Many years ago, Thomas Howard joined host Ken Myers on the Mars Hill Audio Journal to discuss C.S. Lewis’ book Till We Have Faces and the meaning of myth.  During that conversation, Myers and Howard explore what Howard says is one of the great themes of the book, a contrast between rational wisdom and what I’ll call “earthy wisdom.”  Howard says, 

The wisdom of Greece, which is represented by a character, called the Fox, he’s not a fox he’s a man, but they call the Fox who is a slave, and he is the tutor of the young princesses in the pagan country of Glome, which is just to the north of Greece, and he is full of what you might call fluorescently illumine reasonable common sense, and all sorts of lovely maxims that make the world makes sense. That’s on the one side on the other you have the old priest of Ungit, with his beak-like mask and stink of blood and his feathers in his bladders, and his amulets, and all the mumbo-jumbo. And of course the priest, you become aware of the fact, that he knows something that the Fox doesn’t know, he has plunged much further into reality than the Fox can ever dream of. 

Thomas Howard, Ken Myers, “Till We Have Faces and the Meaning of Myth” Mars Hill Audio Journal

The priest of Ungit knows something the Fox doesn’t know.  He has plunged farther into something than the Fox can.  What does the priest of Ungit know?  Myers points out that in Clyde Kilby’s book, The Christian World of C.S. Lewis, Kilby refers to Lewis’s depiction of the pagan worship of the goddess Ungit and according to Kilby, this is what the priest knows, 

Although the worship of Ungit had many evil aspects, its basic assumptions, waterspouts of truth, from the very depth of truth were correct. The assumptions that man should worship, that he is dependent on the gods for rain, and for life itself, that blood is the correct sacrifice, that one person may have to die for all the people’s sins, and that consolation is to be found in the temple. 

Clyde Kilby, The Christian World of C.S. Lewis

Howard goes on to imagine a scenario.  He imagines a safari, which reveals something to us modern Christians.  Howard says,

Now imagine that you are on an anthropological outing to a primitive tribe somewhere and your guide is professor so and so from some great modern secular university, and he’s got his clipboard there, and can explain all the phenomena of this primitive tribal religion, and we suddenly come through the forest, and find ourselves in a little clearing, and here is a pagan, banging his staff on the ground in front of a little totem and ringing a chickens neck and of course your professor says, “now what we have here is probably the ancient human imagination that blah blah blah. Of course, it’s a lot of superstition.” And I say to my Christian students, “Whose side are you on?” And of course, after a moment, they realize they are squarely, firmly on the side of the little heathen because at least he knows there is something in front of which we have got to bow. Whereas the professor doesn’t know that or acknowledge it. At least [the pagan] knows that sacrifice must be offered. The professor doesn’t acknowledge that. At least [the pagan] knows that blood has got to be shed.

Thomas Howard, Ken Myers, “Till We Have Faces and the Meaning of Myth” Mars Hill Audio Journal

There are many things in Christianity that we must learn, such as the Bible or doctrine.  We can develop reasons for our faith and reasonable (winsome) strategies for how to promote the gospel, and we should.  But Christianity is not fundamentally a reasonable faith, and it can never truly be as refined and sophisticated as its unbelieving counterparts.  Why? Because Christianity is, at its heart, a mud and blood religion.  Christianity is not safe, but it is good, it is not always clean but it is always holy, it is not always refined but it is always true.  Lewis understood this, so did Thomas Howard and so does Doug Wilson.  

I recently came across Kevin DeYoung’s article about the Moscow Mood.  The article was interesting, and I appreciate several of the critiques DeYoung offers. But what I found more interesting is that he published the article just two weeks after my return from Moscow, ID where I met with Doug Wilson, members of his family, and other leaders of the ministry in that community.  Because I am fresh off safari, I’d like to serve as a guide of sorts and offer some observations of the mood I encountered while in Moscow and why others may experience a different mood altogether.      

Kevin DeYoung’s Critique.

