What makes me sad is that over the centuries hundreds of thousands, or perhaps millions, of brave men died successfully protecting the West against the invasion of Muslims. Yet, in the last thirty years or so, our governments have essentially surrendered to Islam and turned places like London, Malmo (Sweden), the Twin Cities, the Paris suburbs, and other Western cities into strongholds of Islam. From which, unless Westerners and Muslims both repent, it looks like the Islamic invasion may succeed because of the West’s moral and intellectual decline.

There’s been a lot of online banter about both Churchill and the Crusades.
My main response is that it is amazing how many people want to judge history based on modern events and perspectives. We have seen this recently with the American founding, the Civil War, etc. And now with Churchill.
Was Churchill an imperialist? Absolutely. And that was wrong. But at the time it counted most, Churchill fought against German imperialism, going to the defense of smaller countries to keep them from being swallowed up by the Third Reich. His actions ultimately led to the demise of the British Empire, which no longer had the men or wealth to stay whole. Churchill’s actions were the opposite of Franklin Delanor Roosevelt’s response to Soviet aggression. He abandoned much of Eastern Europe to the Soviet Empire. And used the war to expand the American empire. Historian Darryl Cooper is wrong to call Churchill the “villain” of WWII using his revisionist history.
On to the Crusades. Apparently, some in the church are using the Crusades as a motivational tool to get young men to run from the feminized version of men being taught in much of our culture. This has led some to suggest that using as models men who led many men, women, and children to their deaths in the name of Holy War might not be best for our young men today.
The Crusades are a mixed bag. Much of what happened in the Crusades can be laid squarely at the feet of popes who used them to gain power and wealth.
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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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We must have the righteousness of Christ credited to us if we are to be saved, but we must also apply His standard of righteousness to the public square. Faithfully doing so would allow Christians to see more clearly the similarities of the injustices taking place in Jerusalem with those in America today. A primary application of these lessons to the church today is that Christians should be saddened and angered when they witness government injustice and be motivated to bring it to a halt. Unfortunately, many in the church—even in the conservative, evangelical church—seem to be too preoccupied with faux injustice to notice where biblically-defined injustice is taking place.

And God also made all the evil of the men of Shechem return on their heads, and upon them came the curse of Jotham the son of Jerubbaal. (Judges 9:57)
A Christian endures over a decade of state-sponsored legal harassment for refusing to bake cakes celebrating events that violate his beliefs. Half a dozen pro-life activists are convicted in federal court for protesting the murder of children at a Tennessee abortion clinic. Hundreds of Americans, including a former president, are harassed, indicted, disbarred, and/or jailed in multiple jurisdictions across the country for doing the same thing Americans have been doing for over 200 years—contesting the outcome of an election. A columnist is forced to defend himself in the D.C. district courts for 11 years (and counting) over a 270-word blog post criticizing a purveyor of climate change hype.
The American legal system is rife with injustice. Federal prosecutors boast a 95% conviction rate, with most cases never going to trial because even the innocent often plead guilty. Christians and conservatives are essentially no longer afforded their constitutional right of trial by a jury of their peers in most major cities, while in many of the same cities radical fascists/leftists and common criminals are not charged for their crimes.
Government injustice in America is not confined only to the courts, however. Welfare, public schools, and minimum wage laws are a large part of the reason black men in Chicago are unemployed and murdering each other at alarming rates. In Texas, the state’s transportation department floods a farmer’s property but denies he is due any compensation for the taking of his property. Corporate cronyism has extended beyond the legalized theft of subsidies to coercing Americans into consuming corporate products, such as renewable energy and vaccines.
Given that unjust rulers are a significant concern throughout scripture and in Jesus’ ministry (Leviticus 19:15, Judges 9:57, Psalm 94:20, Matthew 21:12-13, Mark 3:5, Revelation 6:9-10, etc.), we should be alarmed at the lack of engagement by many Christians with these examples of government injustice. To understand how we can awaken the church to the corruption and injustice of modern government, we will examine how Christians can be better equipped for the work of confronting injustice amongst our rulers, who are supposed to be “God’s servant[s] for []our good” (Romans 13).
