Onward: Engaging the Culture without Losing the Gospel

by Russell D. Moore

I don’t accept the narrative of progressive secularization, that religion itself will inevitably decline as humanity evolves toward more and more consistent forms of rationalism. As a matter of fact, I think the future of the church is incandescently bright. That’s not because of promises made at Independence Hall, but a promise made at Caesarea Philippi—“I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matt. 16:18). I believe that promise because I believe the One who spoke those words is alive, and moving history toward his reign.

The problem was that, from the very beginning, Christian values were always more popular in American culture

than the Christian gospel. That’s why one could speak of “God and country” with great reception in almost any era of the nation’s history but would create cultural distance as soon as one mentioned “Christ and him crucified.” God was always welcome in American culture. He was, after all, the Deity whose job it was to bless America. The God who must be approached through the mediation of the blood of Christ, however, was much more difficult to set to patriotic music or to “Amen” in a prayer at the Rotary Club.

A Christianity that is without friction in

the culture is a Christianity that dies.

The typical younger pastor is less partisan than his predecessor, less likely to speak from the pulpit about “mobilizing” voters and “reclaiming Judeo-Christian values” through political action and economic boycotts. This is not because he is evolving leftward. It is because he wants to keep Christianity Christian. As a matter of fact, the center of evangelical Christianity today is, theologically speaking, well to the right of the old Religious Right. It’s true that the typical younger pastor of a growing urban or suburban church doesn’t look like his cuff-linked or golf-shirted forefather. But that doesn’t mean he’s a liberal. He might have tattoos, yes, but they aren’t of Che Guevara. They’re of Hebrew passages from Deuteronomy. His congregation’s statement of faith isn’t the generic sloganeering of the last generations’ doctrinally oozy consumerist evangelical movements, but is likely a lengthy manifesto with points and subpoints and footnotes rooted in one of the great theological traditions of the historic church. This pastor might preach forty-five minutes to an hour, sometimes calling out backsliding Christians from the pulpit with all the force of hellfire-and-brimstone revivalists of yesteryear. He is pro-life and pro-marriage, although he is likely to speak of issues like homosexuality in theological and pastoral terms rather than in rhetoric warning of “the gay agenda.” Unlike the typical Bible Belt congregation of the twentieth century, the new kind of evangel...

As American culture secularizes, the most basic Christian tenets seem ever more detached from mainstream American culture. There is, for those who came and will come of age in recent years, no social utility in embracing them. Those who identify with Christianity, and who gather with the people of God, have already decided to walk out of step with the culture. These Christians have already embraced strangeness by spending Sunday morning at church rather than at brunch. This is leading to a sort of mirror image of the Rapture that the traveling evangelists warned us about. Those who were nominally Christian are suddenly vanished from the pews. Those who wanted an almost-gospel will find that they don’t need it to thrive in American culture. As a matter of fact, cultural Christianity is herded out by natural selection. That sort of nominal religion, when bearing the burden of the embarrassment of a controversial Bible, is no more equipped to survive in a secularizing America than a declawed cat released in the wild. Who then is left behind? It will be those defined not by a Christian America but by a Christian gospel.

The shaking of American culture will get us back to the question Jesus asked his disciples at Caesarea Philippi: “Who do you say that I am?”

The Pharisees were at odds with the Sadducees; Jesus angered them both. The zealots were at odds with the tax collectors; Jesus redeemed them both. His ministry wasn’t, first of all, anti-Pharisee or anti-Sadducee, anti-zealot or anti-collaborator. His mission was the kingdom of God, and that casts judgment on every rival reign.

If the kingdom is what Jesus announced it is, then what matters isn’t just what we neatly classify as “spiritual” things. The natural world around us isn’t just a temporary “environment,” but part of our future inheritance in Christ. Our jobs—whether preaching the gospel or loading docks or picking avocados or writing legislation or herding goats—aren’t accidental. Our lives now are shaping us and preparing us for a future rule, and that includes the honing of a conscience and a sense of wisdom and prudence and justice. God is teaching us, as he taught our Lord, to learn in little things how to be in charge of great things (Luke 2; Matt. 25:14–23). Our lives now are an internship for the eschaton.

God cares about the universe because he patterned the universe after the mystery of Christ. God cares about humanity because he patterned humanity after the mystery of Christ. God cares about family because he patterned family after the mystery of Christ. Everything that exists, apart from the parasitic barnacles of sin and curse, testifies to God’s glory in the person of Jesus Christ.

