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Nuance is a podcast of The Collaborative helping Christians to faithfully live out their faith in their work. We recognize most of life is not lived in black and white but rather lived in the gray, lived in the nuance.
You can find more including complementary spiritual exercises at www.collaborativeorlando.com/nuance.
Case Thorp (00:02.952)
And welcome today to Collaborative's Nuance Being Faithful in the Public Square. I'm Case Thorpe and thrilled to have you with us today. Please like and subscribe, share this episode. It always helps us. Well, if you've been listening lately, you know, it's a new day for the Collaborative. We have widened our focus a bit from just faith and work to impact in the public square. I mean, a greater cultural view. And so if you're in a way, Nuance then as a podcast has a bit.
nuanced. We're now bi -weekly with guests on different topics. Forums for Faithfulness is our 10 -minute episode on spiritual formation, so don't miss that. Well, I am very grateful for today. We have author, pastor, and now a journalist, Dr. Russell Moore. Russell, thank you for being with us.
Russell Moore (00:52.334)
Yeah, thanks for having me. Good to be here.
Case Thorp (00:54.344)
I really appreciate it. Well, Russell is editor in chief at Christianity Today and author of a number of books, but the latest one, Losing Our Religion, an Altar Call for Evangelical America. So he's also an ordained Baptist, previously served as president at Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and a dean at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
In 2017, he was named to Politico magazine's list of top 50 influencers in Washington and been profiled in all sorts of national news outlets, New York Times, Washington Post, Time, etc. He has a podcast, The Russell Moore Show. And I've enjoyed that and encourage you to go listen and co -host of Christianity Today's weekly news and analysis podcast, The Bulletin. A fellow Southerner, Russell, I'm from Georgia and you're from Mississippi.
Russell Moore (01:49.262)
That's right.
Case Thorp (01:49.672)
Uh, wife Maria and five boys. My goodness. You are a tired man.
Russell Moore (01:53.774)
No, they're energy giving.
Case Thorp (01:59.944)
What's their age of ranges? Are there a range of ages?
Russell Moore (02:03.214)
They range from 22 to 12 and sort of stair -stepped all the way through there. Yeah.
Case Thorp (02:05.702)
Woo!
My goodness, that's great. I have 12 to 19, so almost the same. Listeners, they live in Nashville and attend Emmanuel Church. Well, Russell, thank you for being here. And we were just together a few weeks ago here in Orlando. The Collaborative sponsored a gathering and we were looking at political polarization in our days here. And...
Russell Moore (02:11.95)
Ah, so very similar, yeah.
Case Thorp (02:33.864)
So I appreciate you coming to that. What were some of your takeaways from our time?
Russell Moore (02:39.15)
Well, I think in any of these gatherings that I've been in lately, a lot of people concerned about how are we going to make it through the next year without having churches divided or families further divided and so forth. And so there's a good deal of anxiety about that, I think is the bad part of it. But the good part of it is there's a great deal of concern.
Case Thorp (02:51.56)
Mm.
Case Thorp (03:09.32)
Mm -hmm.
Russell Moore (03:09.482)
in a positive way in people who are trying to actually navigate this. So I think that's good news.
Case Thorp (03:14.344)
Well, what an opportunity is Executive Editor at Christianity Today, a platform, if you will, to really be able to speak into these times and the most immediate. I guess that's certainly different from an academic environment. How are you enjoying the new gig?
Russell Moore (03:32.014)
I'm enjoying my time, yeah.
Case Thorp (03:33.98)
Yeah. What's different about it from your previous efforts?
Russell Moore (03:36.718)
My life doesn't really change that much. It's always been pretty much I do what I do and it really doesn't change all that much.
Case Thorp (03:47.048)
And by that, you mean writing, thinking, speaking, speaking in dire times. Yeah. Well, this new book is certainly gotten a lot of great attention, losing our religion. So could you tell us a bit about the book and why and why right now?
Russell Moore (03:51.34)
Yeah.
