“Dying Church” with Russell Moore
Shownotes:
According to a Gallup poll released in March of 2021, less than half of Americans belong to a church, mosque, or synagogue. The politicization of evangelical Christianity has resulted in utter disillusionment, specifically among young Christians who were once eagerly committed to the ideals of the faith. Christians and non-Christians alike are longing for truth and openness in conversation within the church, as well as a sense of connection rooted in hope, grace, and love.
In this episode, Chris and Eddie are joined by Dr. Russell Moore, the President of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. Moore’s recent article “Losing Our Religion” addresses the ways many churches do not seem to believe what they teach and the reasons many have chosen to disaffiliate from the church. Moore speaks of the ways in which he was disillusioned as a fifteen year old by Bible Belt Christianity, his journey back through fear to a genuine faith, and his courage to stand for mercy and justice in the public square. Throughout this conversation and in his work, Moore poses a hopeful vision for the future of the church rooted in the promises of Jesus rather than cultural agendas.
Resources:
Follow Russell Moore on the web:
Read Russell Moore’s article “Losing Our Religion” here
Check out Russell Moore’s books here:
https://www.russellmoore.com/books/
Follow Russell Moore on social media:
https://www.facebook.com/russellmoore
https://www.instagram.com/russellmoore/
Full Transcript:
Chris McAlilly 0:00
I'm Chris McAlilly.
Eddie Rester 0:01
I'm Eddie Rester, and welcome to The Weight.
Chris McAlilly 0:03
Today we're talking to Russell Moore, who is an awesome, awesome guy, and a great witness to the church. [LAUGHTER] I can't remember his titles!
Eddie Rester 0:13
Is that in his bio? Because I could tell you, if you just look at... I could give this to you.
Chris McAlilly 0:17
Well, I was looking at you, and you had your computer up. I thought you're just gonna start reading, and then now you're let me hang it.
Eddie Rester 0:22
He's the president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. And they are the moral and public policy agency of the nation's largest Protestant denomination.
Chris McAlilly 0:32
Just as I said, an awesome guy.
Eddie Rester 0:34
Awesome guy. He's got five sons. I don't, I can't imagine what that life is like. But he's also an author, a thinker, one who has spoken faithfully and at times very courageously, to the political life of the church and helped shape some of that conversation.
Chris McAlilly 0:55
Yeah, I mean, he's an influential Christian voice on the national stage. I would say that all good things begin in Mississippi, isn't that right Eddie?
Eddie Rester 1:03
Correct. He's a native of Biloxi, Mississippi, and a graduate of Southern Mississippi and he's got, if you're, you're going to listen to this, you're going to really enjoy it. He's just a brilliant mind. And the way he communicates is just wonderful. But "Onward" is a book that he wrote about how the church engages culture. And then last fall, he released a book called "The Courage to Stand."
Chris McAlilly 1:27
"Courage to Stand" is the one that I read. And it's rooted in this deep-seated cultural fear that perhaps you sense in yourself, but certainly we see around us, and he kind of charts a course for how you might face your fear and find your way to a courageous posture, a morally courageous posture. It is an excellent conversation. And it was a lot of fun to do.
Eddie Rester 1:55
It really was. Enjoy, enjoy it.
Chris McAlilly 1:56
[INTRO] We started this podcast out of frustration with the tone of American Christianity.
Eddie Rester 2:03
There are some topics too heavy for sermons and sound bites.
Chris McAlilly 2:06
We wanted to create a space with a bit more recognition of the difficulty, nuance, and complexity of cultural issues.
Eddie Rester 2:14
If you've given up on the church, we want to give you a place to encounter a fresh perspective on the wisdom of the Christian tradition, in our conversations about politics, race, sexuality, art, and mental health.
Chris McAlilly 2:26
If you're a Christian seeking a better way to talk about the important issues of the day, with more humility, charity, and intellectual honesty, that grapples with Scripture and the church's tradition in a way that doesn't dismiss people out of hand, you're in the right place.
