If you are a mature, grounded Christian in a good church, with a good sense of discernment, you can find a number of helpful things from the world of Moscow. But there’s a difference between snacking on Moscow once you are already full of good Christian discipleship and feasting on Moscow for three square meals a day. I fear that much of the appeal of Moscow is an appeal to what is worldly in us. As we’ve seen, the mood is often irreverent, rebellious, and full of devil-may-care playground taunts. That doesn’t make us better Christians. 

“Each of the great world civilizations,” Christopher Dawson wrote in his classic work from the 1940s on Religion and the Rise of Western Culture, “has been faced with the problem of reconciling the aggressive ethos of the warrior with the moral ideals of a universal religion. But in none of them has the tension been so vital and intense as in medieval Christendom and nowhere have the results been more important for the history of culture.” At the heart of Dawson’s provocative thesis is the insistence that Western European culture was the coming together of two cultures, two social traditions, and two spiritual worlds. The cultural formation of Europe combined “the war society of the barbarian kingdom with its cult of heroism and aggression,” leavened by “the peace society of the Christian Church with its ideals of asceticism and renunciation and its high theological culture.”

Arguably, the Crusades expressed the best and the worst of this synthesis. There were times when the fusion of warrior-heroism and Christian virtue produced something noble and exemplary during the centuries-long effort to reclaim the Holy Land. And there were times when the fusion failed and produced something ugly and lamentable. But even the failures teach us about the aspirational ideals of Christendom. We cannot understand the rise of Western culture without the religious unity imposed by the Christian Church in the Middle Ages, and likewise, we cannot understand the flourishing of Christendom unless we understand that it grew up out of the soil of warrior kings and barbarian kingdoms.

Dawson’s thesis, though concerned with the rise of Western culture in the Middle Ages, is instructive for our own age. For many of us, it looks as if Western culture has been overrun—whether by Muslim immigration in Europe, critical theory in our universities, sexual degradation in our popular culture, violence in our streets, or plain old anti-Western vitriol in the hearts of many Westerners who have no idea how much more miserable the world would be if their deluded wishes came true. If this is the world we live in—or even something generally headed in this fearful direction—the question we in the Christian West are wrestling with (or should be wrestling with) is what to do now.

The Appeal of the Moscow Mood

Which brings me to the reason you are likely reading this article in the first place, and that is the name “Doug Wilson” in the title. “So, what do you think about Doug Wilson?” is a question I’ve been asked many times during my years in pastoral ministry. I’d say the questioners have been pretty evenly split between “I’m asking because I really like him,” “I’m asking because I hope you don’t like him,” and “I’m asking because I’m not sure what to think.” Even now, I’d rather not be writing this piece because (1) it takes a lot of time, (2) I’m not looking to get into a long, drawn-out debate with Wilson or his followers, and (3) I know a lot of good Christians who have been helped by Wilson and by the people and institutions in his orbit. I’m answering the question now in hopes that I might help those who appreciate some of what Wilson says but also feel like something isn’t quite right.

By any measure, one has to marvel at the literary, digital, and institutional output that has come out of Moscow, Idaho in the past several decades. While some internet cranks are wannabees trying to make a name for themselves by trying to tear down what others have built up, Wilson is to be commended for establishing an ecosystem of schools, churches, media offerings, and publishing ventures. For a scholarly and fair assessment of what Wilson has tried to do in Moscow, I recommend Crawford Gribben’s excellent book Survival and Resistance in Evangelical America: Christian Reconstruction in the Pacific Northwest (Oxford University Press, 2021).

Wilson also deserves credit for being unafraid to take unpopular positions. True, he often seems to enjoy stating his unpopular positions in the most unpopular ways (more on that later), but no one is going to accuse Wilson of being a spineless Evangellyfish. He offers the world and the church an angular, muscular, forthright Christianity in an age of compromise and defection. On top of that, Wilson has a family that loves him and loves Christ.

Moreover, Wilson understands that opposition to Christ—his word, his gospel, and his Lordship—is not to be taken lightly. Many Christians are witnessing the disintegration of our Western world, and the Christian consensus that used to hold sway, and they are thinking to themselves, “This is terrible. I can’t believe this is happening.” To the Christians with these concerns—and I count myself among them—Doug Wilson says, “Yes, it is really bad, and let’s do something about it.”

