Losing Our Religion Quotes

“We see now young evangelicals walking away from evangelicalism not because they do not believe what the church teaches, but because they believe the church itself does not believe what the church teaches.”
― Russell Moore, Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America

“Many of those old controversies were polarized by “slippery slope” arguments. What many of us never realized is that every side of an issue has slippery slopes and if one only sees one of them, one is probably sliding down another”
― Russell Moore, Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America

“Our problem now, though, is that, increasingly, we are called not just to argue about what is true, but to say things that we know to be false, just to prove that we are part of the tribe to which we belong.”
― Russell Moore, Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America

“Those who can still feel shame, whose consciences are still vulnerable to conviction by the Holy Spirit, will then step back or step away, and the shameless will inherit, if not the earth, then at least the political party leadership or the congregation or the school board or the social media feed.”
― Russell Moore, Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America

“Christian nationalisms and civil religions are a kind of Great Commission in reverse, in which the nations seek to make disciples of themselves, using the authority of Jesus to baptize their national identity in the name of the blood and of the soil and of the political order. The gospel is not a means to any end, except for the end of union with the crucified and resurrected Christ who transcends, and stands in judgment over, every group, every identity, every nationality, every culture.”
― Russell Moore, Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America

“Christian nationalism is not a politically enthusiastic version of Christianity, nor is it a religiously informed patriotism. Christian nationalism is a prosperity gospel for nation-states, a liberation theology for white people. In that it has more in common with the lifeless establishments, the old liberalisms, and some of the social gospels, which preferred a gospel that changed externals and did not demand personal repentance and faith. It submerges personal transformation under social transformation, thus making both impossible.”
― Russell Moore, Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America

“As one biblical scholar notes, Jesus here once again upended expectations of what a Messiah should do. The one who was expected to clear the temple of outsiders, aliens, and foreigners, instead ends up clearing out temple space for them.”
― Russell Moore, Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America

“I couldn’t help but wonder if the plot twist to the story of American conservative Christianity was that what we thought was the Shire was Mordor all along.”
― Russell Moore, Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America

“I believe that the imperative need of the day is not simply revival, but a radical reformation that will go to the root of our moral and spiritual maladies and deal with causes rather than with consequences, with the disease rather than with the symptoms.” He concluded, “It is my considered opinion that under the present circumstances we do not want revival at all. A widespread revival of the kind of Christianity we know today in America might prove to be a moral tragedy from which we would not recover in a hundred years.”
― Russell Moore, Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America

“The late pastor Eugene Peterson, in a letter to his son, also a pastor, wrote that the primary problem for the Christian leader is to take responsibility not just for the ends but also for the “ways and means” by which we guide people to pursue those ends. “The devil’s three temptations of Jesus all had to do with ways and means,” he wrote. “Every one of the devil’s goals was excellent. The devil had an unsurpassed vision statement. But the ways and means were incompatible with the ends.”
― Russell Moore, Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America

“outcome is not the measure of the morality—obedience to the way of Christ is, and the loss of one’s own character is not worth any real or imagined outcome.”
― Russell Moore, Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America

“What the doctrine does not mean is that everyone is as bad as they can possibly be, and therefore one cannot expect anything different. That’s why the Scriptures include, for instance, character qualifications for gospel ministry (1 Tim. 2–3).”
― Russell Moore, Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America

“As one segregationist church elder in Jim Crow–era Birmingham reportedly said: “To hell with Christian principles—we’ve got to save the church!”
― Russell Moore, Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America

“Well, nobody’s perfect; all are sinners; remember King David” can be used to defend the indefensible. Such an argument, when applied to the ministry, nullifies the biblical character qualifications of 1 Timothy 2–3 and elsewhere. And, when applied to oneself, can justify literally anything. “Even if I embezzle a little from my company, we’re all sinners.” “I cheat on my spouse a little, but Jesus said lust is adultery of the heart, so who hasn’t?” This is precisely the kind of argument the Bible says is a contradiction of the gospel itself (Rom. 3:1–8).”
― Russell Moore, Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America

“As Wendell Berry warned: “The most destructive of ideas is that extraordinary times justify extraordinary measures. This is the ultimate relativism, and we are hearing it from all sides.”
― Russell Moore, Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America

“Hannah Arendt famously warned that “those who choose the lesser evil quickly forget that they chose evil.”
― Russell Moore, Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America

“We have arrived at the point at which, for many people who name the name of Jesus Christ, Christlikeness is compromise. How did this happen?”
― Russell Moore, Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America