Eddie Rester 2:41
Welcome to the wait. [END INTRO]
Eddie Rester 2:44
Well, again today, we're here with Dr. Russell Moore. Dr. Moore, welcome to The Weight today.
Russell Moore 2:50
Oh, good to be with you. Thanks for having me.
Eddie Rester 2:52
It's great to have a fellow Mississippian with us. A lot of folks may not realize that you were born and raised went to college here in Mississippi.
Russell Moore 3:00
Yes, I'm a Biloxian, so I'm, I'm a coast guy.
Chris McAlilly 3:04
We're stretching the categories here. You got that North Mississippi, South Mississippi, you know the coast folks. I'm sorry to interrupt you.
Russell Moore 3:11
Yeah, that's right. Yeah, it'd be Colossians 3, North Mississippi or South.
Chris McAlilly 3:16
That's right.
Eddie Rester 3:18
And I spent some time, actually I spent 17 years in Hattiesburg. You went to USM...
Russell Moore 3:23
Is that right?
Eddie Rester 3:23
Yeah, I just came out of seminary and went to Parkway Heights United Methodist Church, which is
Russell Moore 3:28
Yeah.
Eddie Rester 3:29
catty corner to USM. So...
Russell Moore 3:33
I attended there a couple times, back when, back in the day.
Eddie Rester 3:36
Can you say that from your position now, that you went to the Methodist Church some?
Russell Moore 3:40
[LAUGHTER] You know, Acts 17 we go to the [INDISTINGUISHABLE].
Chris McAlilly 3:45
That's right.
Eddie Rester 3:47
That's right. Well, again, we're just thankful that you're spending some time with us today. I've been just an admirer from afar of the way that you think and the way that you speak, not just for the church, but to the church in our day and age. You wrote an article, just--we're recording in late April--and on April 15, one called "Losing Our Religion," kind of a reflection, kind of the moment that the church finds itself in. What led you, I want to talk about that article a little bit, but what led you to write that article?
Russell Moore 4:24
The fact that I'm having conversations all day, every day, with people who are in a number of different, similar categories. So some of them are people who have lost their faith. Some of them are people who still have their faith but they're hanging on just barely. And some of them are people in ministry who are exhausted and are in need of of encouragement in this time. So those conversations going on constantly, all day every day is what was weighing on my mind.
Eddie Rester 5:03
You know, you wrote a book five, six years ago called "Onward," which is really about the church. How does the church engage culture? This article--which is a fabulous book, if folks are listening haven't haven't read that I thought it was a fabulous read--but this really, that was how it engages culture. This is almost, this article about how do we re-engage people of faith, you comment that people are leaving the faith right now, not because they disagree theologically, but just they're tired of kind of the church. And, yeah. Say a little bit about that, and kind of the point of that article.
Russell Moore 5:43
Yeah, I think that there's been an assumption for a long time, that there's the church, and then there's the secular world. And what the secular world hates about us is our orthodoxy and the fact that we hold to the scripture and to the gospel and so forth. And and of course, there is that element that takes place, but what I'm finding is, increasingly, a sense of disillusioning of people with the fact that they don't think the church believes what it teaches.
Russell Moore 6:15
So I saw this several years ago, talking to someone in the aftermath of the sexual abuse revelations in the Roman Catholic Church, who was a strong Catholic, every Sunday church going guy who said, "I don't think I can go to Mass anymore. And it's not because I don't believe what my church teaches anymore. It's because I don't think my church believes what my church teaches." And as I've sort of looked around in evangelicalism ever since, I see that same attitude, showing up with good reason, and when we look at several of the things that have have come to light, it's not surprising that people would be shaken by it. I think it's just a question of what do we do about it?
Chris McAlilly 7:07
Yeah, you know, I think that reality is one that I see in a lot of my peers. I have friends who grew up in the church, I mean, in North Mississippi, in kind of the footprint of AFA, and kind of that cultural institution and the kind of conversations that have emerged. And I think one of the things that I hear among some of those friends who used to be a part of the church and are kind of frustrated with American evangelicalism is the way in which, the way you put it in your book, "The Courage to Stand" is that Jesus becomes a mascot for whatever the political agenda of the day might be, or, you know, whatever the kind of the particular hints of power or money might kind of turn the purposes of religion, particularly of Christ. That really resonated with me. You know, I think that... How have you experienced that? Or I guess, you know, going back to that dimension of "The Courage to Stand," why did you kind of include that as a starting place for the conversation?