The people of God are supposed to “maintain love and justice” (Hosea 12:6) because God’s way is “doing righteousness and justice” (Genesis 18:19). It was on this basis that Job asked God, “let no injustice be done” (Job 6:29). To equip us to mirror His character and uphold His standards, God gave us His Word of truth (John 17:17), righteous rules, and statutes (Psalm 119:7-8).
God emphasizes the importance of faithfully maintaining righteousness and justice when He attaches both blessings and curses to his laws in Deuteronomy. Those who obey God are set “high above all the nations of the earth,”(v. 28:1) and receive an economic bounty: “Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the field” (v. 28:3). But those who do “not obey the voice of the LORD your God or be careful to do all his commandments and his statutes” will be cursed in their cities, occupations, and in their very lives (v. 28:15ff). God further drove home the necessity of keeping His standards of justice when he carried out His judgment upon His unjust people by twice destroying the city in which He had dwelt with them.
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To help us depend on Him, God gave us self-governance, or self-control (Proverbs 25:28). He also gave us three external forms of government: family government, church government, and civil government. Each operates in its own sphere, though each sphere overlaps with the others. In the case of “caregiving,” the family government, not civil government, is the primary care giver. It is what we might think of as the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.

A proposal being debated in my church and denomination (the Presbyterian Church in America) would insert language into our Book of Church Order (BCO) that says, “Men who describe themselves as homosexual, even those who describe themselves as homosexual and claim to practice celibacy by refraining from homosexual conduct, are disqualified from holding office.”
A friend of mine, during a recent conversation on this issue, said that the proposed statement was “political” and did not belong in the BCO.
I know my friend did not mean that homosexuality is only a political issue that has nothing to with faith. I took him to mean instead that the focus of some people in our denomination on those who are gay and celibate has moved beyond faith to politics.
His statement reflects a sentiment popular among some Christians today that evangelical Christians, especially white evangelicals, have politicized the Christian faith.
In an interview with Vox last year, David French said, “Any time you’re going to tie faith to ideas and people who do not either personify biblical ethics or positioned to flow from biblical ethics, you’re creating a real problem. They’ve essentially politicized their faith.”
Notice how carefully French constructs his statement. He has positioned himself so that if he finds a Christian who supports a politician French believes does not “personify biblical ethics,” perhaps Donald Trump?, he can easily claim his opponent has politicized his faith. Likewise, if a Christian takes a position on public policy that French and company do not think “flow[s] from biblical ethics,” French can readily dismiss it as political, not based in faith.
Let’s consider this in the context of an example from Scripture. On a recent American Vision podcast, Gary DeMar mentioned that the dispensational Christian author Dave Hunt complained that John the Baptist cut short a promising ministry by getting involved in politics. What did John do wrong? He pestered Herod about his sin of taking his brother’s wife as his own wife. According to Hunt, John’s politicization of marriage interfered with the purpose and promise of his ministry.
I provide this background because I want to talk about Stacey Abrams, the race baiting progressive gubernatorial candidate in Georgia, from the perspective of biblical ethics. Abrams wants to expand welfare programs for Georgians with disabilities so that more of them are able to live “independently.”
My take on Abrams is what she really wants is not to improve the life of the disabled but a larger, more intrusive government that can be used to destroy what’s left in America of a Christian perspective on government and family.
Yet quite a few evangelicals today would claim my position on this issue is political, not scriptural. That because my ideas do not flow from biblical ethics, I have politicized them. So, I will lay them out here and let you decide.
I ran across Abrams’ focus on disability in the 19th, an online news site which identifies as “an independent, nonprofit newsroom reporting on gender, politics and policy.” It particularly promotes feminism and homosexuality.
The article about Abrams was written by the 19th’s “caregiving reporter.” This in itself tells us something about the progressive agenda. With reporting focusing on the lack of government-supplied caregiving, the implication is that caregiving is only compassionately caring for those in need when it is supplied by the government. This bias shows up clearly in the first paragraph of the Abrams’ story.