One of DeYoung’s criticisms is that the mood created by Wilson’s use of language is sarcastic, satirical, and often combative.  Wilson gets in the dirt, and after reading him, you often find mud on your cloths.  Most evangelicals want to keep their whites clean, starched and free of stains.  Wilson’s rhetoric is sharp, and it cuts, and sometimes well-meaning people find themselves bleeding after reading Wilson.  Personally, I’ve enjoyed a growing relationship with Grove City College, my podcast has interviewed several of their faculty, and two of my children attend the school.  Wilson has a few blog posts critiquing the school, and I had to take a deep breath after reading them.  But I never found myself hyperventilating.  

I understood the message, probably because my maternal grandmother was a Brooklyn Italian. She and all of her kids (my mother, aunt, and uncles) were loud and direct in their speech.  Sarcasm, not Italian, was their native tongue.  I grew to understand and even appreciate this form of speech.  People often thought were we arguing with each other when we were just talking.  This was true, especially for my wife.  I’ll never forget the first Thanksgiving she came to our house.  She was shocked and thought we all hated each other.  She left the dinner shaken and concerned for our family. Only later in our marriage did I come to realize that this type of language would not work with my wife.  She never picked up on my sarcasm, or more importantly, the point I was trying to make. Too many times I found that I hurt my wife in my attempts to help her understand, and so I had to change my approach.  

Does Wilson’s message sometimes get lost in his medium?  Sure it does, and that is unfortunate.  Not everyone gets or appreciates this type of language, and for some it is hurtful.  But Wilson is not talking to fair maidens, he’s addressing men and often taunting enemies, even enemies within evangelicalism. Fortunately, we are not married to Wilson so if you don’t like his style, there are other great evangelical websites you can read, such as DeYoung’s.  Sometimes Wilson’s language is crass, but is it immoral?  I don’t think so, more on that below. 

DeYoung goes on to observe that Wilson’s rhetoric is turned up to eleven and he wishes Wilson would just tone it down a bit. It’s a type of Ralph Waldo Emerson critique, who once said, “Who you are speaks so loudly I can’t hear what you’re saying.”  DeYoung laments that some, if not much of the other good things Wilson has to say or has written are overshadowed by his satirical rhetoric.  I think DeYoung has a good point here.  One option could be to turn down the volume a little, as DeYoung suggests.  However, Wilson and Canon could also simply turn up the volume on all the other channels they have in their sound system.  Why not broadcast more loudly and more frequently the beautiful and elegant dimensions of the ministry?        

A friend of mine once told me about the communication dynamic between him and his father. My friend’s father told him, “I agree with about 90% of what you say to me, but 100% of the time I hate the way you say it.” I think that sentiment sums up well DeYoung’s concern with Wilson. Maybe DeYoung only agrees with 50% of what Wilson says, but he rarely likes how he says it.

There are several things in DeYoung’s article I appreciate and a few things I would disagree with him over, but if I were to identify one glaring mistake it would be DeYoung’s fallacy of composition.  DeYoung conflates Wilson with the Moscow project.  DeYoung believes they are one and the same.  To be fair, DeYoung isn’t the only one committing this fallacy and it’s not as though he has no good reason to assume Wilson and Moscow are one and the same.  Wilson is a large figure, and the internet is an amplifier.  Wilson has been accused of being a cult leader, and when your likeness and signature are attached to so much coming out of Moscow, then a glancing examination of the ministry might lead you to that conclusion. But Wilson seems to understand this, which is why he and many of the other leaders in Moscow regularly and publicly put out invitations to come and see things for yourself, which is exactly what I did just a few weeks ago.   

My Trip To Moscow

I am a pastor who was recently canceled by my denomination through presbytery actions in support of monied congregational elites.  I made the mistake of not responding correctly to the “concerns” of those who influenced the church, nor correctly appropriating the recommendations offered to me by the managers of the presbytery.  I also (apparently) made the mistake of reading Doug Wilson and was soon accused of misogyny and introducing heresy into the church.  Though I worked hard to resolve this issue, conditions deteriorated to such a degree that I was forced to resign rather than compromise biblical and moral standards.  The whole ordeal left me battered and bruised.  

I discovered Doug Wilson during the pandemic.  I started reading his work and learning more about the Moscow project.  He seemed well acquainted with opposition and so after resigning, I decided to email him to seek advice.  The subject line was pretty simple. It said, “I got canceled, can you help?”  Doug said “Sure” and within a few weeks, my wife and I and three other couples from the church were headed to Moscow.  We arrived on a Thursday night and spent Friday and Saturday meeting with church leaders.  On Sunday we worshiped at both Christ Church and King’s Cross and headed home on Monday. Here are some of my takeaways from that experience.      