Russell Moore 8:18
Well, I talked about in the book of what it was like to go through a spiritual crisis at the age of 18, in looking around at Bible Belt culture, and just wondering is this really a political agenda or a cultural agenda or something like that, and Jesus is just a way to a way to get there. Which of course, is, I mean, I didn't know that this is what I was asking at the time. But that's the old at least caricature, Marxist position on religion, that religion is a means to an end to keep people with the status quo.
Russell Moore 8:59
And so I was wondering if that's true. And my response to that was not some sort of intellectual problem with, you know, the way that many people have. Many people get to the point where they're wondering, can I really believe in virgin births and bodily resurrections and those sorts of things? That wasn't my problem. My problem was, if that's the case, then that means that Jesus is not alive. And if Jesus is not alive, that means that the universe is what it seems to be, which is red in tooth and claw. And as John Updike used to put it, a freak show. And so that was really disorienting to me. And what I needed and what I received by the grace of God was CS Lewis, because I was familiar with his writings from having read The Chronicles of Narnia constantly as a kid, so I recognized his name on the spine of "Mere Christianity" in a bookstore in the mall in Biloxi, Mississippi, the Edgewater Mall.
Eddie Rester 10:00
The Edgewater Mall. Been there many times,
Russell Moore 10:02
Yeah. And I brought it home and read it and it transformed my life. Not so much because of the arguments that Lewis makes, although I think those are sound, but because of the, for lack of a better word, that tone of voice that came through. He was really clearly not marketing anything or selling anything, but was bearing witness to something. And that's what I needed was that larger, transcendent truth of Christianity, and found it.
Chris McAlilly 10:33
You know, I think that one of the things that I've been reflecting on is the way in which, because there's the sense of the existential question of what's at the heart of the universe? And is that kind of unconditional, steadfast love that is kind of out for our good and for us, ultimately, or is at the heart of the universe, just power in anything that would purport to be truthful is really just spin and propaganda? And I think the two pages about CS Lewis there at the beginning of "The Courage to Stand" were striking to me, because it was as if it seemed to me that CS Lewis gave you a way into the truth of Christianity that was disconnected from politics, just disconnected from power but that spoke deeply in the way that a prophet might or would,
Russell Moore 11:26
Yes, it gave me an inroad into the big picture of the kingdom of God that transcends the moment. So the sort of, and I think a lot of that has to do with there are so many benefits of American evangelical Christianity entrepreneurialism in the right sense of the word, adaptability, and all of those things. But with that, sometimes can come up a shadow side, and one of those shadow sides can be a disconnection from the historic church in a way that ends up with what Lewis called "chronological snobbery," but that feels like traditionalism.
Russell Moore 12:20
So I mean, I remember being somewhere, some event one time, and someone was introducing. So this is the person who wrote the song "Beulah Land." And I remember thinking, "I thought Beulah Land was a 400-year-old hymn." And it was written very, very recently. And so sometimes there's the need to be connected to the big, broad Body of Christ, across the generations and around the world, united to the church in heaven. For many reasons we need the whole body of Christ, but also because we need to know this is not something we're making up, or someone is making up for us, that this really is a matter of life and death.
Eddie Rester 13:11
And I feel like in our day and time, we've, you talked about the larger body of Christ, the sense of connection across time and space. We just kind of lost that in the tribalism that we've fallen into. You know, we have different litmus tests in different denominations. And we have different things, boxes to check, and every church has those boxes, that you've got to check somehow, and how do we begin? And maybe this is the other side of it, because we're in a day when people are just, you know, I feel like we finally hit that acceleration point with folks being done with church and maybe the pandemic has been that. They've said, they've gone a year without church, and now they're like, well, that seemed to be an okay year. What's the step back? What's kind of the move for the church right now?
