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.

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 making such accusations, 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.

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