Moscow and Doug Wilson are remarkably ordinary.  Having grown up in Pittsburgh, I’ve spent a lot of time in Rust Belt, blue-collar communities.  Moscow has the same vibe.  Moscow is not a major city so it’s nothing like downtown Pittsburgh, more like the rural Western PA towns Beaver Falls or Butler.  Moscow has a mix of wealth and poverty, with working-class rubbing shoulders with the more “successful” who are connected to the University of Idaho.  Moscow is a little like Nazareth, “Can anything good really come out of it?” you might ask.  

When I met Doug Wilson, I was expecting to meet a larger-than-life, charismatic personality.  Doug is a large person, physically, but he’s actually quite mild and meek.  I was surprised.  If he is a cult leader, then he really is one of the more unimpressive ones, personality-wise.  Wilson is the head of a body, and he seems to occupy that position, not because he wants to rule an empire, but because all bodies need heads to lead them.  As the head, he’s relatively small in proportion to the overall ministry.  The elders and other pastors seem to occupy a great deal of leadership, and when it comes to running things, my interactions suggest that Wilson’s secretary (who was wonderful) wields more power than Wilson does.

Everything seemed ordinary and it was precisely this ordinariness that was so reassuring.  Only the work of God could account for the remarkable blessings and impact of Moscow.  People talk about the Moscow mood, the Moscow mojo, or the secret sauce, but I don’t think there is any unless you believe that biblical fidelity, Christian faithfulness, discipline, and hard work are special.  From what I can tell, Moscow is what it is because they have pursued (in the words of Nietzsche, popularized by Eugene Peterson) a long slow obedience in the same direction.  The reason people are moving to Moscow is because they see the authenticity and the blessings of generational faithfulness and they want to be a part of a community that supports that kind of faithfulness.  Some are tempted to move to Moscow when they see it, others like me are tempted to try it in their hometown.   

Wilson offers more wisdom than knowledge.  I spent several hours with Doug Wilson, and I always felt like I was meeting with a fatherly figure or a wise uncle.  Make no mistake, Wilson knows what he is about.  He has convictions and he shared them forthrightly, but he never lectured, he was never condescending or impatient. But he also didn’t shade the truth or allow us to indulge our fears.  If he or his wife Nancy sensed that we were about to have a pity party, or if we wanted to try and justify our grievances, then they politely told us to stop it.  They give no quarter to mollycoddling.  Instead, they reassured us of the sufficiency of Christ and encouraged us to rejoice in our suffering.  Joyful, cheerful, fruitful; that’s what we were encouraged to be over and over again. 

Doug Wilson and the Wilson family practice unreasonable hospitality.  On the plane ride to Moscow, I listened to Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More than They Expect by Will Guidara.  Guidara tells the story of how he and his business partner took a small struggling brasserie named Eleven Madison Park and made it the best restaurant in the world.  The food was great, but their hospitality was unreasonable. That’s what made them world famous.  Unreasonable hospitality is not big, expensive, or ostentatious.  Unreasonable hospitality is achieved by being perceptive.  Oliver O’Donovan said in Resurrection and the Moral Order, that “love achieves its creativity by being perceptive.”  Since hospitality is a form of love, it accomplishes its goal in the same way.  

Guidara tells the story of overhearing four guests at a table discussing how they were so happy with their culinary experiences in NYC. Their only regret was that they would not get a chance to eat a famous New York City hotdog before heading back home.  Guidara heard this remark and immediately ran down to the street to buy a hotdog. He brought it to the kitchen and asked the chef to cut it into fours and plate it.  Guidara then presented the final course to his guests who were blown away by this gratuitous gesture.

The Wilson family practices a similar form of hospitality.  They are perceptive.  They pay close attention to the food, the seating arrangements, and their guests.  They are also longitudinal in their perception.  They look to the future as they practice hospitality, adding to their numbers generationally.  Having a weekly sabbath supper for between 40-60 people might seem unreasonable and that’s because it is. What’s also unreasonable is how such hospitality has become a part of the Moscow mood.  Our group was invited in multiple times by multiple people.  A group of eight showing up for dinner might seem overwhelming to most of us, but for Moscow, it’s just another Saturday.           

