In late 2023, the Moscow Mood was all the rage, with Kevin DeYoung taking aim at Doug Wilson and a masculine approach to Christianity that Moscow represents whereas The Gospel Coalition represents the antithesis. To his credit, Wilson is a pioneer, leading him to build Moscow and a reputation that has garnered increasing credibility in media to a wider audience unfamiliar with Christian teachings. However, he is somewhat of a theological pioneer which leads to strange teachings, most notably on concupiscence and a soft supersessionism theology. And these issues have seeped into the modern political discourse through the acolytes of Doug Wilson, thus exemplifying the limitations of the Moscow Mood.
Rory Wilson, the grandson of Doug Wilson, is a student at Columbia University who made national news when he and another student attempted to defend the steps of Hamilton Hall from being invaded by rapid protestors. This sparked a debate over whether it is prudent for Christians to intervene in these campus protests.
Contrary to the Moscow Mood, where Toby Sumpter called this glorious, Rory Wilson was foolish to intervene in the protests. Hamilton Hall is the sanctuary for much of the campus wokeness while also housing the office of the dean. While he might contend that he is standing up for what is right, Hamilton Hall embodies much of what is wrong with college campuses in America. Therefore, he was defending a woke temple, similar to the SBC defending the rights of a Ground Zero Mosque. Moreover, he is defending an institution that is charging him tens of thousands for a piece of paper which may or may not include an education.
Furthermore, intervening in these protests is a counterintuitive strategy in the Culture War. America is engaged in a Cold Civil War and these college protests represent a leftist divide between the Jewish donors and the Marxist students, who were unironically influenced by Jewish intellectuals. Going into a contentious 2024 election, any rift in the Biden coalition is a positive thing for this country, much as the House of Satan being divided against itself.
The self-immolation of the university system along a critical leftist faultline during an election year is about as great a gift as the right could ask for
The only way the left gets out of this is a GOP governor who bails them out by ending the protests
-Auron MacIntyre
Auron tweeted it best, and these sentiments have been echoed by others including Jon Harris, Andrew Iskar, and Joel Webbon. Auron also contrasts the police response with that of the 2020 BLM riots where “You were locked in your home while your city burned because that’s what the ruling class wanted.” If politics is war without weapons, then assisting in leftist infighting is foolishness, but because the Right is beholden to Neoconservatism, conservatives are made to care about college protests that do not affect them.
Another important element about these protests is that the protesters are the same as the BLM-ANTIFA protest of the past several years, just showing up for the latest fad. They are even being supported by Soros-backed NGOs. They are not protesting Israel because of the Jewish religion or the contents of the Talmud, but because they perceive the modern nation-state of Israel to be a white colonizer nation, which they believe to be inherently bad. In other words, they are anti-white protestors who perceive Jews to be white people while Palestinians are brown people.
Toby Sumpter vs. Joel Webbon, Andrew Iskar
On his own blog, Toby Sumpter responded to Joel Webbon and Andrew Iskar, who have been critical of the conservative response to the campus protest, and more specifically with tweets that Sumpter has made regarding antisemitism.
First, my friend Joel Webbon commented that he was following me until the last sentence. How does hatred of Jews figure into hatred of Christ and Christianity? Jews aren’t Christians, and we’re not collapsing important differences between us, are we?
And of course the answer is “no.” I don’t have any interest in the liberal project of blending monotheistic religions together into some kind of Eisenhower prune juice. That clearly hasn’t worked; it’s just given Western Civilization a bad case of the secular runs. “Judeo-Christian” has often seemed to want to soften differences, and pretend that Jews and Christians are just another version of Baptists and Presbyterians. So, no, count me out of the Judeo-Christian peacenik movement.
So far, so good, but the greater problem with “Judeo-Christian” is that it seeks to give Jews credit for building Western Civilization or America which is undeserved. Generally speaking, Jews have often acted as agents of subversion to Christendom, most notably through 20th-century Marxism and the push for mass immigration.
Sumpter proceeds to exegete Romans 11, suggesting the peculiarity of Jews stems from their relationship with Christians. This inherently assumes that most Jews, particularly Ashkenazi Jews, are authentically Jewish, but they bear no verifiable trace to first-century Jews, so the genetic lineage claim is invalid, something even Doug Wilson has acknowledged.