Russell Moore 14:14
Well, I think that the year of the pandemic, and I'm including the pandemic with all of the ways that institutions and any sense of stability seems to be breaking down and being replaced with cynicism. Now, it really it doesn't matter. It's not just the church. It's in every aspect of not just American life, but global life in many ways. And the question is, what has that done? Well, I think one of the things that it's done is it has taken secularization, and sort of put it in a little bit of warp speed.
Russell Moore 14:53
There's a debate that was in Prospect Magazine in the United Kingdom, this past month between an atheist and a Church of England clergy person, and the question was, has the pandemic killed God? And I mean, of course, the answer to that is no. But the atheist was arguing. He said, it's not so much what's happened over the year of the pandemic as how it's been responded to. He said, even the response to it has largely been framed in secular terms. So he said, I don't want sort of the old guy, Doomsday prophet standing with the "world's about the end" signs. He said, but you notice those people aren't really around. We have lots of Doomsday prophets and conspiracy theorists and whatever, maybe more than ever, but they're not talking about principalities and powers and spirits and demons. They're talking about Bill Gates or microchips or something like that, which are decidedly secular ideas. And he says this is demonstrating what has happened to the disenchantment of the world. I don't agree with where his argument's going completely, but I think he's pointing out something that certainly is observable.
Russell Moore 16:24
Question is, where do we go from here? One of the things you mentioned was denominational kinds of tribalisms. I like what Richard Mao wrote about denominations as thinking of the denominations almost as monastic orders in the medieval church. And if you think about what those monastic orders were to do, they were each of them, taking a vow of emphasis. So the Franciscans are going to emphasize care for the poor. You're going to have the Jesuits who are going to emphasize learning, intellect, and so forth. Just go through those various different monastic orders. None of them are in contradiction with one another. But they're emphasizing something different. And he said, I think you can look at the denominations within Christianity as that kind of monastic order. So the Baptists have said, we've taken a vow to emphasize personal regeneration. And the Methodists have said, we've taken a vow to emphasize holiness, sanctification. And the Presbyterians to emphasize the sovereignty of God, and the Anglicans, liturgy and worship. I mean, you just go through the list. If you look at it that way, then what you can see is the entire body of Christ, even where we have disagreements, able to see that key emphasis and be reminded of it, even if the details we would differ on. I think that's a good way to look at it.
Chris McAlilly 18:09
Yeah. And it's not just what we can see in one another. I think that's part of the problem at the moment is that just that, I mean, the fact that we're talking about denominations, the complete splintering of the Protestant church means that like, there is no unity from which, you know, the world can see kind of a consensus, you know, what I mean? Just like, a clear witness that can be shared across space and time, which is why I think it's interesting in your book that, you know, novelists and art become kind of an important source of inspiration or restoration of the Christian vision. It isn't only CS Lewis that you talked about but Walker Percy, you know, Dostoyevsky, James Baldwin.
Chris McAlilly 18:56
For someone who might be listening who doesn't kind of share faith in Christ and who are maybe exploring out there but needs, I mean, really is just kind of deeply disillusioned by the state of the American church right now. What are some other, you know, novelists or artists that you would point them to that have been important for you?
Russell Moore 19:17
Well, what I would say to anyone is, find a novelist whose voice you can resonate with and continue to read that person. Not everybody's going to speak to to everyone. So some of the people that have really been important in my life. You mentioned Walker, Percy and Dostoyevsky and Flannery O'Connor and various others have been important in my life. But I tried to say to someone the other day [that] Marilyn Robinson has been an important voice in my life. And I was talking to someone the other day who said, "How do I discipline myself to read fiction in this way?" And I said don't discipline yourself. Read what you like, just train yourself to like better stuff a little bit at a time as you go. But it's really not going to help you if you say, okay, I've just got to plod my way through Anna Karenina today. That's really not going to be helpful because the whole point of the power of fiction is to get you to inhabit a narrative, and that can only happen if it's something that's gaining your attention, and it's actually resonating with you. So not everything is going to do that for everybody.