Russell Moore (04:03.246)
Well, it largely came out of conversations that I keep having with people who are either at the precipice of walking away from the faith or maybe they have or maybe they love somebody who has. And to speak a word to those folks from somebody who has seen and lived through a lot of this but really believes that...
Case Thorp (04:17.928)
Hmm.
Russell Moore (04:33.294)
Jesus is still the way, the truth, and the life, and that we ought to cling fast to that. And then also to speak to the larger church about after all of this crazy period is over, what are we going to do to rebuild?
Case Thorp (04:49.32)
Mm hmm. What are we going to do to rebuild? And by that you mean rebuild the church, our country, evangelicalism.
Russell Moore (04:58.798)
I mean the witness of the church. And I think that one of the reasons I wrote the book is because there was this big shift in people. When I first started in ministry, I would have people come into me all the time saying, I'm disillusioned. I think I'm going to walk away from the faith or I'm trying to figure out whether to. Usually, that had to do with one of two things. It was either that they were saying, I encountered some sort of argument. Why is there evil in the...
Case Thorp (05:00.678)
Mm -hmm.
Case Thorp (05:09.96)
you
Russell Moore (05:28.366)
world or some scientific finding or something like that that causes me to reject the supernatural aspects of Christianity. Or it was somebody saying, I think the moral rules of the church are too strict and are impeding something that I want to do. I almost never hear that anymore, either of those. It's more often somebody who's saying, look,
I believe everything that the church teaches, I just have started to realize I don't think the church believes what the church teaches. And so there's a sense not that, well, the church is so morally strict that I can't take it. It's the opposite. It's that the church actually isn't displaying basic human morality and decency and therefore I'm going to walk away. So that's a big shift.
Case Thorp (05:59.272)
Hmm.
Case Thorp (06:13.67)
Hmm.
Case Thorp (06:18.12)
Well, I was on a call this morning with a fellow pastor and he made a great point. He said, you know, early in my career, the question was, uh, is Jesus Lord kind of to your point, the earlier questions. And he said, I hear people asking today is Jesus good. And they're asking that because of the witness of the church.
Russell Moore (06:27.47)
Mm -hmm.
Russell Moore (06:33.386)
Yeah.
Yeah, they are. And it seems to me that we have two things going on. It's, is Jesus good, kind of from people who are maybe thinking about walking away or maybe who have walked away or who just aren't going to listen to the witness of the church? But then also is Jesus...does Jesus love me from people inside the church? So it's...
Case Thorp (07:00.022)
Mm.
Russell Moore (07:07.598)
You know, at the beginning of my ministry, I was having to emphasize just what you said about Lordship of Christ a lot and say, look, you need to take the holiness of God seriously. Now, I find that I'm having the same conversation over and over again with people who are actually living the Christian life and repenting of sin and struggling with sin and so forth, and they're convinced that they're failing.
Case Thorp (07:09.512)
you
Case Thorp (07:22.356)
Yeah.
Russell Moore (07:35.246)
because they have this view, I think, not cognitively, but deeper than that, that God really is angry with them. And that if they don't perform at a certain level of sanctification, that God's angry with them. And of course, that makes all of the problems worse because you start to withdraw back from God to say, I'm going to get my...
Case Thorp (07:35.88)
.
Case Thorp (07:47.204)
Hmm.
Case Thorp (07:51.272)
So I'm.
Russell Moore (08:05.134)
fixed up and then I'm going to come into the presence of God and prayer and scripture reading and other things. And you can't do it without that. So it just compounds the problem. Well, I don't think it's necessarily that we haven't done discipleship well. I...
Case Thorp (08:19.752)
resonating with your insights and yet then I'm feeling guilty as a pastor like have we just not done discipleship well? Like what got us here?
Russell Moore (08:34.734)
think it's that we often don't realize that, as C .S. Lewis put it, the devil sends errors into the world, not one by one, but two by two on either side of the good. And sometimes I think we see a problem and we hit that problem without realizing there's another flank there that we're leaving open. And so you can... In just...
Case Thorp (08:51.936)
Hmm.