Unreasonable hospitality has a place in the church, and it’s well-ensconced in Moscow, but it’s not quite the right category.  Thomas Cahill, in his book, How the Irish Saved Civilization, describes how in the wake of the fall of Rome, the Irish monks practiced “heroic hospitality.”  Heroic hospitality was a part of what Cahill describes as the “Green Martyrdom.”  Before Ireland was evangelized, young pagan Irishmen desired a “red martyrdom,” a glorious death by violence in blood.  But as Christians, such an end was no longer good.  As Christians, the Irish would now pursue a green martyrdom. Cahill writes, 

“The Green Martyrs were those who, leaving behind the comforts and pleasures of ordinary human society, retreated to the woods, or to a mountaintop, or to a lonely island—to one of the green no-man’s-lands outside tribal jurisdictions—there to study the scriptures and commune with God.”  

Thomas Cahill, How the Irish Saved Civilization

A green martyr was a dessert monk stuck in the lush landscape of Ireland, where salmon and honey were plentiful.  Desert asceticism was not a realistic option, what replaced it was heroic hospitality.  Often, these Irish monks would receive visitors, and when they arrived the monks showed them hospitality and taught them the scriptures.  It was a “green” form of mud and blood.  The results were astonishing.  Cahill writes,

 “People began to come from all over Ireland to sit at the feet of the monks and learn all they had to teach. On a plain to the east of the Lower Lake, the monks built what would become in time a kind of university city, to which came thousands of hopeful students first from all over Ireland, then from England, and at last from everywhere in Europe. Never forgetting the prehistoric Irish virtue of heroic hospitality, the monks turned no one away.”

Thomas Cahill, How the Irish Saved Civilization

After the fall of the Roman Empire, it was here in these hospitality-laden university communities where the scriptures were preserved, the gospel shared, and the church strengthened.  Heroic hospitality produced disciples who went out in pursuit of the “white martyrdom,” as they climbed upon ships and sailed over the whitecapped waves of the ocean to take the word of God to the rest of the unbelieving world.  The Wilson family is kind of a monastic community that gave rise to a university town.  Yes, there are two universities in Moscow, the University of Idaho and New St. Andrews.  Only one of them includes hospitality and Bible reading as part of their culture, and only one of them is sending young men and women into the world with Christian martyrdom, mud and blood, as a guiding principle.    

Criticisms are fair but misunderstandings should be clarified. 

The Moscow mood is polarizing.  Some of that is a tactic instigated by Wilson, but some of it, I think, is due to a misunderstanding of what’s actually going on in Moscow.  As someone recently returned from safari, allow me to offer a few insights as to why I think Wilson connects with some and misses with others. 

Working Class, not Upper class.  Some of the affection for and dislike of Doug Wilson is pure classism.  Wilson is a working-class, middle-class guy living and working in a middle-class, working-class neighborhood.  All of his sensibilities are working class.  He drives a truck, he wears jeans and a plaid shirt to work and when he wants to dress up, he puts on a grey sweater vest.  He built a house with his son, which means he’s comfortable with power tools.  He’s also comfortable with guns and even flame throwers.  It’s not as though Wilson doesn’t understand the ethos of evangelical elitism, it’s just that he’s more at home in a pair of muck boots strolling the Palouse than a pair of penny loafers in Manhattan. 

We’ve always had classism in America.  We talk about it less than racism or sexism, especially in the church, but it’s no less problematic.  The church I served is in a historic, monied, upper-middle-class suburb of Pittsburgh where many professionals live, and not a few millionaires.  I remember when one member of my church criticized me for driving a truck.  It was an old, late-model Toyota Tundra with a standard transmission and 4-wheel drive. I loved it.  My father was a contractor, and we always had a truck in the family.  I grew up to appreciate the benefits of an old truck and the good work you can do with one, but I was told by my parishioner that it was a bad look for a pastor. Wilson thinks and lives like a man who drives a truck.  He sees the world through the windshield of his truck.  Not everyone has to drive a truck, but Wilson does and you either appreciate that about Doug Wilson, or you don’t.