I’m convinced the appeal of Moscow is visceral more than intellectual. That’s not meant to be a knock on the smart people in Moscow or attracted to Moscow. It is to say, however, that people are not mainly moving to Idaho because they now understand Revelation 20 in a different way, or because they did a deep word study on ta ethne in the Great Commission, or even because of a well-thought-out political philosophy of Christian Nationalism. Those things matter to Wilson and his followers, but I believe postmillennialism and Christian Nationalism are lagging indicators, not leading indicators. That is, people come to those particular intellectual convictions because they were first attracted to the cultural aesthetic and the political posture that Wilson so skillfully embodies. In short, people are moving to Moscow—whether literally or spiritually—because of a mood. It’s a mood that says, “We are not giving up, and we are not giving in. We can do better than negotiate the terms of our surrender. The infidels have taken over our Christian laws, our Christian heritage, and our Christian lands, and we are coming to take them back.”

Where the Mood Misfires

And yet, for all that is understandable and sometimes commendable about the Moscow mood, there are also serious problems. In my criticisms that follow I’m not going to focus on historical or theological disagreements I may have with Wilson. I won’t be touching on Federal Vision, or paedocommunion, or his views on the antebellum South, or his arguments for Christian Nationalism, or his particular brand of postmillennialism. My concerns are not so much with one or two conclusions that Christians may reach if Wilson becomes their intellectual mentor. My bigger concern is with the long-term spiritual effects of admiring and imitating the Moscow mood. For the mood that attracts people to Moscow is too often incompatible with Christian virtue, inconsiderate of other Christians, and ultimately inconsistent with the stated aims of Wilson’s Christendom project.

Rather than expounding these claims in abstract terms, let’s look at a couple of concrete examples.

Five years ago, Doug Wilson and Canon Press started something they call No Quarter November (NQN). The idea is that during November, in addition to giving away free resources, Wilson and his crew will show no mercy (give no quarter) to their enemies. Each year, in advance of NQN, Wilson puts out a promotional video. They always involve a good deal of fire and more than a little sarcasm.

The 2023 NQN video ends with a Clint Eastwood-style closeup of Wilson puffing a massive cigar, strapping on a giant flamethrower, and setting ablaze an assortment of Disney characters and media logos. Here’s what Wilson says in the first half of the video:

Welcome back to No Quarter November.

First, it strikes a tone that is deliberately sarcastic and just a little bit naughty. No one really thinks Wilson is timid and cautious the rest of the year. That’s the sarcasm. The naughty part is that Wilson uses the words “wussy” and “wuss”—adolescent slang for someone weak and effeminate. These are words most Christian parents don’t allow their kids to use, since the terms probably originated as a combination of “wimp” and another word I won’t mention.

Second, the video takes cheap shots at other Christians. Wilson’s sarcastic bite is not first directed toward the wicked, the hardhearted, or the forces of evil in our world. He takes a swipe at the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and at the G3 Conference. Both are conservative Baptist groups—groups, we might add, that would be on the same side as Wilson in almost every important cultural battle. It’s fine if Wilson wants to disagree with these groups; they’ve disagreed with him at times. But Wilson doesn’t mention them in the video in order to make a serious argument. He uses them for a punchline. If you like Wilson you are supposed to think “Oh no, he didn’t?! That’s hilarious.” And if you like the ERLC or G3, you are supposed to be triggered, because if Moscow can watch their opponents get triggered, that is also funny. When serious criticism is leveled at Moscow, the response often includes a smattering of mockery and memes. This isn’t Wilson using his famous “serrated edge” to make a prophetic point against a godless culture. This is intentionally making fun of other Christians for a quick chuckle.

Third, the point of NQN is explicitly about culture warring and culture building. Rightly understood, it is good to do both these things. But it is instructive to see that Wilson’s stated aim is to “help you apocalypse-proof your home.” I think it’s safe to say this is what Wilson aims to do not just in November (in an intensified fashion), but during the other eleven months of the year, and in Wilson’s mind preparing for the apocalypse means doing battle against the forces of leftism in our world. Wilson’s public persona is largely about commenting on the culture, pushing back on the culture, lampooning the culture, and getting Christians ready for the coming cultural collapse.

Fourth, the video is squarely focused on Wilson himself. On one level, this is not surprising. Christian institutions and organizations often use their founder, president, or leading voice as the “face” of the ministry. But the focus here is not on Wilson as the conduit of biblical teaching and doctrinal truth, or even as the instrument of helpful cultural analysis.