Martha Haythorn, 22, has Down syndrome and gets help from her mother with everyday tasks like grocery shopping, meal planning and getting around. The Georgia Institute of Technology student would love to be living independently, but she’s been on a waitlist to receive in-home support services from the state of Georgia for six years — with no end in sight.
We can learn an awful lot from this paragraph if we approach it from a logical and biblical perspective. So let’s do that.
First, let’s focus on logic. The problem described here is that Martha can’t live independently because without these in-home support services she has to do depend on her mother. I looked up what some of these services are. They include:
The staff will assist in acquiring, retaining, and improving skills such as bathing, dressing, chores, walking or moving around and planning or cooking meals. We will even help find ways to get you where you need to go and help you get involved with things you like, such as recreational activities, access to food, making your own schedules and having visitors.
Do you see the problem here? The complaint is that Martha can’t live independently because she has to “get help from her mother with everyday tasks like grocery shopping, meal planning and getting around.”
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One action our denomination can take now is by making it clear to the world, our presbyteries, and our churches through Overture 15 that men who define themselves as homosexual cannot be elders in our denomination. Perhaps even more important is that we make this strong statement to our members, church courts, the world, and those struggling with same-sex attraction in our governing documents so that it is clear that Side B homosexuality is sinful and must be repented of.

I attend a church in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). The PCA is one of the more “conservative,” or biblically sound, denominations in the United States. Yet over the last 25 years the woke progressive movement has been making inroads into the PCA like it has in many other denominations. These inroads have been made on biblical doctrines such as those related to the days of creations, race, and egalitarianism.
The most recent assault on God’s Word in the PCA is on the issue of homosexuality. Particularly what is known as Side B homosexuality, the idea that it is okay to be a “Gay Christian” with same-sex attraction as long as one remains celibate. Now, I welcome all same-sex attracted men and women to church, including those who are attempting to remain celibate. I do so because they, like me, need to repent of their sin. And unless they come to church, they are unlikely to hear that both same-sex sex and same-sex attraction are unholy and sinful in God’s eyes and something of which they need to repent.
Sadly, in the PCA there is a movement which proclaims that same-sex attraction is not a sin if accompanied by celibacy, that men and women can live their lives as Gay Christians. To address this and to speak to the culture around us, the PCA has adopted a number of “overtures,” or resolutions, at our recent annual gatherings (General Assembly–GA). The same is true this year; several of the overtures relating to homosexuality this year (Overtures 8, 15, and 29) would amend the PCA’s Book of Church Order (BCO), one of our governing documents. To be included in the BCO, each must be also ratified by ⅔ of our presbyteries, then go back for one more vote at GA next year.
I want to focus on one of those overtures here: Overture 15. It would insert the following into Chapter 7 of the BCO:
7-4. Men who describe themselves as homosexual, even those who describe themselves as homosexual and claim to practice celibacy by refraining from homosexual conduct, are disqualified from holding office in the Presbyterian Church in America.
Overture 15 highlights one problem currently facing the PCA; the committees and agencies of the PCA don’t always reflect the beliefs of the majority of elders and members in the PCA. It was rejected by the GA’s Overtures Committee, but resurrected on the floor of GA and passed by a majority of elders.
One reason why a majority of our elders approved this is because the PCA has at least one elder (and perhaps more) who describes himself as gay and same-sex attracted. And because during the several years this has been an issue, the presbytery this man belongs to has refused to remove him from office. And because the highest court in the PCA, the GA’s Standing Judicial Committee, has ruled against one attempt that might lead to his removal. And because, more generally, the PCA has dealt poorly with the Side B Gay movement in our denomination and the culture over the last five years.
The vote to approve the language in Overture 15 for inclusion in the BCO was very narrow: it passed with only 51% of the votes, 1094-1044, (a second vote approved Overture 15 with 54%). Because of the narrowness of the vote, many people predict that Overture 15 will not receive the ⅔ majority of the presbyteries needed to become part of the BCO. Elders from my presbytery, the South Texas Presbytery, will vote on Overtures 8, 15, and 29 on October 29. A few other presbyteries have already voted, while the rest will be voting fairly soon. You can follow the votes of presbyteries on this and other overtures here.