Chris McAlilly 20:47
Yeah, I think audio books have been helpful for me too, especially with young kids, you know, you can allow a story to just kind of wash over you in that way. I think that the other dimension of "Courage to Stand" that is just there is the reality of fear, that stands... And I think that that's something that crosses the conversation that you were talking about having with people who have been affected by the pandemic, people who are within the church or outside of the church, just this this low-grade fear that is just there. Why did you make that such an emphasis in in your book?
Russell Moore 21:28
Because I'm encountering it almost everywhere. And it's one of those things where it's not just that almost everybody that I'm talking to, once you get to the point where you're actually having honest conversations, when people know that they can drop the pretenses and can really talk, that everyone's facing it. But I find that almost everyone is confused about the way that they're facing it. So some of the most fearful people that I know seem to be very courageous, and maybe believed themselves to be courageous and built kind of a brand of courageousness, courage.
Russell Moore 22:14
And some of the most courageous people I know think that they're cowards, because they assume that courage is brashness, and courage is sort of an invincibility to fear and all those things, none of which is the way that scripture defines courage. And they're, they're confused by that. And so I think that it was a moment where I found myself having to say to some people, "I think you're more scared than you think you are." And to say to other people, "I think you're more courageous than you know you are." And that was really the impetus behind it.
Eddie Rester 22:53
How do you define courage? What is courage, in your mind, the courage that you're talking about?
Russell Moore 23:01
I think that when I when I think of courage, I think about what the Apostle Paul talks about in Ephesians 6, when he says, 'Having done all to stand." And you go back, I centered so much of the book on Elijah. And I think about when Elijah said to Ahab, "the God before whom I stand," and that standing is a sense of accountability. And I talked about in the book judgment and judgment seat, which we tend to think of in really, really negative categories, because we all know, judgmental people who are looking to find fault and so forth.
Russell Moore 23:46
But a really biblical understanding of God's judgment is liberating. Because if you understand yourself to be in Christ, and you're standing before God with a mediator, then that means that we don't have to live with this constant... We have all these little judgment seats that are going on all around us. A group of us, [???] and I were talking to a social scientist who's done a lot of research over the past three years. And one of us said, Is it just me? Or does it seem like everything and everybody's going crazy? And the social scientists said, No, it's not just you. That is exactly right. And he said, and "I can tell you exactly when it happened." He said it was whatever the date was 2009 when Facebook added the "like" button, and then Twitter copied it later on, and other social media platforms did. He said, because people don't really care about self esteem. They care about the esteem of others, and always have. But previously, there could be a group of people whose esteem you could try to get. And that was a manageable group of people. But now there's this infinite sort of a group of people who are standing in judgment all the time. And nobody can live that way. And it leads to all sorts of dissolution and disintegration. And I think that's, I think there's a lot of truth in that.
Eddie Rester 25:24
The guy that invented the "like" button has regretted inventing the "like" button at Facebook. And I think there's a lot of truth to that. Because, you know, when you think about the small group of friends that we would travel life with; I was born in 1971, I think that's when you were born. Something did shift when our lives suddenly did become very public, when our commentary on the world could be judged by others, when we could judge the commentary of others as well. And I think that plays a large part, not only of the fear, that low-grade fear that you talk about in our own lives, but I think it allows us to prey on the fears of others, as well. I think part of our brokenness is that we see an opportunity, and maybe that's some of the meanness that comes out on social media so well.
Eddie Rester 26:25
As you think more about courage, one of the things I think about is, you know, a lot of Christians, they take these courageous stands against or courageous stands for, and sometimes I think that courage is abused, misused. How do we know when we are standing in that confidence like Elijah, faithfully, versus maybe misusing some of that courage?
Russell Moore 26:59
Well, I think there are a couple components to that. And one of the things that I would say is you have courage, as with any other virtue, to go back to Lewis, he says, "The devil doesn't send errors into the world one by one, but two by two on either side of the truth." And that's exactly right. Which is why you have warnings in Scripture, both against timidity and against a quarrelsomeness. And so part of what we have to understand about ourselves is, "Where is my unique point of vulnerability?"