Closely related is the fact that next to Christians, Jews have been and continue to be some of the most highly functioning people in the history of the world. They often excel at higher rates than other cultures, and let us hasten to add, including excelling in both evil and good. So, you can give 15 examples of foul and heinous Jews, and I can flip it around and give you 15 more examples of Nobel Peace Prize winners, cancer research doctors, scientists, and relatively faithful husbands and fathers.
This is a parroting of Doug Wilson’s high-performance people argument, which is perhaps overstated, but naturally leads to Sumpter’s later contention that the left is envious of Jews. This is largely an assumption since the left hates Israel through an anti-white racial lens, not because they envy their material success. Whether right or left, they attribute negative feelings towards Jews to envy, yet they have not substantiated this claim with evidence nor does it hold water when people air their grievances.
Sumpter goes further to suggest that Jews are Christian-adjacent.
And I would argue that this comes with the spiritual territory of that severed covenant status: enemies of the gospel, beloved for the sake of the fathers. They cannot shake that historic covenant reality. And to the extent that many still read and hear the Torah read, they above many other cultures, are constantly being exposed to the glory of Christ. Paul says that every time the Old Testament is read, the glory of Christ is shining on them, but their minds have been blinded and there is a veil over their faces so that they cannot and will not see Jesus (2 Cor. 3). Nevertheless, there is more common grace available to those who are exposed to the Old Testament than for other cultures. I think this is a massive reality. A monotheistic culture that has some reverence for the Ten Commandments and the Old Testament, warts, perversions, blindness, and all, is a culture that has more light than others, light that will result in more heinous evil in some cases and more astonishing good in others. This will result in hatred for the evil certainly and hatred and envy for all the good.
Sumpter conflates ancient Judaism with modern Judaism, which largely rejects the Ten Commandments and has added teachings that run contrary to the Mosaic Law. That they have the written law and a form of Covenant Common Grace, using Sumpter’s framework, does not immediately imply that their culture has “more light” than other cultures when there is a behavioral rejection of the law. Since the law is in the hearts (Romans 2:15), therefore all men can recognize the Second Table of the law while only believers can obey the First Table. Most civilizations have had some implementation of the Second Table, however flawed.
Moreover, the pitfalls of those who have some reverence for the Ten Commandments that Sumpter calls a “more heinous evil” is also unfounded. Islamic terrorism is perhaps the worst pitfall of Islam but is hardly an aberration from tribal warfare that has persisted throughout history. The pitfall of Mormonism is largely subtle and legalistic rather than violent despite the theological similarities to Islam.
The blindness discussed in 2 Corinthians 3:14 would reflect why one particular religion would propagate a more heinous form of evil, which is exhibited in the rise of Marxism, Feminism, Multiculturalism, the prevalence of Homosexuality, and secularism in the West. It has nothing to do with reverence, or absence thereof, for the Ten Commandments, but a foundational rejection of Christ at the core that is unique to this religion.
Sumpter eventually concludes his article by addressing Andrew Iskar.
One final, question came from my friend Andrew Isker. Part of his objection I’ve already answered above, and I don’t have any problem agreeing that “white” is often being used synonymously for Christian. I would just hasten to add that as pastors, we must keep pressing our people, discipling our Christian followers to see through the racial façade. Nevertheless, Andrew brought up the current Gaza campus protests and says they have nothing to do with Christianity. I understand that many of the protestors may themselves be Jewish, and yes, many see the modern nation-state of Israel as more European colonialism that has displaced brown people. Yes, I get that, and no doubt that is what many would say. But it is a significant pastoral mistake to then conclude and agree with them (despite their claims to the contrary) that this has nothing to do with Christianity.
Sumpter relies more on wishful thinking and soft supersessionism to justify this stance rather than the horse’s mouth which spoke without stuttering. In this instance, Christians should take the left at their word. This is not leftist doublespeak. They mean what they say. They are not conflating Judaism with Christianity.
Conclusion
The Moscow Mood has been helpful in promoting masculinity in the culture which is not corrupted by the Red-Pill Manosphere types or some form of self-help for men, but a genuine, Christian response to the feminization of the culture. To this, they deserve great praise.