Russell Moore (09:04.302)
any type of Christian discipleship, you're going to have some people whose primary problem is that they think they're too good for the gospel, they don't really need it. But you're also going to have people who think they're too bad for the gospel, and that somehow the gospel's for somebody other than me. And you've got to address both of those people. And if you don't, if you leave one of them unarticulated, then you just further the problem for that person.
Case Thorp (09:20.8)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. Mm
Russell Moore (09:34.19)
because I'm hitting the sort of presumptive person who thinks it doesn't matter what I do, God's just going to approve of me. I'm hitting that person with the holiness of God and the reality of judgment. Well, when I'm speaking to somebody who's hiding in the shadows from God and afraid that God doesn't really love them, then I'm making that worse.
Case Thorp (09:51.532)
Yeah. So if not discipleship, is this a sociological thing, ecclesiological? What do you think has gotten us here? Okay.
Russell Moore (10:06.542)
Well, I think there is a discipleship problem. I just think that it's not primarily in terms of our programs. I think instead it's a misdiagnosis of what's wrong. And I think that early on in my ministry, I assumed, because I was looking around at a really lifeless Bible Belt Christianity,
Case Thorp (10:22.156)
Okay.
Russell Moore (10:35.086)
that was trying to find life in something other than Christ himself. And I assume the problem was shallow theology. And if we just shored up our theological grounding, that that would take care of itself. And yeah. And then what I concluded after a long time is I'm seeing people who are very theologically...
Case Thorp (10:51.528)
Which we as Presbyterians say too.
Russell Moore (11:04.33)
grounded, sophisticated, can argue all day long about doctrine of election and free will and predestination and complementarianism versus egalitarianism and everything else, but who lack life and genuine life in Christ. That's, I think, a real problem. So when you have lifelessness, people are going to try to find some way to get at least a
Case Thorp (11:16.676)
Hmm. Hmm. Hmm.
Case Thorp (11:32.324)
Yeah.
Russell Moore (11:34.206)
a jolt of a feeling of life. Right now, usually, that manifests itself in anger. Let me just find out who the enemies are and what they've done. And then that can give me... I mean, for a short time, that really does give you sort of a... Gets your blood running, but ultimately, the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God.
Case Thorp (11:35.4)
Mm -hmm.
Case Thorp (11:53.468)
Yeah.
Case Thorp (12:02.834)
Well, for the last nine years at the Collaborative, we have resonated with just what you're saying by doing as much spiritual formation as we might do teaching ideas, etc. And I gleaned that from Redeemer, Tim Keller, and the New York crowd that if you don't have the heart stuff, the head, I mean, look at all these holes at the head stuff, it leaks over time. And I completely, and that's why I'm doing the Forum for Faithfulness. I want folks not just to listen to
Russell Moore (12:04.078)
Mm -hmm. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Case Thorp (12:31.144)
big ideas, but to take some time and form the heart.
Russell Moore (12:34.542)
Yeah, and I think some of it has to do with the fact that we assume too much in the sense that I will often have young Christians who are saying, look, I need to know how to pray. And what I mean by that is not that I ought to pray. And what I mean by that is not what happens when I'm praying, how to understand that theologically. I mean, do this first, then this.
than this. Yeah. Yeah. And it's hard to do because on the one hand, you don't want to teach that kind of thing to step by step because then you end up having a kind of legalism that says, well, okay, because I pray better this way, that means you need to. That's true. But on the other hand, if you don't have that...
Case Thorp (13:04.2)
We don't teach it. Most churches don't teach.
Russell Moore (13:33.078)
step by step, is kind of like, I think we overreacted to the kind of evangelism that was very prevalent when I was growing up, which is, here's what you do, here's the sinner's prayer, here's how you pray it, and so forth. And that was, in many ways, very formulaic and programmatic, and people said that's not the biblical picture. But we overreacted that to a way in which I think there are a lot of people who say, okay,
Case Thorp (13:47.464)
Sure.
Case Thorp (13:55.912)
Right.
