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.