But their compromise on Judaism is contrary to the interests of Christendom 2.0, as Doug Wilson would call it. This is not about whether true justice is blind, but tactics in fighting a war. These protesters are not our countrymen, but our enemies, yet so too are the institutions they protest. Just as interventionism is a terrible foreign policy, it is also an imprudent tactic in the Culture War, and standing in between a leftist civil war is how we lose down here.
6 Responses
” … why one particular religion would propagate a more heinous form of evil, which is exhibited in the rise of Marxism, Feminism, Multiculturalism, the prevalence of Homosexuality, and secularism in the West. …”
Sort of reminds me how the nazis blamed all Jews for marxism one minute, then blamed all Jews for capitalism the next. One minute bellyaching about communists. The next bellyaching about all the capitalist Jews in banks and wall street.
While many of the nazis were homosexuals, occultists, pagans, promoted sexual immorality, shared several attributes with feminism (not to mention the eugenics behind abortion), darwinists, collectivists, eugenicist.
Are we to believe their wickedness was also the fault of the Jews?
Meanwhile, those Jews behind most of the mess going on are atheists. Soros for example.
Have some Jews been involved in promoting the wickedness? Sure. So have many non Jews.
Every one of the evils listed involves a rejection of the Creator and His created order. Who’s most responsible for that in modern times? Charles Darwin (who was not a Jew). And Darwin heavily influenced Marx (who’s family converted to Christianity before he was born) and Engels (who also was not a Jew).
Every one of the evils listed has also been around since the beginning, in one form or another. None originated with the Jews. Sure some Jews are involved in it, as are non-Jews. But they’re not the source of it.
And to add, as stated before, the one that isn’t necessarily an evil, in and of itself, is multiculturalism. It depends on the cultures, and whether or not they are in conflict with God’s word. Within the body of Christ, throughout the world, there are many cultures. All very compatible. But without that body, there is no compatibility.
It also needs to be noted that, from a Biblical standpoint, whether or not they are Ashkenazi, and whether or not they have blood lineage to Jacob, is entirely irrelevant.
There are examples in the Old Testament where the Israelites welcomed in those without blood lineage, who became Jews.
In Romans 9:6-9, Paul is not only talking about believing gentiles being grafted in, he is also reiterating the fact that it had always been. Not all descendants of Abraham inherited the promise. Nor were all inheritors of the promise were descendants of Abraham.
This is a very important fact to remember. Old Testament Judaism was not limited solely to and for the blood descendants of Jacob. They welcomed in many who were not, and who became Jews.
The Ashkenazi are no exception. They’re Jews. And it is entirely irrelevant whether or not they have blood lineage. And it may be that they became Jews as far back as Jeremiah 51:27, when God called upon the descendants of Ashkenaz to join with the Israelites against Babylon.
This brings up another thing worthy of note, though not entirely on subject. It is understood that europeans are descendants of Japtheth. That’s why we say the Ashkenazi are European. Guess who’s also “european” …. the descendants of Magog. Who, after the flood, first settled in what is now Ukraine. The Ashkenazi are not descendants of Magog, but descendants of his brother Gomer. So who are the “Europeans” that will war against Israel? Something to think about, especially for those who seem to be fixated on Europeans and the west.
In any event, it doesn’t matter whether or not they’re blood descendants. They may not be, but that does not mean they are not Jews. A careful reading and understanding of the Old Testament, and the fact that they welcomed in outsiders, bears out that fact.
They’re named for, and identified with, a grandson of Noah.
It’s not exactly like they’re any sort of invention of the 20th century. (and I mean that with a bit of humorous sarcasm)
It is not a sin to be Jewish.
Alright?
So call out and rebuke the sin, not “the Jews”
From a purely logical standpoint, every time you who are obsessed with the Jews bring up the fact that many are Ashkenazi, you implicitly recognize the fact that the blood lineage is still of significance.
But many, I believe, are too obsessed, nearly to the point of derangement, to reason with … that logic will not register.
According to Romans Jew or Greek doesnt matter for all have sinned and are under the curse of the law and are justified freely by the grace avaiable in Christ Jesus. Christians are called to respect the Jewish nation for their place in preserving Scripture and being the human form of the Messiah and the incarnation of the Creator, which is no small thing, right? As Christians we are called to pray for and love our enemies Jew or Greek and work out our salvation with fear and trembling in these last days. Maranatha.
PS How about some spell check up in here?