Case Thorp (14:00.296)
you
Russell Moore (14:01.966)
If I want to become a Christian, what do I do? You know, and we just don't fill that in.
Case Thorp (14:05.928)
Mm -mm.
Case Thorp (14:09.512)
Well, besides the teaching and the mechanics of prayer, are you a praying church? I've seen those churches where prayer is such a central component. It, there's a different field. There's a different work of the Holy Spirit going on there.
Russell Moore (14:24.174)
Yeah, there definitely is. And it's not a...where I see that working, often it's in churches that don't really know they're praying churches because they're just sort of responding to God. And I think they think, well, a praying church is a church that prays a long time. And, you know, that...
Case Thorp (14:36.742)
Hmm.
Case Thorp (14:49.288)
Hmm.
Russell Moore (14:52.174)
that thinks of itself as a praying church and they're not, they're just sort of Abba Father moment to moment and that's what prayer actually is. So sometimes I think that the churches that are actually the most powerful and the most successful have no idea that they are. They just have no idea.
Case Thorp (15:10.792)
Well, I am a son of a...
Russell Moore (15:14.572)
Yeah.
Case Thorp (15:15.176)
rooted in the camp meeting tradition. Our family owns a tent at Salem Camp Meeting just to the east of Atlanta and a tent's the old timey term for a cabin. But I noticed in your byline of your book, so.
people to miss that. An altar call for evangelicals.
And I loved and still love going back to camp meeting and having those calls to the altar. I look forward all year long to getting back to being in that tabernacle with the sawdust floors, we still have them, and to have that special time after a worship service to go down and be there with the Lord. So why did you pick that byline?
Russell Moore (15:43.34)
Mm -hmm.
Russell Moore (15:50.252)
Mm -hmm.
Russell Moore (15:58.67)
Because I realized as time went on that as the altar call started to dissipate in churches of almost all sorts, sometimes for good reasons. I mean, people were saying, we've had too much kind of manipulation or people who are substituting an emotional experience for actual faith, but...
I think we lost something, and what we lost is the fact that in my church growing up, the altar call was an every week reminder of what it means to be in Christ. And it was an every week reminder that there are people all around me that Jesus loves, for whom Jesus died, and we're not going to give up on that.
Case Thorp (16:53.416)
Mm -mm.
Russell Moore (16:53.652)
And so there was a there was a a melding together I think too and the reason I chose altar call for this is There's bad news and good news That has to be present and if if you're not actually Confronted with what you need and what you lack Then there is no call to any altar. You don't need it. You have to have that articulated
Case Thorp (17:03.61)
you
Russell Moore (17:20.974)
But there also has to be good news. You are being called to the altar, which means you're welcome there. And so you have to hold both of those two things together. And I think when it comes to the witness of the church, you will have some people for whom there's only the bad news. They're looking around and rightly diagnosing...
Case Thorp (17:29.448)
Mm.
Case Thorp (17:46.472)
Marketing. Yeah.
Russell Moore (17:47.406)
the scandals and the cover -ups and everything else that we've seen in the church. And some people who respond with public relations, everything's great, onward and upward, where things are better than ever. People know that's not true. And so, ultimately, what we have to do is to have what Jesus gave us, a realistic view of the world.
and of the church so that when Jesus is saying, for instance, here are all the things that are going to happen, really dark things he's talking about. And he says, I'm telling you these things ahead of time so that when they happen, you don't panic. I mean, I think that's just necessary to tell the truth about what's happening, but not to do so as those who have no hope.
Case Thorp (18:22.376)
Hmm.
Case Thorp (18:42.336)
And I see and have experienced altar calls for repentance as much as for communion. Now that I am, you know, confessed faith in Christ, there's altar calls for those that need to come to salvation, but it's that repentance.
Russell Moore (19:01.774)
Yeah. Yeah, it's repentance and it's also, there's a balancing of the personal, the individual. It's I'm being called and the communal because I mean, if you think about the people that I would watch as a kid every day, you know, getting up and walking down, you would see somebody come and just bow down at the front. You don't know what's going on in their life.
