Russell Moore and REM

Late to the party but glad he's here

About a decade ago, as I was trying to conceptualize what I saw as the fragmentation of American evangelicalism, I hit upon what I thought was a useful contrast. I tried to articulate the difference between Institutional Evangelicalism and Testimonial Evangelicalism.

The former was comprised of those structures that we often think of when we think of evangelical organizations: the NAE, the Gospel Coalition, Acts 29, major seminaries, Christianity Today, and the like.

The latter were those critics out there with evangelical backgrounds who were pushing the boundaries on social media¹, blogs, books, and other writing. It was because of this latter group that I launched my millennial memoir project. These writers were telling their stories involving critiques of what they saw as the excesses of the former group.

Needless to say, the former group didn’t like the latter group because they wouldn’t adopt the party line. Futhermore, the Testimonial folks didn’t care that they were outside the bubble (maybe even took pride in it!).² The more the Institutional Evangelicals complained, the more attractive the Testimonial folks seemed and the more people aligned with them.³

I return to this conceptualization because I recently finished Russell Moore’s Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America. Moore offers a Testimonial critique of evangelicalism within the context of Institutional Evangelicalism. When I was coming up with this contrast, Moore was the President of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, a position of institutional identity within the SBC and therefore, evangelicalism in general. Today, he is the editor of Christianity Today, a central pillar of Institutional Evangelicalism.

Moore tells a story in the next to the last chapter that can illustrate the contrast I’m making, one that he himself recognizes. It involves Beth Moore.⁴

Not long ago, I came across a very conservative evangelical critique of the women’s⁵ Bible teacher Beth Moore. While this evangelical offered appreciation for the ministry and wisdom of Beth Moore, he suggested that she was a “gateway drug” to feminism, to the erasure of any distinction of what he believed to be a biblical calling of only qualified men to serve in the ordained pastoral role, and, while she did not hold that office, this evangelical man believed her ministry blurred those lines in wrong ways. I rolled my eyes and exhaled when I read this critique. It as arrogant as it was mistaken. Ordinarily, I might not dwell much on the musings of some young firebrand with whom I disagree, but the redness on my face in reading this critique was not from anger but from blushing. The evangelical critic was Russell Moore, circa 2007. (228-229)

This reflects the general tenor of the book. Russell Moore looks at claims made by the evangelical church over the last decade and describes how he could no longer go along. His opening chapter references the REM classic “losing my religion” and uses that theme throughout of what the church needs to set aside and what to reimagine in its place. It’s not about abandoning religion for secularism but about substituting false components for scriptural ones.

The components that have been put the church in jeopardy that need rethinking are his title chapters. What needs to be “lost” is a false credibility, authority, identity, integrity, and stability. He then closes each chapter with a pastoral word on how to rebuild these important characteristics in daily life.

This is an important point. This is a personal and pastoral work and not a scholarly work. He does cite⁶ some of the right people (Kristin DuMez, Robert P. Jones, Frances FitzGerald, James D. Hunter, Christian Smith)⁷ along with C.S. Lewis, John Stott, Walker Percy, and Wendell Berry. He loses points for describing (without citation) Dean Kelley’s awful book, Why Conservative Churches are Growing.

Scholars of modern evangelicalism — hopefully I can consider myself one — will want to critique the simple gloss he gives to complicated issues. He has a habit of “both-sidesing” Christian nationalists on the right with imagined utopian activists on the left or “scriptural Christians” with a caricature of mainline churches.

A passage from the introduction underscored how his book could have benefitted from talking to the scholars who have been immersed in this topic over the last decade plus.

There’s no way to reform the “evangelical church,” because there’s no such thing as “the Evangelical church.” That’s part of the difficulty of this conversation. Evangelicalism is just a work we impose artificially to describe a particular type of Christian. No one signs up at a central office to be an “evangelical.” (13-14)

Clearly, scholars have developed means over the last 40 years to appropriately define evangelicals, their attitudes, and their politics. Recent work from Ryan Burge suggests that the politics may be driving the definition in post-2016 America. Relying on “just Christian” fails to operationalize a significant independent variable.

Religion scholars and sociologists of religion have long pointed out the challenges the Moore is belatedly identifying. From Christian Nationalism to the New Apostolic Reformation to the Quiverful Movement to the #ChurchToo movement, the issues long have been readily available. While not all scholars agree with the various analyses (otherwise, they wouldn’t be scholars!) there is broad consensus.

In light of this, it’s not surprising to see a certain degree of pushback during Russell Moore’s book tour. I’ve seen many comments along the lines of “we’ve been here for years and nobody cared”. Moreover, those who had earlier raised the same critiques were consider to be outsiders by the (supposedly non-existent) Institutional Evangelicals. It’s understandably frustrating to now have pundits gushing over Moore’s book.

Maybe it’s because of Moore’s pastoral tone at the close of each chapter, but I find myself returning to Jesus’ parables. One is about the workers who arrive at different points of a long day and receive the same pay. Another is about a banquet where there are still seats available and people are compelled to go into the highways and byways to invite people in.

I guess that’s where I come down after reading Moore’s book. It’s important for someone with such past and present Institutional Evangelical credentials to tell the story. Maybe he could have arrived sooner.

But at least he’s at the table. That’s not nothing.

1. Teaching about sociologist Manuel Castells’ work on the small-d democratic tendencies of modern communication was very helpful.

2. When John Piper tweets, “Farewell, Rob Bell” did anybody really care?

3. Which motivated the institutionalists to push harder, which continued the cycle.

4. He jokes that when people asked him about her, he’d say “well, she’s my mom and I love her”. The joke, of course is that she’s not old enough and they aren’t related anyway.

5. A completely unnecessary adjective!

6. He has a weird footnote style and no bibliography.

7. Although in my opinion he cites the wrong works. For example, he relies on Hunter’s Culture Wars from 1991 and not the much more relevant 2010 To Change the World.