If God is working all things together for my good, then nothing in my life is a “waste of time.” Every aspect of my life, my relationships, my job, my family, my suffering, is part of an internship for the eschaton, preparing me in some way to rule with Christ. If the kingdom is what Jesus says it is, then what matters isn’t simply what we neatly classify as “spiritual” things. Our callings—whether preaching the gospel or loading docks or picking avocados or filing legal briefs or writing legislation or herding goats—aren’t accidental. God is teaching us, as he taught our Lord, to learn in little things how to be in charge of great things (Matt. 25:14–23).

We are stranger and exiles in the present time, that’s true. But we are not losers. There will be wars and rumors of wars, literal and cultural, but Jesus is on the move. We fight, but we fight from triumph, not from defeat. Jesus, in announcing the kingdom, declared that he was “anointed.” If we are joined to him, we share that anointing (1 John 2:20). That’s what it means to be Christians, to be the church.

We must grow into who we are, even as childless, elderly Abram couldn’t see how he could be “Abraham” or “father of many nations” and unstable, deserting Simon could hardly be described as “Peter” or “the Rock.” God names his people, and then makes the name true.

That’s why the culture of the church is crucial for our moral and social witness. Jesus told us that the kingdom is present where he is, and he promised to be present with his church, no matter how struggling or how small (Matt. 18:15–20). The church gathered is not merely a matter of fueling the people for a week of individual devotion. In worship, the church, mysteriously and spiritually, ascends to the heavenly Mount Zion, joining an already existing worship service (Heb. 12:18–19). Our preaching isn’t just information sharing; it’s the voice of Jesus clearing the way for the new regime (2 Cor. 5:20). Baptism is a sign of the future, made present now, of those who need not fear the coming flooding of the world by fire, because they have already endured it, in Christ. The Lord’s Table is a sign of that future kingdom victory party, now inbreaking among us, as broken bread and poured-out wine announces that he has conquered all our accusing foes. In the taste of bread and grape, there’s a voice saying to the unlovable, “You are loved.” There he shows us the kind of ruler he is, and thus the kind we are to be: the kind that serves at the table (Luke 22:27).

The kingdom of God turns the Darwinist narrative of the survival of the fittest upside down (Acts 17:6–7). When the church honors and cares for the vulnerable among us, we are not showing charity. We are simply recognizing the way the world really works, at least in the long run. The child with Down syndrome on the fifth row from the back in your church, he’s not a “ministry project.” He’s a future king of the universe. The immigrant woman who scrubs toilets every day on hands and knees, and can barely speak enough English to sing along with your praise choruses, she’s not a problem to be solved. She’s a future queen of the cosmos, a joint-heir with Christ.

The doctrine of election, for example, is a subject of great fearfulness among many Christians who wonder whether passages on “predestination” might mean that somehow they would find themselves excluded from God’s promises on the last day because of some invisible, inscrutable clause in the Book of Life keeping them out. Now, Christians have argued for almost the entire history of the church about the relationship of God’s sovereignty to human freedom, but whatever the doctrine of election means, we can be sure of this: God’s election in Scripture is meant to make people more, not less, secure in God’s faithfulness.

On the other hand, many Christians act as though the Sermon on the Mount is comforting—a list of wise sayings to be crocheted and hanged on the wall. The Sermon on the Mount ought, though, to terrify us. Jesus articulated the righteousness of the kingdom, what sort of person would be an heir to it. And it’s devastating. Jesus pointed out that God’s law is not about merely external obedience, but about the direction of our psyches. It’s not just the furtive cheater who is an adulterer, but also the one who is enflamed with desire for those he should not have. It’s not just the fugitive killer who is a murderer, but also the one who is embittered with hatred. If we really get what Jesus was saying, we ought to be undone by this.

If the kingdom of Christ is distinguished by “pity on the weak and the needy” whose lives are threatened by “oppression and violence” (Ps. 72:13–14), then the people of the kingdom cannot ignore the silent cries of “embryos” frozen in fertility clinics, “fetuses” dismembered in antiseptic hospitals, “unwanted children” languishing in institutions, “illegal immigrants” exploited by cartels and businesses, or “invalids” wasting away in lonely nursing homes.

What would it mean for your pro-life witness if your local congregation were served by a deacon or a worship leader with Down syndrome? What would it mean for your pro-life witness if the person reading Scripture this next Sunday isn’t polished for performance but instead is the stammering voice of an elderly woman in the beginning stages of dementia? It would signal that life is about more than perceived usefulness.

Our churches must embody the reconciliation of the gospel not by doing more “ethnic” ministry, whose very nomenclature assumes that there are “regular” people and “ethnic” people. We’re all ethnic. The “white” church doesn’t “do ministry” to those “ethnic” churches dependent upon it. We assume often without thinking that the church is white, American Protestants doing missionary work for the benefit of everyone else. But the church isn’t white or American; the church is headed by a Middle Eastern Jewish man who never spoke a word of English. We do not need more “ministry” to the poor or racial minorities or immigrant communities. We need to be led by the poor and by racial “minorities” and by immigrant communities.