Case Thorp (19:03.14)
to the altar and confess.
Russell Moore (19:31.702)
something is, and then you would see a group of people gather around that person and put hands on that person and start to pray. And they may not know what's going on, but they know this is my brother or sister who needs me. And that's an individual thing and it's a corporate thing.
Case Thorp (19:36.392)
Mm. Yeah.
Case Thorp (19:43.816)
Yeah, that's right.
Case Thorp (19:50.376)
And when you see your, your leaders, your elders, you're the people you lift so high up in your mind. Wow. Even they too go and bow at the foot of the cross.
Russell Moore (19:58.414)
Yeah. Yeah. And that's really counter -cultural right now, particularly, it's always counter -cultural, but it's very counter -cultural right now because there's a, a cultural mentality that says, if I acknowledge, uh, being wrong at all, then what I'm doing is handing something over to my enemies, whoever they, whoever they are. Uh, so, I mean, I was talking to somebody not long ago,
Case Thorp (20:23.322)
Hmm.
Russell Moore (20:28.398)
who realized that he had handled a situation the wrong way. And he said, you know, I could have handled that differently and I wish I had. And here's what I wish I had done. And he said what happened was that sort of his friends were saying, why did you sell us out by that? And his quote unquote enemies were saying, see, we told you what else is.
Case Thorp (20:50.984)
Hmm.
Russell Moore (20:58.062)
Yeah, so there's that cultural sort of moment and that makes it all the more necessary for us as Christians to not conform to that and to do something else.
Case Thorp (21:00.328)
Yeah. Yeah.
Mm.
Case Thorp (21:08.36)
So I am convicted and convinced by your argument of evangelical America needing to confess. So you mentioned, I mean, in your book, you name like political polarization and the Christian nationalism that we're running into. You mentioned the scandals, so many scandals, sadly. And hey, I'm not above big sin and falling away from the Lord.
It's just been particularly tough when so many high profile folks have cast a pall over who we are as a church. What do we need to confess?
Russell Moore (21:48.174)
treating Christianity as a means to an end. And that's the fundamental problem, I think, in all of these situations, is that you will have, for instance, with the political idolatry, Christianity becomes a means to some political or national or ethnic end gets us where we want to go. Or...
In the case of these scandals and cover -ups, you have people who are saying, well, the institution is so important. We need to protect the institution by covering up awful things that are happening within the institution. I mean, it's all very similar in terms of treating Christianity as a means to an end, which has been the case. The temptation has been there with that.
Case Thorp (22:15.56)
Thank you.
Case Thorp (22:21.926)
Mmm.
Case Thorp (22:29.992)
Right.
Russell Moore (22:40.718)
all the way back to the very beginning. I mean, in John chapter 6, you have a situation where some people, Jesus says, are coming to him because they want bread. They want to have a bread supply. And some people are wanting to make him king. And rather than actually hearing what he's saying, I am the bread that comes down from heaven. I'm not a means to your already existing end.
Case Thorp (22:52.966)
Hmm.
Russell Moore (23:09.678)
And that's, I think... I think there are many people who are wondering, wait, is this really about the gospel or is this just about something else? And if it's about something else, then what people ultimately realize is even the people who want that something else realize, I can get that without giving up a Sunday morning. And I can get that without...
Case Thorp (23:34.192)
Hmm.
Russell Moore (23:37.678)
crucifying the flesh. So let me just go directly to that. And that's one of the reasons why you saw, for instance, for a long time you would have on the left churches that were really about political restructuring of society. Jesus teaches you how to do that.
Case Thorp (23:39.432)
Sure, right. Sure, sure.
Case Thorp (24:02.536)
Mm -hmm.
Russell Moore (24:05.728)
Ultimately, you have people who said, I don't have to be a Christian to be an activist for energy policy or whatever it is. And that in the fullness of time, we've seen that happen on the right too. And always did, but we've seen it really, really pronounced. So that, I mean, that just, it leads to secularization ultimately.
Case Thorp (24:29.768)
And then I guess you would agree COVID just accelerated a lot of this.
