A Response to Russell Moore: Is Christianity Dying?

Dr. Russell Moore, President of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission has been aggressively touting his view that the death of the “near-Christianity” of the Bible Belt is a good thing.  He once again tackled this issue in a recent “Moore to the Point” blog post.  While I understand his argument, I’m not sure I’m totally sold.

Moore argues:

For much of the twentieth century, especially in the South and parts of the Midwest, one had to at least claim to be a Christian to be “normal.” During the Cold War, that meant distinguishing oneself from atheistic Communism. At other times, it has meant seeing churchgoing as a way to be seen as a good parent, a good neighbor, and a regular person. It took courage to be an atheist, because explicit unbelief meant social marginalization. Rising rates of secularization, along with individualism, means that those days are over—and good riddance to them.

Yes, Moore is right that what he calls “near-Christianity” is no Christianity at all.  That said, there is also a sense in which what he is describing above might also be seen as part of God’s common grace in keeping social chaos to a minimum.  The problem, as I see it, was never with the folks, but with those who were teaching the folks.  Thus, the difficulty with this “near-Christianity” isn’t that it created a social setting in which Christian values were the general standard; rather, the difficulty was watered down theology taught by weak-kneed pastors who refused to call sin sinful and uphold clear biblical teaching.  I recall about 15 years ago reading a tract put together by a so-called Southern Baptist pastor (whose name I can no longer remember) who had decided that the God who struck down Egyptians with multifarious plagues and who wiped out the inhabitants of Jericho simply couldn’t be the same as Jesus.  Around the same time, the church I attended was sliding into liberalism by accepting women deacons and pastors because of past “subjugation of women” by the SBC, as if that had any theological grounding.  Little wonder the Bible Belt’s buckle got rusty, resulting in its pants coming a “tumbling” down.

In a fashion similar to John Piper in Let the Nations Be Glad (where Piper comes within a whisker of suggesting Christians ought to seek out suffering), Moore seems to be suggesting that Christians ought to seek social chaos, as if it is social chaos that necessarily produces new converts to Christianity.  Moore says “Christianity isn’t normal anymore, and that’s good news. The Book of Acts, like the Gospels before it, shows us that the Christianity thrives when it is, as Kierkegaard put it, a sign of contradiction. Only a strange gospel can differentiate itself from the worlds we construct.”  I know, I know, Moore doesn’t say “seek social chaos.”  I get it.  But he does seem to revel in the new reality that we have social chaos on our doorstep (if not already here) and that this is a good thing for the gospel. 

Moore’s argument, in part, is certainly right.  I have found “near” Christians very often think their church membership, or baptism, or vows, or Christening, or confirmation has saved them.  This makes it hard to get them to see the true sinfulness of their sin and their need for repentance.  As one woman I know once told me, she believed in “live and let live” even though she claimed a form of Christianity.  She found my views on women pastors and homosexuality downright Neanderthal and unbecoming (my words, not hers).  Yet, when it came to general social and moral standards, she and I had much in common.  As a result, there was a general standard of decency and morality to which she adhered, despite her lack of any theological depth.

More to the point, though, (pun intended), where Dr. Moore makes a wrong turn is in his (apparently) necessary determination that losing this common recognition of biblically based morality is somehow a good thing.  I have trouble following the logic that appears to crave a world where Christianity is seen as awful, bigoted, vile, and reprehensible.  By Moore’s own logic, it’s just as hard to convert a “near” Christian (maybe harder) than to convert an “honest” atheist.  If this is the case, then weren’t we already in a difficult spot where true Christianity already looked different than the world?  My friend above believed herself a Christian in some form but, as I told her on several occasions, was not.  She thought my views very odd, despite our general agreement on many moral issues.  Do we really need for the whole moral realm to dissolve before we can appropriately and properly preach the gospel?  Yes, I’m pushing Moore’s argument to the edge, but it’s the edge to which his language leads.  I don’t think we must get to that point to preach the gospel or for the gospel to flourish.

Having said these things, I agree wholeheartedly with Dr. Moore that we need not despair.  We know the end game here and it works out well for the faithful.  So we take heart, whatever the moral realm looks like.  But I’d be okay if the moral reality remained a little closer to mine than further away from it.