When some tell us that we should choose between caring for the earth and welcoming new life, we stand with our mandate from Eden, which gives us both. Procreation is pro-creation.

The repentant woman who had an abortion, the repentant man who empowered an abortion, and indeed the repentant abortionist who committed the abortion, are not beyond the grace of God. Every accusation against them, and against you and me, is true. But in Christ, we have been through the scrutiny of the tribunal of God. We have already been through the justice of hell. And in Christ, God declares what he thinks of us, “You are my beloved child, and in you I am well pleased.”

Patriotism—the love of one’s country—is a natural affection. Saluting the flag is a sign of gratitude, for the freedoms purchased through the sacrifices of others. It’s also a sign of humility; a recognition that we are not atomized vapors but rather that we exist in a context, in a place, and in a culture. When rightly applied, patriotism is akin to what God commands us to do in showing honor to mother and father.

A religion that needs state power to enforce obedience to its beliefs is a religion that has lost confidence in the power of its Deity.

Part of our missions focus should be concern about religious persecution and violence, and not just of Christians. After all, how can we love the world with the gospel if we are apathetic to, for example, global anti-Semitism, or the burning of houses of worship of religious minorities? We should pray for human rights and religious freedom for everyone, everywhere—not just for those who believe our gospel.

It is better for our future generations to be willing to go to jail—for the right reasons—than to exchange the gospel of the kingdom for a mess of Esau’s pottage. Sometimes jails filled with hymn-singing, letter-writing, gospel-preaching Christians can do extraordinary things.

A husband’s leadership is to picture the gospel. Jesus is inseparable from his bride, as a human head is from a human body. Paul himself heard this truth directly on the road to Damascus where he was headed to arrest and disrupt the church in Syria. The Galilean voice did not say to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute a gathering of people who believe in the things I taught,” but rather “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me” (Acts 9:4).

This means we ought to stand for Christian conviction, and also avoid ridicule or hostility toward those who disagree. We ought to love our gay and lesbian neighbors. We ought to serve and care for our serially-divorcing or cohabiting neighbors. The loudest voices against, for example, the hounding and intimidation of gay and lesbian persons around the world should be from the wing of the church most committed to a biblical Christian sexual ethic. The people most concerned about working to end gay and lesbian homelessness, for kids who’ve been thrown out of their homes by parents who’ve rejected them, ought to be those who believe the full counsel of God on these matters. The people most willing to love and receive strippers and porn stars and prostitutes who need to be seen for more than the use of their parts, ought to be the church of Jesus Christ.

Sometimes church leaders will ask me to tell them how they can engage on controversial issues, usually related to the Sexual Revolution, without appearing mean or evil. I always respond that I can’t do that. If they stand for biblical principles, and if they call people to repentance, they will indeed seem to be mean, and bigoted, and evil. Jesus told us to expect this. “A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master,” he said. “If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more will they malign those of his household” (Matt. 10:24–25). The issue is whether we actually are mean or evil. That’s what we can control.

Jesus’ preaching took clear stands, with sharp edges. But Jesus never turned the sword of the Spirit into a security blanket for the already convinced.

Reductive Darwinism, which rules out divine intervention in the universe, cannot adequately explain the mystery of the universe of humanity. But when we laugh and say, “My grandpa wasn’t a chimpanzee,” we are not taking seriously the claims of those who hold such views. In fact, we’re not speaking to them at all, just to ourselves. When unbelievers hear a canned, caricatured picture of their views, they recognize what I recognized in that television show. They conclude that we don’t wish to convince them or even to talk to them, simply to soothe the psychologies of our partisans.

Preachiness never changed anybody’s mind. Preaching, on the other hand, can change everything.

Jesus is harsh with those who claim God’s authority and use it to twist revelation and to condemn. But he is gentle to those who are “sheep without a shepherd.” Too often, we do the exact reverse.

If all we have to go on is what we see around us, then, of course, we will become scared and outraged, and our public witness will turn into an ongoing temper tantrum, designed just to prove to our opponents, and to ourselves, that we are still here. And in so doing we would employ the rhetorical tricks of other insecure movements: sarcasm, vitriol, ridicule. But we are not the voice of the past, of the Bible Belt to a post-Christian culture of how good things used to be. We are the voice of the future, of the coming kingdom of God. The message of the kingdom isn’t “You kids, get off our lawn.” The message of the kingdom is, “Make way for the coming of the Lord.”