In a recently published blog post and accompanying video, Pastor Douglas Wilson cautioned against “the sin of servant leadership,” arguing that a man’s service to his household is found in leading, not in acquiescing to the desires of his wife.
Wilson is the pastor of Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, and the founder of New Saint Andrews College. He is also the founder of Canon Press, which published Dr. Stephen Wolfe’s “The Case for Christian Nationalism” and Dr. Joe Rigney’s “The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and Its Counterfeits.”
Wilson describes himself as a “paleo-Confederate” and has argued that antebellum chattel slavery “produced in the South a genuine affection between the races that we believe we can say has never existed in any nation before the [Civil] War or since.”
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In his argument against servant leadership, Wilson began by acknowledging that “the title is certainly provocative, at least in some quarters,” but said, “This merely highlights yet another aspect of the diseased understanding of discipleship that prevails in these troubled times of ours.”
“Bear with me, and I think we might be able to come to agree by the end,” said Wilson. “There really is a sin that we cover over with the white paint of that alluring phrase ‘servant leadership.’”
“Not only is it a sin,” he added, “but it is a black mold kind of sin—hard to identify, difficult to notice, and really destructive. And if the black mold is deep in your walls, another coat of paint is not the solution anybody should be looking for.”
Wilson said that he was not offering “a rant about sacrifice and service” but rather “a case against selfishness and cowardice disguised as servanthood.”
“I am not objecting to the servant part of servant leadership,” said Wilson. “The concern has to do with the noun that the glorious adjective is modifying. Where do we get this ‘leadership’ business?”
Wilson argued, “Modern evangelical husbands have been taught that they are to be servant leaders, and that they are to lead by serving. The idea is that their role is to ‘build consensus.’ That translates into ‘find out what she wants and make sure it happens.’”
