Journal Articles

“Dear Dad, I’m Not Your Enemy” published in Free Inquiry, Vol. 43, No. 2, February/March 2023

…David told Free Inquiry that one of his standard lines when speaking to college students was, “If you honestly, objectively investigate the evidence, Jesus Christ will stand up from the midst of all the competitors and say, ‘I am the truth.’” But David began to realize that he had never done this himself; rather, “I had imbibed my convictions with my mother’s milk.” Over a period of several months of earnest inquiry, David concluded that he had been wrong. He told his father and other authorities in his religious life and dropped out of seminary to pursue a doctorate in philosophy from UCLA.

As to how his relationship with his father unfolded, David told us, “He unrelentingly proselytized me. His firm belief was that I would return to the fold and be all the more effective because of my decades of unbelief. It was often as though I was some nameless audience member he was preaching to.” David described his father as “a complicated man—a self-styled evangelical intellectual and minor Christian guru whose prophetic posture was hardest on those who were closest to him.” Carl Wilson died on January 4, 2022, at age ninety-seven….

July 13, 2005

Dear Dad,
I’m writing in response to your letter of June 14, 2004, more than a year ago, about your new book. Thank you—I enjoyed reading it and the enclosed chapter. I apologize for not answering sooner. I realize that, according to the enclosed chapter, I am not part of the book’s intended audience. You say you are aiming it at Christian leaders to help them see what they’re up against, to help them better understand the enemy, and to see the superiority of their own position (to see “the triumph of the wisdom of God”). So I am among the enemy that your audience is supposed to understand better and see itself as triumphing over. According to the book, I’m one of the intellectual elite, on the of the university leaders who are—to use your terms—dishonest, hypocritical, self-righteous, arrogant, prejudiced, biased, and perverted. People like me are “committed to undercutting religion and giving people unbridled freedom to indulge their desires.” According to your book, it isn’t even worth aiming a book like this as people like me, since we won’t get it….