Russell Moore (24:35.246)
COVID accelerated a lot because what COVID did was to take a church in a country already on edge and to put us in a situation where we were isolated from each other. So we're responding to each other mostly online and we're in a really stressful crisis.
Case Thorp (24:47.078)
Hmm.
Russell Moore (25:04.366)
And one of the things that COVID also did was to take away the magical thinking that a lot of people had, because a lot of people would say, if you look around at this really polarized, angry time, what's going to change that is some crisis. So people would often say, you know, when there's a Pearl Harbor, when there's a September 11th, the country rallies around each other.
Case Thorp (25:29.64)
Yeah, sure.
Russell Moore (25:32.526)
Well, with COVID, we saw a big national crisis, big global crisis, and it didn't do that. We all went to our corners. Yeah.
Case Thorp (25:34.632)
Wow, great point. And we all went to our corners.
Wow. Well, my experience has been, and this is not scientific, clearly, but those churches that were in decline, declined faster. Those who were fairly healthy, I got a little stronger that COVID accelerated what was already occurring.
Russell Moore (25:59.918)
Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I was shocked after COVID in some positive ways because I really did not think a lot of smaller congregations would survive. Especially, I mean, I was thinking in my home church, mostly now older people in a rural area, people don't...
Case Thorp (26:14.246)
Hmm.
Russell Moore (26:26.894)
Typically give online. I mean the folks there are still sending checks off for the power bill and I thought they're yeah They're not gonna be if there's not an offering they're not gonna be able to survive Well, they did and the reason they did is they they figured out how to how to do it So there were some there were some surprisingly good and healthy things happen to you
Case Thorp (26:31.528)
Yeah. In an envelope.
Case Thorp (26:39.962)
Yeah.
Case Thorp (26:49.832)
So your book offers some prescriptions for going forward. I mean, how would, what is your vision for how the church corrects itself or becomes effective again?
Russell Moore (27:04.366)
Well, I think the main thing is that that can't be the question for us individually. It has to be the question for us corporately, but it can't be the question for us individually because if what I do is to say, okay, how do I fix the church? I can't do that. And so you end up with people who then just give up. And so what I'm often saying to people is you can't...
Case Thorp (27:11.526)
Mm.
Russell Moore (27:33.582)
You can't change and fix what's happening on in the church, broadly speaking. What you can do is to identify what's happening and not conform to that and to instead pursue something better. And here's how you do it. And I think that's actually how change happens is that you have groups of people who start walking in a better direction, then they find each other.
Case Thorp (27:47.012)
Hmm. Hmm.
Russell Moore (28:02.782)
And over time that can change an entire institution. But I think there's a, I quote in the book, Wendell Berry says at one point he was talking to a group of environmental activists. And he said, the problem is you think that the solution has to be at the same scale as the problem. When in reality, the solutions that actually work are usually at much smaller scale.
Case Thorp (28:22.376)
Mmm.
Russell Moore (28:30.35)
And I think that's completely consistent with what we've seen in Christian history.
Case Thorp (28:36.104)
So correct then to run with that metaphor, the smaller scale is in each individual heart.
Russell Moore (28:42.862)
Well, it's in, yes, sometimes it's in each individual heart and practices of each individual person, but it doesn't stay there because, I mean, one of the things that happens is that sometimes people stay in unhealthy patterns of crisis because they don't have even an option in the imagination of what could be different.
So for instance, I remember there was somebody in my home state of Mississippi, an older man who was talking about being at a, I think he was at the Neshoba County Fair, and there was an old politician, William Winter, who came in and was talking about moving beyond segregation. He said, I'd never heard anybody talk that way before.
Case Thorp (29:27.834)
you
Case Thorp (29:39.676)
Mm -hmm.
Russell Moore (29:40.334)
And so he had an option in his mind, there is a way of living life that I've never thought about before. That had ripple effects. And that happens, I think, in the life of people all the time. And not in ways that you even see or recognize. I mean, I just think about the people who have influenced me positively in my life. Most of them don't know it.
