Kevin DeYoung, Douglas Wilson, and the Mizpah Mood

Healing the Moscow/Mizpah Divide

Kevin DeYoung’s infamous coinage of the term “Moscow Mood” has highlighted significant concerns about the evangelical church today.

DeYoung sought to warn Christians of the harmful “long-term spiritual effects of admiring and imitating” the “visceral” mood emanating from Christ Church, pastored by Douglas Wilson, in Moscow, Idaho. According to DeYoung, these harmful effects include developing a personality “incompatible with Christian virtue [and] inconsiderate of other Christians” and theological positions such as “Christian Nationalism or [Wilson’s] particular brand of postmillennialism.”

The critiques of DeYoung’s article are widespread, but I believe Joe Rigney’s piece in the American Reformer gets to the heart of the matter. He writes, “DeYoung fears that Moscow appeals to what is worldly in us. I have the same fear about the circles that DeYoung runs in. DeYoung worries that the world is burning and Moscow is lighting things on fire. I worry that DeYoung is bringing out a fire extinguisher in the middle of a flood.”

Rigney succinctly captures a major divide in the evangelical church today. Both sides are concerned about worldliness creeping into the church, but they have significant disagreements over the nature of the worldliness. From this perspective, DeYoung’s article and the responses to it have revealed valid concerns about the evangelical church, but they are not the concerns DeYoung seemed to have in mind. Instead, what has been brought into focus are the differences in how the two sides react to their concerns about worldliness, and especially in how they treat each other.

Wilson and company act on their concerns by reforming the church and debating the issues with all comers. While hoping to bring others along with them, they are willing to move forward on their own. One result of this was the formation of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, which has drawn members away from denominations such as DeYoung’s, the Presbyterian Church in America.

DeYoung and company react to their concerns very differently. They criticize the other side but largely avoid debate, often treating those who disagree with them as “troublers” in the church. They often describe their opponents’ views as sinful, even at times heretical. The attitudes and actions of many on this side of the divide are what I call the Mizpah Mood.

The name Mizpah means “watchtower” or “lookout.” There are two different places in the Bible named Mizpah where God watched over His people. The first Mizpah is where Jacob and Laban settled their differences by making a covenant with each other and setting up a heap of stones to serve as a witness to their agreement. The place received its name after Laban said, “The LORD watch between you and me.” The second Mizpah was where Samuel poured out water before the Lord, which probably indicated a cleansing from sin of the people who had just put away the foreign gods—the Baals and the Ashtaroth (1 Samuel 7).

Yet there was often great strife in these watchtowers of God. This usually occurred when the people of Israel refused to trust that God would watch over them, and instead took matters into their own hands. The second Mizpah was where the people of Israel gathered, after the rejection of God as their King, to receive Saul as king, one “like all the nations” (1 Samuel 10:17ff). It was also where the Israelites came together to address the rape and murder of the Levite’s concubine by the people of Gibeah (Judges 20). In the first Mizpah, Jephthah returned home after his victory over the Ammonites to be met by his daughter. She became the fulfillment of Jephthah’s pledge to “sacrifice[] as a burnt offering” to the Lord “whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites” (Judges 11:29-40).

The human-centered strife in today’s church, the watchtower of God over His people, reminds me of the strife that took place in Mizpah. While the Moscow Mood is often blamed for most of this, the response to DeYoung’s article has shown that more often than not the strife originates in the Mizpah Mood camp.

An early example of the Mizpah Mood occurred at the PCA’s 2019 General Assembly. In floor debate, teaching elder Steven Warhurst made biblical arguments and expressed pastoral concerns as he spoke in favor of an overture on sexuality that had been rejected by the Overture’s Committee. The next morning, one elder raised an objection to Warhurst’s statement on the account it was intemperate. The objection was supported by the General Assembly, despite the fact that it was out of order. Because he espoused the pastoral concern that the celibate gay community’s self-identification as sexual minorities is an attempt to deceive Christians about the sinfulness of homosexuality, Warhurst was–in effect–branded intemperate by the PCA.

More recently, in an interview this year, Ligon Duncan said, “There are some people in our culture today who are saying, ‘this is the model of faithfulness—lob grenades.’” While lobbing grenades like this themselves, those affiliated with the Mizpah Mood often claim the high ground and do not engage with the other side. Wilson has explained that Duncan did this at least once. Kevin DeYoung also did this when he wrote almost 5,000 words about the Moscow Mood, but said, “I’m not looking to get into a long, drawn-out debate with Wilson or his followers.” An elder in my church took a similar approach. He sent to me an unsolicited (though welcome) email, sharing his thoughts with me about something I had written publicly. He said he was doing so in the interest of discipleship, while also saying he did not care to debate the matter with me. When I responded with some thoughts and one question, his main response was to repeat his previous points and discipleship rationale and tell me he would not argue with me about this.

