Challenging Russell Moore

Challenging Russell Moore

The other day several of my Facebook ® “Like”s cited, and recommended as a favorable read, an article by Russell Moore. Therefore, I had to read it.

In The Washington Post opinion article of October 9, 2016, Moore headlined (or The WP editor headlined) his opinion as “If Donald Trump has done anything he has snuffed out the Religious Right.”

I, for one, never want to criticize Russell Moore, the president of the Southern Baptist Church’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. But I challenge his initial assertion.

Trump did not and has not “snuffed out the Religious Right.” Moore credited the wrong person. The Religious Right described by Moore as the “old guard,” has for decades been a dying phenomenon.

The likes of Oral Roberts, Jim & Tammy, Robert Tilton, and Jimmy Swaggart were not mentioned by name in his article, therefore one has to assume that Moore is referring to those older TV evangelists as well as to the more politically active evangelists of the past namely Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. (Falwell eventually walked away from his political activism and returned to the Gospel.)

For this current political cycle, again, one must assume that Moore obliquely refers to and lumps in Dallas Baptist minister, Dr. Robert Jeffress as part of the “old guard.” Fair enough. But to headline that it is Donald Trump who has snuffed out the Religious Right is a stretch, a stretch that actually undercuts Moore’s conclusion – the Gospel witness of Millennials.

Russell Moore attributes to the next generation a witness to Christ as counter-cultural. Who can argue with that? For the past decade or more I have read articles by young people who have become fed up not only with TV evangelists but with churches that deftly identify with the culture.

Many of us have seen this emerging Gospel generation close up. Take for example Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham, Alabama. Beeson is an academically top-notch school of theology and trains its students with sound and fundamental Christian teaching. In my own parish we have had a dozen or more seminarians from Beeson taking part in our church life as interns – a requirement of the Beeson curriculum.

These students and most of their non-seminary peers are replacing the “old guard.” Their Christian witness is implicitly counter-cultural, not anti-cultural. It took 40 years for God to transform the Israelites [read the details of the difficult transformational process in The Book of Numbers]– it took the passing of one Israelite generation to the next to understand its mission.

It is the witness of this younger Christian generation who are replacing the “old guard” and not Donald Trump.

© 2016 Worth Earlwood Norman Jr

Russell Moore Article