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The four-decade effort by the secular left to undermine the integrity of our elections and constitutional order is nothing less than an attempt to remove the biblical foundations of our government and culture in order to create a centralized, tyrannical government untethered from God which will be a terror to good conduct rather than bad (Romans 13).

When you go out to war against your enemies, and see horses and chariots and an army larger than your own, you shall not be afraid of them, for the LORD your God is with you.—Deuteronomy 20:1
Christians’ ability to speak and live out the Word of God is under assault from the secular, progressive left. They seek to remove any trace of God or His people from the culture.
The ongoing assault against President Trump is part of this. In order to understand why this is the case–and why Christians should be concerned, let us take a look at what the left has done to Trump in light of attacks on other Republican presidents before him.
The week before the raid on Trump’s home, George Parry published an article in the American Spectator, “The Democrats’ Looming Trial and Conviction of Donald Trump.” In it, he wrote:
“We intend to hold everyone, anyone who was criminally responsible for the events surrounding January 6, for any attempt to interfere with the lawful transfer of power from one administration to another, accountable,” said Garland.
Who’s he kidding? Garland made it sound as if there is a chance that Trump might not be arrested and prosecuted. But, to anyone who has been paying attention, the intention of the Democrat-controlled federal government has always been and remains to be the legalized destruction of Donald Trump. It is, in fact, the whole purpose behind the illegally constituted Jan. 6 committee’s Soviet–style show trial, its contempt citations of Trump administration officials, and the follow-up supporting criminal cases by the FBI and Justice Department.
The Soviet–style show trial and previous efforts to remove Trump from office come from the same playbook Democrats have been using against Republicans for decades. It started at least as far back as Watergate, when Democrats took illegal activities by some Nixon aides–who acted without Nixon’s knowledge–and managed to parley that into overturning the results of a presidential election in which Nixon won 97% of the electoral vote. They twisted and distorted the evidence so badly that even Nixon thought that he had engaged in a coverup. But he had not. Nixon had his faults, but he broke no laws and committed no high crimes or misdemeanors. Yet Nixon was forced to leave, and progressives had the run of the federal government for the next six years.
The Democrats took this route twice with President Reagan. First, it was the October Surprise conspiracy theory, where Democrats concocted a story that vice presidential candidate George Bush travelled to Paris in October on a U.S. government SR-71 spy plane to convince the Iranians not to release their American hostages captured during the attack on the American Embassy until after the November 1980 presidential election. Congress finally rejected the theory–in 1992.
Next were the 1987 Iran-Contra hearings, based on largely unconstitutional attempts by Congress to control the president’s ability to conduct foreign policy. These hearings failed to overturn the 1984 Reagan landslide over Walter Mondale, but hamstrung his final two years in office and were perfectly timed to affect Vice President Bush’s prospects for being elected president.
After Bush overcame Iran-Contra and was elected, the October Surprise hoax was revived. It received substantial coverage in the mainstream press, to the point that a January 1992 poll showed 55 percent of Americans believed the allegations. Bush created many of his own problems, especially lying to the American people when he promised, “Read my lips. No new taxes” during his 1988 campaign, but the propagation of the hoax likely had an effect on his loss to Bill Clinton in the 1992 election.
Bush’s son George W. also was the target of Democrats seeking to overturn presidential election results. This time, it was U.S. Rep Dennis Kucinich, joined by 11 cosponsors, who filed articles of impeachment because of what they claimed were lies regarding weapons of mass destruction as a pretext for America’s invasion of Iraq. I do not think we should have invaded Iraq, but neither do I believe that Bush manufactured false evidence to push us into another war. Yet Democrats still tried to overturn his election through the impeachment process. As well as hamstring his administration through the bogus Valerie Plame Wilson investigation.
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