Russell Moore 27:35
So there may be one person who says, "I'm vulnerable to just accommodating my Christian faith to whatever is expected of me in the world." And someone else may have a point of vulnerability toward what Paul called an unhealthy craving for controversy. And so I think there's a metaphor here, an analogy here, with war, in the sense that the people that you want leading a country into war are not the people who enjoy war. Those are the people who not only are going to start unnecessary wars, but they're going to lose wars, because they don't understand what war is. What you want are the people who understand the horrors of war. They know how to exercise restraint and to achieve objectives, not just to sort of express their their bloodlust.
Russell Moore 28:30
And I think the same thing applies to issues of controversy. The people who ought to be engaging controversies ought to be the people who least enjoy being involved in controversy. And the people who actually enjoy controversy ought to see it the way a recovering alcoholic would see the call to do evangelism in a bar. That recovering alcoholic would say, that's a very needed ministry. We really need people to do it. And I'm not the one to do it, because of my point of vulnerability.
Eddie Rester 29:08
And I think that's interesting that because the voices in our day today that speak the loudest, that people think are the most courageous, are often the ones that are stirring up the most controversy often for the sake of controversy. I think one of the things that I've admired about you, I mean, you've taken stands at times at odds with your own denomination, at voices within your denomination, I think. And it's that you've done it in such a way where there's truth involved and there's also kind of an openness to conversation involved. I think that's a unique way forward that the church I think is coming out of a season where it's felt like it's had to be bold stands, no room for conversation, no room for error. And maybe it's that sense of how do we invite people back to the table, maybe that's the courageous thing for the church in this era.
Russell Moore 30:08
Well, or I think more closer to the reality is an illusion of bold stance, which is easy to do. So if you look at what the Apostle Paul says in First Corinthians 5, he says, "it's not those on the outside that I judge." So he says to the church at Corinth, "when I said to you to separate yourselves from those who practice," and lists off these lists of sins, he said, "I was not talking about the people in the world, otherwise, one would have to leave the world. I'm talking about the one who bears the name of brother." So he makes a distinction between what's going on within the church and what's taking place within the mission field, which is, of course, entirely consistent, consistent with what the gospel writer show us Jesus doing repeatedly.
Russell Moore 31:05
So sometimes I think that there is a way of feeling courageous.--a friend of mine years ago used the analogy of bungee jumping, where there's an adrenal hit, but there's no real danger involved--where someone can say, what are the sins and problems that are the least present in my audience, whoever my audience is, and I'm going to ignore those. And then I'm going to take, or I'm going to denounce those, and whatever are the sins that are the most present in my audience I'm going to ignore. Well, that's just in the exact opposite of what Jesus is doing.
Russell Moore 31:53
And so when you end up with a church that says, we're going to minimize what we're doing and we're going to maximize our denunciation of what we're not doing, then you just have, that's Darwinian tribal identity. And everyone knows that that's the case. They can see it in any aspect of human life. But if the Holy Spirit is present, that means that you're actually going to see more of the reverse of that.
Chris McAlilly 32:30
I wonder if you would talk a little bit about kind of, I mean, as you became kind of a public figure, public intellectual, public theologian, who were some of the examples that you use, or people that you saw around you, as you were kind of growing or maturing, that you look to as examples of the kind of voice or witness that you wanted to emulate?
Russell Moore 33:01
Well, I mean, one of them was something that I saw early on with a boyhood pastor, who had really modeled a kind of tranquility in the right sense. He knew who he was before God. And he, therefore, was able to, I saw him sort of take his, for lack of a better word, political capital that everyone has, and spend it on people who were on the margins and maybe weren't the kind of people that other people would be willing to give an opportunity to, in order to show Jesus to those people. And that really made an impression on me early on, and continued. I mean, he's with the Lord now, but it continues to.
Eddie Rester 34:02
One of the things in the article, I want to come back to it. Near the end of it, you asked the question, will the church die? And I loved your answer, because it was very simple and bold and hopeful. And the answer was no. "Because the church moves out into the future, not on the strength of its culture or its institutions, but because of the promise of Jesus at Caesarea Philippi." Where do you see that hopefulness beginning to emerge in the work of the church on here, whether it's in the United States or the work that you see being done around the world?