Case Thorp (30:07.88)
Hmm.
Russell Moore (30:08.29)
Because most of the time I was just kind of watching and overhearing what was happening and thinking, okay, there is a way to do that. And after time, those people find each other.
Case Thorp (30:14.664)
Sure. Yeah.
Case Thorp (30:21.544)
Yeah. Well, and that's one of the things I treasure about camp meeting is I go and see all these dozens and dozens of adults from my childhood who are now in the later stage of life. And I look around and just smile and they don't realize the kind of influence they had on me just by being in the round. And it makes a difference.
Russell Moore (30:32.076)
Yeah.
Russell Moore (30:40.652)
Yeah.
Yeah, and it's one of the reasons why, and my wife hates it when I say this, because it sounds so morbid. But I love a funeral for a life well lived. Because it's not that I love that the person has died, but it's that you actually get to see the completion.
Case Thorp (30:57.96)
Ah, yes.
Russell Moore (31:09.102)
of an earthly pilgrimage and you get to talk about the ways that that person influenced and changed the directions of lives, it actually is an encouraging, in a literal sense of that word, moment.
Case Thorp (31:20.326)
Mm -hmm.
Case Thorp (31:26.6)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. It's a formative moment and one that I, that's good. I'll use that in my next eulogy that we can appreciate more. So we're having this conversation just after Super Tuesday 2024 and it seemingly will be Trump and Biden again. And the political polarization is a big topic in which you've been able to share. How would you encourage our listeners?
as we go into this election cycle.
Russell Moore (31:58.542)
Well, I think one thing is to say a lot of us have a misunderstanding about what 2024 is going to be like because we assume it's just a replay of what we've seen before. And it's reasonable that somebody would think that because you say, we've got the same players. You're sort of repeating.
Case Thorp (32:18.28)
which my son told me has not happened since the 50s when Eisenhower met the same Democratic candidate twice. I don't remember his name. Adlai Stevenson, okay.
Russell Moore (32:25.75)
Adlai Stevenson, yeah. Yeah. I mean, so we assume that that's the case, but that's not really the case because we don't know what 2024 holds. So, I mean, think about 2020. If you were to say in January of 2020, what's this election year going to be like? You would have said, well, it's kind of a repeat of 2016, except with a different Democratic nominee.
Well, what we didn't see coming, a global pandemic, January 6th. I mean, you just go through the whole list of George Floyd. Yeah. You think about all the things that are there. We don't actually know what's waiting for us in 2024. So the way that we get through that is not by necessarily gaming out all the possibilities of what might happen.
Case Thorp (33:00.264)
Mm.
Yep. George Floyd.
Russell Moore (33:25.272)
but shaping and forming ourselves into the kind of people who will have the character and intuition to be able to respond to those things when they happen without panic and without world conformance.
Case Thorp (33:34.918)
Mm -hmm.
Case Thorp (33:41.928)
Well, I was disappointed to hear a poll recently, and this actually came out of a conversation we've had with Jim Davis and Michael Graham, their new book, The Great De -Churching. And Jim actually was with us when you were here in Orlando, that so many people associate the word evangelical with Republican.
Russell Moore (33:56.46)
Mm -hmm.
Russell Moore (34:09.442)
Mm -hmm.
Case Thorp (34:09.864)
and not understanding our theological Christian insider understanding of it. So evangelicalism has been impacted by Trump. So whether Trump's run is over in 24 or in 28, I've been trying to think lately, what does evangelicalism look like after this season? And have you done any thinking on that or could you speak into that?
Russell Moore (34:34.446)
Yeah, I think what's happening is, and this is not just true in evangelicalism, it's true in just about every area of American life, is that old coalitions are being ripped apart and new coalitions are forming. That's not the first time that that has happened. As a matter of fact, what we call evangelicalism now has come out of that. Billy Graham and Carl Henry and others said, look,
Case Thorp (34:48.84)
Mm, true.