These examples highlight another Mizpah Mood characteristic: not engaging with or mischaracterizing the words of what those in the Moscow camp write and speak. Not only does this allow them to stay above the fray, but it allows them to make bold, unsubstantiated claims about the Moscow Mood. Often in the name of maintaining the peace and purity of the church.

Here is Ligon Duncan again. “We have a culture in a part of evangelicalism right now that is desensitized to its own spirit of mocking and slander,” he said. “That kinda goes back to the Moscow Mood thing again. Mocking and slander is not a Christian way of dealing with anything. Many of those mockers and slanderers I have no reason to even think they are Christians.”

Duncan’s statement expresses the heart of the Mizpah Mood: there should be no engagement with those in the Moscow camp because they are unbelievers, heretics, liars, and/or spreaders of ideas and attitudes harmful to the church. Excoriation or church discipline, not intramural debate, is the better way to deal with the troublers and their ideas about paedo-communion, Christian nationalism, postmillennialism, the objectivity of the covenant, etc.

The Mizpah Mood was on full display on the February 5 episode of The Westminster Standard podcast. The topic was the Federal Vision, but the five participants (PCA pastors Ryan Biese, Steve Dowling, Nick Bullock, Todd Pruitt, and Matt Stanghelle) spent much of their time focusing on the Moscow Mood, “movement,” and “folks.” Including folks like Douglas Wilson.

The core theological concern expressed was that Wilson’s and the Federal Vision’s position on the objectivity of the covenant and paedocommunion is going to put the church on “the fast track to liberalism,” to the point that “we’re gonna find ourselves in Europe back 500 years to defending the gospel and justification by faith alone” (Stanghelle). Again we see the “no engagement” standard at work. The Moscow Mood adherents are to be viewed as liberals of the 19th and 20th centuries who abandoned the Gospel or 16th century Catholics who burned protestants at the stake.

The group also advanced the common theme that the Moscow Mood “fosters dissension and discord” (Stanghelle). Some of the panelists seemed concerned about the effects dissension might have on established evangelical institutions and their reputations.

Stanghelle spoke of the “anti-establishment ethos of Wilson and these other guys.” He added, “When you (Wilson, etc.) speak this way, you are intentionally destroying the trust in institutions that have been faithful.” He mentioned institutions like the North American Presbyterian and Reformed Council and the denominations affiliated with it. 

Bullock added, “When you have a leader like Wilson, you don’t have a pastoral leadership, or a reforming leadership. You have a leadership with the ethics of revolution.” Later, Bullock suggested that revolution might be taking place in his and other churches led by pastors who disagree with Wilson.

“It’s been my experience,” Bullock said, “as I’m sure many have had the experience of[], the insubordinate attitude that we receive from people who are actually in covenant with our churches, who are influenced by Wilson and others in this group.” Bullock connected this attitude with postmillennialism. “We are talking about a postmillennialism that views the kingdom as being progressively built by confrontations that the church initiates with society and culture. That is at the very essence of what pushed Wilson.”

This concern about the status and authority of certain evangelical institutions and pastors suggests there might be more than theological motives behind the Mizpah Mood and the unwillingness to engage Wilson and others in debate on these issues.

Whatever the motives, the strife of the Mizpah Mood is not a biblical approach to dealing with divisions within the evangelical church. We will now examine scriptural guidance for how believers in the church should deal with those who are also on the Lord’s side (Psalm 124) yet might still be doing harm to the church. Just as Mizpah served as the place where Laban and Jacob resolved their differences, so can we in the church today find God’s provision for reconciling our differences with fellow believers.

Jerusalem was a place of great strife in the years leading up to its destruction by Nebuchadnezzar. During this time, as the glory of God was in the process of leaving the temple, God told Ezekiel (9:4) to “pass through the city, through Jerusalem, and put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan over all the abominations that are committed in it.” The mark indicated those who were faithful so that they would not be visited by the executioners who were to “pass through the city after [Ezekiel], and strike” those (the unfaithful) who did not have a mark (9:5).

Setting aside the Moscow/Mizpah divide for a moment, there are faithful people today who sigh and groan over what is being done by others in the church. And often for good reason.

Let’s take the divide between those who advocate for six 24-hour days of creation versus those who advocate for the framework view, which argues that the days were literary, not real. One of the sides is wrong: either God created the world in six days (“there was evening and there was morning”), or He did not. Now, we must keep in mind that all of us are going to be wrong at times as the church grows in its understanding of God through His Word. Nonetheless, this means that the side that is wrong is harming the church to a greater or lesser degree by teaching false doctrine and undermining the authority of scripture. While this harm is often minimized, it is real.