“The way to do that is to remind yourself where home really is, and pray and meditate upon that until you start to long for it. That’s the first step to declaring independence from the kind of culture where it’s always Election Day, and never Easter.”
― Russell Moore, Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America

“An exilic identity does not mean “Oh no! We’re marginalized! How can we fix it?” An exilic identity asks, “Why do I not seem more marginalized than I do? Is it because I’ve adapted my own appetites to the degree that I can no longer feel the longing that drives me onward into the unknown?” The danger for us at the moment is not that Christians will see themselves as exiled in a far country, but that they will see the United States or Canada or wherever they are as the Promised Land.”
― Russell Moore, Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America

“If exile language is used to bemoan a “darkening” or “growingly hostile” culture, rather than to see our situation as fundamentally the same as every other era before us, then we don’t understand what the Bible means by exile. Exile language does away with both a sense of entitlement and with a siege mentality. We don’t look to merge into whatever seems “normal” around us—and we don’t rage when we’re not accommodated there. We see our normal situation as not occupation but pilgrimage.”
― Russell Moore, Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America

“The point of “exile” language is exactly the opposite of the idea that Western Christians should lament or resent losing a “Christian culture.” The point is that in every place and every culture, from the first to the second comings of Jesus, every Christian community are to be “strangers and exiles.”
― Russell Moore, Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America

“Pivot away from seeing human beings as your enemy, and look for the old serpent of Eden.”
― Russell Moore, Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America

“He said “beware” to the reality that the disciples might not be defeated by Herod or the Pharisees, but that they would become like them.”
― Russell Moore, Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America

“Culture-warring is easier than conversion because, as George Orwell once wrote of “transferred nationalism,” it “is a way of attaining salvation without altering one’s conduct.”
― Russell Moore, Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America

“Christian nationalism cannot turn back secularism, because it is just another form of it. In fact, it is an even more virulent form of secularism because it pronounces as “Christian” what cannot stand before the Judgment Seat of Christ.”
― Russell Moore, Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America

“They are seeking a canopy of protection—from death, from shame, from guilt, from humiliation—in the group.[*] The quest is for everlasting life—a life seen in the ongoing life of the tribe, not the person. This is precisely the mindset John the Baptist bulldozed when he said, on the banks of the Jordan: “And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham” (Luke 3:8). The question is the same as it always was,”
― Russell Moore, Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America

“That faith—as defined by Jesus and his apostles—does not come through the proxy of a nation or a ruler or even a religious structure. If that were the case, then John the Baptist would not have needed to preach repentance to the descendants of Abraham (Matt. 3: 9–10). And if that were the case, the apostle Paul could have found no fault in those who served the false gods chosen for them by their national or family traditions (Acts 17:22–31). Instead, the gospel addresses each person—one by one—as one who will stand at the Judgment Seat, who will give an account, and who is commanded to personally believe the gospel and repent of sin”
― Russell Moore, Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America

“And these partisan identities, he notes, “are increasingly anchored to hatred of the out-party rather than affection for the in-party.” Freiman writes, “We hate the other team more than we like our team. Why? We need to ramp up our animosity to the out-party to rationalize our continued dedication to our own party despite its obvious shortcomings. (‘I know my party can be spineless and ineffective but I’ve got to stick with them because the other side is downright evil.’).” [*] That’s why not just every election but every political conversation is so often posed in apocalyptic terms of existential threat.”
― Russell Moore, Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America

“people who know a story well enough to recognize when someone is attempting to use us, to fly a gospel message over a gallows, to use a church youth group to groom a child toward rape, to baptize a political movement to the point that “I alone can fix it” sounds like “Thus saith the Lord.” And yet, it cannot be enough for us to recognize wrong use of authority. You must come to love the voice of Christ, handed down through the ages in the Word of God, enough to be able to sing, once again, “We have heard the joyful sound—Jesus saves.”
― Russell Moore, Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America

“The Bible proposes an alternative storyline—a true storyline—that invites the community and the individual to find themselves in an already-existing story—the ongoing life of Christ. When Jesus was tempted by the devil in the wilderness, he responded with Scripture. But Jesus’ response was not just proof texts against false teaching. By citing the particular Scriptures he did, from Deuteronomy, Jesus was pointing to the fact that he knew what the devil was up to—because the people of God had already been in the place of testing—to seek food, protection, and glory from somewhere other than from God.”
― Russell Moore, Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America