Russell Moore (35:02.382)
We don't want mainline Protestant liberalism, and we also don't want separatist legalistic fundamentalism. And so you had a lot of people. I mean, Billy Graham was in the Bob Jones, John R. Rice sort of old school, hardcore fundamentalist camp, even though he wasn't that way personally, but he was, those were his people. And what happened is there was a,
Case Thorp (35:06.726)
Yep.
Case Thorp (35:27.944)
Sure.
Russell Moore (35:31.15)
there was a different coalition that formed.
Case Thorp (35:33.384)
Yeah, and he comes to eventually be a part of Fuller Seminary's founding, one of my alma mater's.
Russell Moore (35:37.774)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, there are so many institutions that came out of that, including Christianity Today. And if you think about it, that's what's happening all over the place is that you have these new sorts of coalitions that are forming. And I think that's disorienting. It's always disorienting. But I mean, I had a friend who was talking about America. He well, he wasn't talking about the church.
particularly, but American life generally is kind of a Tower of Babel right now where people can't understand each other, communicate with each other. And I said, yeah, but Tower of Babel, God did that. And the problem wasn't the fragmentation. The problem was the unity. It was unity in the wrong thing in the building of that tower. And the fragmentation that God brought about with the confusion of languages,
Case Thorp (36:14.024)
Hmm.
Russell Moore (36:37.47)
was actually to lead toward April. I mean, so, you know, that's not bad news. It's actually good news. And I think we're in a moment like that.
Case Thorp (36:41.608)
Yeah, right.
Case Thorp (36:49.48)
Sure. Sure. So, um, are you working on your next book? No.
Russell Moore (36:53.582)
No, because what I always do is I wait six months before I even think about the next book. So I still have a little ways to go before I... Yeah, yeah. And because I usually find that if I do plan something earlier than that, I end up tossing it aside and doing something else. So...
Case Thorp (37:02.92)
Yeah.
Case Thorp (37:07.144)
That's just to take a breather to refresh. Yeah, yeah. Well.
Case Thorp (37:20.168)
Here you have hope.
Russell Moore (37:22.19)
Yeah, yeah. I mean, how can you not have hope when, I mean, I believe Jesus is alive and Lord of the universe and promised I will build my church. And I think about all the time there was, I don't even remember who it was, but it was a Catholic thinker who said, I get the question all the time, is there a future for the church?
Case Thorp (37:30.44)
Lord of the Universe.
Russell Moore (37:50.862)
If the church is the body of Christ, then that question is the same thing as asking, is there a future for the glorified humanity of Jesus Christ? They're the same question, and I believe that to be true. And I also believe that to be true, not just in terms of the promise, but in terms of what I'm seeing. I mean, there are some amazing things going on.
with 20 something and younger evangelicals, even if they, you know, most of them don't want to call themselves evangelicals and that's fine. But people who fit into that category, I Asbury Seminary is a sort of a big public manifestation of that, but on a smaller scale, that kind of thing happening all over the place.
Case Thorp (38:41.71)
We have an Asbury satellite here in Orlando and I'm very grateful for that great institution.
Russell Moore (38:48.654)
It's a great institution. Yeah. And you look at, I mean, even with all of the institutional sorts of failures that we've seen, you look at the way that Asbury handled that. I mean, there are all kinds of ways that somebody could have turned that into an enrollment drive or something like that. And they didn't. They handled it exactly the way you would hope a mature institution would.
Case Thorp (39:18.174)
Okay, Russell, thank you. I really appreciate you and your time. And I want to encourage our listeners don't miss Dr. Moore on his own podcast, The Russell Moore Show and Christianity Today's The Bulletin. Thank you for joining us again, like and share, help us get that word out there. Leave a review wherever you might get your podcast. Always check us out at collaborativeorlando .org, all sorts of content. Find us on the social media platforms.
Russell Moore (39:23.566)
Thank you.
Case Thorp (39:47.262)
We've got nuance formed through faithfulness, that 10 minute devotional that drops each week and focuses on life in the public square following the liturgical calendar. I'd like to thank our sponsor for today, the Magruder Foundation. I'm Case Thorpe and God's blessings on you.