Russell Moore 34:39
Okay, well, I will say I see that hopelessness, but I don't think we need to. And here's what I mean by that. What I mean by that is we can trust God to be at work invisibly, in keeping his promises in ways that we often are not able to see. So if you think of Elijah, standing before God and saying everything's lost, I'm the only one left. And God says there's 7,000 people you don't even know about right now. There's a remnant that Paul says later in Romans is an important aspect of what God is doing in the Gospel. So I think that's the case, the metaphor that Jesus uses of yeast that's working invisibly, or of a seed that goes into the ground, you don't see it working, but it's working. So I think that's something to keep in mind. So everything that we're able to see is just grace, I mean, just extra grace given to us in in seeing that, and I do. I see young people who are coming to faith in Christ, following Jesus in really, really difficult circumstances. I know people who never knew anyone who was a Christian, just about until they came to faith in Christ. And it's a very difficult and hard path. But one that's really similar to what would have been faced in the in the first century.
Russell Moore 36:18
And then you also see what God's doing around the world. I mean, I think that we're moving into a time where the illusion of an America anchored global Christianity... I mean, it wasn't, that was never true. But it was easy to think it was true. It is no longer going to be the case. And it's going to be the opposite. Because often where you see people... The more that people are... When people are sort of thrown out of their illusion, of centrality in a cultural system, it can go one of two ways. It can go with a sense of anger and entitlement and victimhood that goes along with that, and sort of a digging in, or it can result in vibrancy and renewal.
Russell Moore 37:23
And I think that that's what we're seeing all around the world right now are our Christians in places such as China, and Iran, and Cuba, and other places where the Gospel is going forward very powerfully. And part of that is because it's really clear in those settings, there is no social capital to be gained by becoming a Christian. This is real. And I think that has the opportunity to revitalize the American church, as well.
Eddie Rester 37:55
I think about a trip I took to Russia in the summer of 1993 with these Russian Methodists, these new churches that were just exploding all over Russia, and you know, Sunday morning worship, we had Sunday morning worship, and I saw people kind of trickling out before the service was really over. And afterwards, the pastor said, "You Americans, you don't realize that for the people who came to worship here today, they missed two to three hours of work, of pay, to come You get Sundays off. In Russia, we don't get Sundays off." And it opened my eyes in a way to understand that.
Eddie Rester 38:41
Sometimes it's, in those places like you're talking about where there's no social capital, there's nothing to be gained by becoming a Christian, there's no... It's not going to help you get votes when you run for office. There's a sincerity and an authenticity to the faith that sometimes--because it's easy for us to be Christian. It's expected of us, even as the veneer of the Bible Belt begins to wear off--that somehow we've missed along the way.
Chris McAlilly 39:12
But I do think, I mean, it doesn't seem to me to be... I mean, there are those that would argue that the church should cede any social capital that it has and look for the places where, you know, there's vibrancy in spite of social capital. But I guess on the other side of it for Christians that do still retain a fair amount of social capital or power, cultural power within the American, I guess, cultural system. What are you learning? Or what do you continue to reflect upon as you think about how to use power rightly or well or in a way that would be redeemed?
Russell Moore 39:50
Well, I think we have to look at the use of authority in the right biblical understanding of authority. So if you think of the way that Jesus... Mark 1 is so striking: "He speaks as one with authority and not as one of the scribes." And well, what does that mean? Well, I think the entire rest of the Gospel of Mark and then elsewhere in the gospels show us what that looks like. And that's that someone who, on the one hand, what you see is, "who is this, that the winds and the waves of obey Him, the evil spirits obey Him." But you also have someone who is clearly not using power and authority for some sort of temporal self service, but is following the way of the cross all the way through.