Concrete Language not Abstractions. Working-class sensibility also informs Wilson’s language. That and his complete disdain for pietism.  Wilson is not the kind of writer you discuss at fashionable dinner parties, at least, not if you want to be invited back.  His language is far too earthy, too visceral, with too many references to mud and blood and body parts.  Some find his language offensive, crude, even vulgar.  And it is Wilson’s use of vulgarity that is one of his biggest barriers.  The objection is not to a word like “wuss” because it is morally offensive but because the word is common.  Wilson employs vulgar language, from the Latin vulgus meaning the language of the common people.  Wilson condescends his language to the mud and the blood, and so he throws some dirt into his prose and he isn’t afraid to discuss menstruation.  Such language works in flyover country because that’s how people there talk and think, they think in concrete, earthy terms and not in ideas or abstractions.   You won’t hear that kind of language in the great lecture halls of England.               

When I was a kid we took one destination vacation.  I was about thirteen when we spent four days in Disneyworld.  My parents were poor, working-class people, but they came into some money, and they discovered that Disneyworld in November (in the late 80s) was fairly reasonable.  One of our days was spent at the Epcot Center.  As we were touring the facility, we came across an exhibit in which they were growing vegetables completely above ground.  The plants were suspended in the air in a greenhouse with water and nutrients periodically sprayed onto the root system.  I remember seeing this giant plant suspended in mid-air with a large bulb at the bottom and all these little roots spreading out to nowhere.  

I’ve never forgotten that image.  Over the years I’ve discovered that many Christians try to grow their faith in the same way.  They think Christianity is an idea, that we receive into ourselves and suspend in our minds.  We then try to grow our faith big and strong, free of dirt, nourished through squirts of pietism.  The roots of Christianity never touch the concrete realities of our lives, yet we wonder why we feel so unstable at times.  And then you read Wilson, whose language plunges you back into the mud and blood of Christian faith, and some find themselves steadied, while others start looking for the laundry detergent.      

More Farmer than Stateman. DeYoung hopes that Wilson will transform himself into a Christian statesman and spend his remaining years of ministry writing to reassure nervous Christians in an increasingly hostile world.  But that is to fundamentally misunderstand who Wilson is.  Wilson wants to die in the saddle.  Wilson has spent a lifetime at his craft, and the tools he’s used have made his hands calloused and rough.  People assume leathery hands mean a leathery heart that is harsh and uncaring.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Terry Cummins’ novel, Feed My Sheep tells the story of a boy and his grandfather who is a sheep farmer.  The grandfather loves his sheep, and he loves his farm. He only uses his knowledge and the strength of his hand to bless the farm.  Cummins describes the grandfather’s hands vividly,

 “He has arthritis in his hands and his fingers are all drawn up like claws. They’re harder than tough leather, and his palms are callused and as rough as a gritty rock. He has one finger that was ground off down below the nail when he got it caught in a gristmill. If you saw him, you would take notice of his hands, because they show he’s spent many years gripping an ax, hoe, shovel, hatchet, pitchfork and plow handle. He never shied away from taking anything in his hands. When a cow is having trouble giving birth, he’ll stick his hands right in and help bring the calf out to life. Mud, slime, blood and manure don’t bother him. Most splinters and thorns break against his tough old skin. His hands tell so much about his life.”

Terry Cummins, Feed My Sheep 

Conclusion

Wilson is a man of the earth and the kind of pastor who does not shy away from the mess of animal husbandry.  He has spent a lifetime putting his hand to the plow, and now they are hard and calloused, but that does not mean he is. If Wilson’s ministry is more like farming, then he’s the kind of farmer who reminds us that food comes from the land and not the grocery store.  Animals have to be slaughtered and sweat expended if we want to eat.  Some of us have forgotten this basic truth.  Wilson doesn’t offer a sanitized and pious form of Christianity.  Wilson has a more earthy wisdom on offer and he knows something that other evangelical leaders have forgotten. 

I, for one, was born a son of Ungit. I’ve spent twenty-five years now living, learning, and working in Glome. And I’ve come to believe that we do indeed need foxes who can give us clear theology. I appreciate the Fox, but I also believe we need old priests who are stained with mud and blood.  Wilson is such a man, a man of mud and blood.  There is something we can learn from his wisdom too.  He dares to show us the mud and the blood of a savior. Thank God, let’s not look away.