it back and forth to see what light shines out in what manner from what facet.
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
If you, reader, have followed me for any amount of time, you’ve probably heard me pull this one out. I’d say I’ve done thirteen of the things; doesn’t seem like an impressive number.
I don’t know if Doug Wilson has ever planned an invasion or conned a ship, but I know he was in the Silent Service. I don’t know if he can make a tasty meal, but I’ve seen him write a sonnet, and care about it.
If it be true that congregations assume the character of their ministers, consider the effect that having such a man as pastor will have on his people.
Someone who hasn’t just written one sonnet, but published a collection of poetry (I suspect he has scads more verse tucked away here and there). Someone who loves Anne Bradstreet and wrote a biography of her, who conceived of a collection of Calvinist poets, who has written lyrics to numberless hymns, who loved Beowulf so much he had to do a version of his own.
What is the effect?
Effect 1 (not the pickle):
Well, it’s the same effect on his people that being a lover of P. G. Wodehouse has, that driving a beat-up pick up truck has, that being a willing conversationalist who’s not very good at small talk has: the people know that here is a man. A man with his own likes and dislikes, desiring to live according to God’s will. A man who has lived a life, a man in full. This is comforting. It is comforting to the people to know that their pastor has manned a submarine and led a Bible study in a garage.
Effect 2 (the pickle):
If it is true that a congregation takes on the character of its minister, then surely it does so incompletely, to lesser glory in some ways and perhaps to greater in others. We learn through imitation, but it becomes its own thing. A son imitates his father and thus becomes his own man. Many are the men that every Christian imitates, which is as it ought to be. Now, Doug Wilson has been remarkably blessed in beginning and working out many projects that Christians have found worthy of imitation. This is most seen in classical Christian education, especially among Protestants. Many have imitated him to the point that, like sons, they feel so far past those first things they imitated that they’ve nearly forgotten where it began for them, how they learned to take those first steps and start running.
Perhaps, reader, you think that imitation narrows the scope for growth, that discipleship requires straitness. Quite to the contrary. At least, not with a good model, a good teacher.
As I draw to a close, and as I’m about to say even more nice things about Douglas Wilson, I wish to say that there is no blowing of smoke up skirts, no tooting of horns. This really is just me being grateful…for a man, for a church, for a community. Most of all, this is me being grateful to the Lord, and thankful for the Holy Spirit who makes his people one.
The Pickle King
So many pastors are educated narrowly, have lived narrow lives, and are ungenerous or fearful in their expressions and enthusiasms. This must be remedied in the evangelical church; such pastors can only pastor intellectually. They encourage intellectually, they counsel intellectually; they struggle to say I’ve been there, to say follow me or even, with Paul, imitate me.
No man is ever truly a man in full, no man is ever complete. Regardless, pastors need to be well-rounded, they need to love a lot of things. If congregations really do take on their pastor’s character, they’ll appreciate all the affirmation and latitude that creates in the church culture.
Think about it. How many poets reading this right now can say their pastor writes sonnets? How many churches provide a place for Christians who love beauty to stand up and say so, and be respected for it?
Think about your church. So often churches seem to pick only one of the transcendentals (truth, beauty, goodness): this church over here is goodness, that one over there is truth, that one there is beauty (and vaguely gay). Which one of these is yours?
Christians who have moved to Moscow have founded, built, helped build, and so on, a lot of things that bless God’s people and glorify the Lord of Heaven. Those who have been attracted here, and been able to afford moving here, have often been entrepreneurs and business people. This has without question affected the culture of Christ Church, the CREC churches in town, and Moscow itself. And yet, despite this strong influence, there is no monoculture. Why?
In part, at least, because of its pastor. Take a look at Douglas Wilson’s bibliography. Ride Sally Ride; Her Hand in Marriage; Dangerous Alphabet; Ploductivity; Gashmu Saith It; European Brain Snakes; etc etc etc. And that’s just books. Who knows what else the man is into in real life.
Well, for one, and again, Douglas Wilson writes sonnets. That makes him a poet. And yet, what would he say if asked “What do you do for a living?”
The more pastors can say, with Paul, “I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some”, the more they build out the cover of their church for all kinds of faithful ones living out all kinds of faithfulness. And having all sorts is highly desirable. Rather than having one church where people who want business contacts or social lubrication go, and one church where academic types go, and a church where hipsters go, and a church for the young, and a church for the poor, and a church for black and a church for white and a Spanish-speaking church, isn’t it more desirable to have a church will all these people together? The lion lies down with the lamb, the boomer with the baby?
What is the significance of having a pastor who rides rhetorical Harleys into battle? You get a lot of people in your church who like to ride into rhetorical battle. What is the significance of having a pastor who founds things? You get a bunch of founders. What happens when you have a pastor who writes sonnets? You get more sonneteers than usual.
What happens when you have a pastor who talks with interest, authority, and enthusiasm, about aesthetics and beauty? You get a bunch of makers.
Our churches are chock-full of makers, and that makes me happy. And they don’t just make for each other, as I’ve seen elsewhere.
When I see Pastor Wilson enthusiastically writing sonnets and collaborating with musicians, it not only inspires me in my crafting and collaborating, it helps me feel confident in talking to other in my church about these things.
As a father, I am reminded to be broad for the sake of my kids, to provide for them the cover that vindicates not only their interest in my things, but in my wife’s things, in all things bright and beautiful, in all things great and small, not only in the wordsmithy, but in the mathematicking, if that’s where they wish to find and make beauty. Specialization is for old bachelors.
Our pastor writes sonnets. Maybe it’s not a big deal, not as big a deal as this text makes it out to be. I certainly was a poet before I ever met Douglas Wilson, and would have continued being one if I’d never met him. So with most of the makers in our church, I’m sure. It matters less that pastor Wilson is a poet who pastors, and more that he’s a pastor who poets. Less that he’s a maker who pastors, and more that he’s a pastor who makes. His job, alongside others, has been to shepherd us. It’s up to us to poet and make and raise and cook and draw and click and whatever else it is we’re called to go about doing.
Our congregation is learning to be beautiful, to make beauty. That’s the significance of the pickle. That is the gherkin that grace is workin’. It’s a poetic pickle. You may think, when you look over here from across the land, that it’s about the motorcycle. But no, it’s always been about the pickle. I just neglected to explain to you, last time, what was the significance of the pickle.
It has been pointed out to me, and not for the first time, but I keep forgetting, that Wilson is wearing a Genevan robe on the cover of Rules for Reformers.
Praising men who are praiseworthy is honourable. 👍
This is beautiful. Thank you for putting into words.