Russell Moore 40:54
And one of the things that I'm really struck by in the gospels is the way that Jesus reveals his knowledge of people, not in terms of information, but the fact that he knows them, truly knows them. He knows human nature, that's evident, but he also knows specifically the people that he's talking to, both in positive and negative ways. So John 1, Jesus is saying to Nathaniel, :here's an Israelite in whom there is no guile." And Nathaniel's response to that is to say, "how do you even know me?" I mean, a compliment that's coming from someone who doesn't know you doesn't mean anything to you, because you just assume that's just what they're saying to gain favor with you. Until Jesus turns around and says, "I saw you under the fig tree. I know who you are."
Russell Moore 41:52
And then later with the woman at the well, "You have had five husbands and the man you're with right now is not your husband." And she goes forward and says, "This man told me everything about myself. He knows me." But he knows these people, not in a way of manipulating them. He knows them in a way of drawing them into himself. And I think that's a right use of authority and a right use of power. That, you know, it just doesn't make sense, in a kind of neorealist, social Darwinist view of the universe. But it makes sense in a Christian view.
Chris McAlilly 42:36
And I so appreciate the ways in which you've chosen to use your authority to call people out of fear. And I want to just come back to that, the question of what is one, for a person out there who is completely afraid by circumstances that are happening in their own life, things that have been intensified by the pandemic--politics, the cultural moment that we're in--and are just completely afraid? What is one practical step that that a person like that could take to break through their fear?
Russell Moore 43:12
Well, I would say, no disrespect to President Roosevelt, but "we have nothing to fear but fear itself" is not really true. It was true in terms of fighting the depression. It's not true in terms of living life. And what I mean by that is, there are a lot of people who are, TS Eliot talked about, fearful of fear, an sometimes drawn into a frenzy by the fear of fear. But if you look biblically, fear itself is often used by God in a revelatory way. It sometimes leads people into self destruction, but it often leads people into a moment of revelation.
Russell Moore 44:06
So think about Luke 2 and Matthew 1 and 2, the nativity narratives, you've got fear all over that. But fear shows up in different ways. So Herod is fearful of losing his throne. And he's angry, he is troubled, and all Jerusalem with him, and it leads to murder. But when the angels appeared to the shepherds, the glory of the Lord, the old King James puts it, "the glory of the Lord shown round about them and they were sore afraid." Well, why? That's a reasonable response to the sort of unusual dual [???] and it leads to worship. It leads to revelation.
Russell Moore 44:53
The same thing happens at the empty tomb. The disciples are fearful. And the fear is sort of held in tension for a moment until it's addressed by God. So I think there are some people who come to this moment of fear and they assume, "well, the problem is the fear. And so what I need to do is to either numb myself to fear, so I kind of I pretend that this isn't going on. Or I allow the fear to drive me into some sort of frenzy, and I'm trying to protect myself from it." Rather than stepping back and saying, "What is God showing to me in this moment of fear? Why am I afraid? And and how do I sense the presence of God, even if I don't yet know how he's leading me out of this, but I can trust him." That's that's hard to do. That's much easier to say than to do. But I think that's how God works.
Eddie Rester 45:52
I think that's a great spot for us to end, that we can trust the revelation in those moments of fear. We really appreciate your time. We know you've got a lot going on, a lot of great work that you're doing. We just appreciate time to speak to some fellow Mississippians today.
Russell Moore 46:13
Well, it's great to be with you and blessings upon your ministry, there in Oxford. I'm grateful for it.
Eddie Rester 46:19
Well, we'd love to get you to Oxford sometime so you can experience the crown jewel of North Mississippi.
Russell Moore 46:24
Well, I love it. And I love Square Books.
Eddie Rester 46:29
There you go.
Russell Moore 46:29
Anytime.
Eddie Rester 46:30
[OUTRO] Thank you for listening to this episode of The Weight.
Chris McAlilly 46:36
If you liked what you heard today, feel free to share the podcast with other people that are in your network. Leave us a review. That's always really helpful. Subscribe, and you can follow us on our social media channels.
Eddie Rester 46:48
If you have any suggestions or guests you'd like us to interview or anything you'd like to share with us, you can send us an email at info@theweightpodcast.com. [END OUTRO]