In most of the current disagreements between the Moscow and Mizpah moods, both sides see harm; often, one correctly and the other incorrectly. This leads to one of three outcomes. The first is that one side sighs and groans about an actual harm committed by the other side but is sinfully labeled a troubler by those on the other side. The second is that one side sighs and groans about an actual harm committed by the other side, but does so in a sinful manner. The third is that one side sinfully sighs and groans when the other side has done no harm.

In all three instances, I suggest the root of the sinful strife is that someone perceives harm being done and treats the other person as their enemy. They forget in the midst of their disagreements that in most cases their opponent, who they perceive (rightly or wrongly) as doing harm to the church, likely still has Ezekiel’s mark of the faithful because the LORD is on their side (Psalm 124).

This points to a challenge the church will always have until Christ returns. The Bible tells us that the church is going to contain both the faithful (sons of the kingdom) and unfaithful (sons of the evil one) and it will often be difficult to tell the difference (Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43). Which raises the question: How do we deal with a brother or sister in Christ who we firmly believe is doing real harm to the church by teaching false doctrine?

Here are a few lessons from scripture to help us work through this difficult situation, which I believe lies at the heart of the Moscow/Mizpah divide.

The first thing we must do is to assume that our brother or sister is not our enemy, that is, not a false prophet (Matthew 7:15-20). Church elders are tasked with removing wolves in sheep’s clothing from our midst. Until the wolves are recognized by their fruit and removed, we are required to assume that church members teaching false doctrine are not false prophets, just mistaken ones. Of course, this can get a bit complicated when we are working across denominations.

We must also practice humble discernment (James 3:13-18). James tells us to “show [our] works in the meekness of wisdom.” If instead we “have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in []our hearts,” we are likely to “boast and be false to the truth.” This recalls the necessity that when we disagree with someone over how to understand the Bible, we must consider the possibility that we could be wrong. And whether we are right or wrong, we much approach our brother or sister with humility, discerning the best way to work through our differences.

Sometimes this might mean that it is appropriate to be angry at someone on our side who is teaching false doctrine. After all, they are in one sense giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Satan twists God’s Word to his own ends and must delight when those like Eve assist him with this (Genesis 3:2). But we must be cautious with our anger. Yes, Jesus likely became angry at Peter (Matthew 16:23), but usually his anger was aimed at the unrighteous (Mark 3:5). Additionally, even with the best of us, our anger is often likely to be unrighteous (Luke 15:28). So our best approach will generally be to reach out to teachers of false doctrines with compassion (Hebrews 4:15).

Compassion, however, does not mean timidity. The errors of our brothers and sisters who falsely teach the Word of God must be addressed. Sometimes privately, and sometimes publicly. Paul openly opposed Peter when the latter succumbed to the Judaizers and stopped eating with the Gentiles (Galatians 2:11–14). Paul wrote, “when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned.” Peter acted out of fear, and his sin harmed the church: “the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy.” And when Paul “saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, ‘If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews?’” Thus, we must be zealous like Paul (Acts 22:3). And like the Laodiceans, who Jesus told to be zealous and repentant, ready to receive His reproof and discipline (Revelation 3:19).

All these principles apply to lay members and church leaders alike. And to the criticism of laity by laity, laity by leaders, and leaders by laity. Nathan spoke critically of King David and his adultery. Of course, Nathan was a prophet. But, thanks to the saving grace of Jesus grace, today so are all believers. Similarly, Jesus spoke critically to the religious rulers of His day (Matthew 23). Yes, He was God. But He was also a man, a man without an office in the temple.

Also, when we go to our brothers and sisters, we should do so in the spirit of Matthew 18:15-17. First, go to them one on one. Then take one or two others with you. Then, if necessary, take them to the church: this might mean to the church leaders or to the church as a body. Remember, biblical church government is representative government. Much like our national republican government, authority in the church is delegated by God both to members as well as leaders (2 Samuel 5, 1 Kings 12). And we all have an obligation to exercise it.

Finally, as we reach out to our brothers and sisters, we must remind ourselves that human nature is corrupt, and even those who have been born again often speak out of sinful anger rather than love and respect. Thus, before beginning an effort to correct errors—and throughout the time such an effort is active—we should be asking God to search our hearts and thoughts and reveal whether there “be any grievous way in” them (Psalm 139:23-24).

These are some of the ways to address the current strife in the evangelical church. They all require charity. And they all require fellowship: it is impossible to heal the division in the church with one party throwing bombs at the other across the Moscow/Mizpah divide. We can question, debate, or oppose those we disagree with, but, like Paul, we should do it to their face. While trusting that God is watching over us.