Top Evangelical Leader: “We’ve Lost Our Credibility”

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, INTERNATIONAL HOST: And now the Evangelical church in the United States faces significant challenge from the current political landscape. Russell Moore is the editor in chief of Christianity Today, and he explores this theme in his new book. And he’s joining Michel Martin to discuss questions of religious identity.

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MICHEL MARTIN, CONTRIBUTOR: Thanks, Christiane. Pastor Russell Moore, thank you so much for talking with us.

MOORE: Well, thanks for having me.

MARTIN: I think people, even if they don’t necessarily follow issues of kind of faith and politics closely, they might remember you because you had a very high-ranking position at the Southern Baptist Convention. You were one of the people who was tasked with speaking out on issues of public concern. You begin this book by recounting your experiences at the end of your tenure. And it’s pretty bracing to read. Would you describe what was happening that caused you to think differently about your time there? What that — those last couple of years were like?

MOORE: Well, it was bracing to write and even more bracing to live. But it was a situation where really there was a controversy over Trump and politicization of the church. some controversies over racial justice and whether or not that’s something that the church ought to be concerned with at all. And then, questions of sexual abuse. And those were the ones that became the most revelatory in some ways to me. I was not shocked that sexual abuse was happening in the church. I was shocked by some of the responses to it, or at least the lack of response to it, and the kind of backlash that even raising the question could bring, that’s what was surprising to me.

MARTIN: Talk about some of that, if you would, like what was some of the — what were some of those internal conversations that the rest of us would not have been privy to?

MOORE: Well, there were some people who would say, well, there’s really no problem in our churches. We all know each other. Nothing like this is happening. It’s just made up by the media. There were some people who would say, well, this is just the MeToo movement in the secular world, and it’s not something that the church should concern itself with. And then, there was, frankly, a lot of really rollie (ph) misogynistic sorts of statements and actions that would be made. And so, it was a confluence of events, not with most people, and I think with most people in the pews and most people in the pulpits, there’s a different sort of priority, but there’s a significant minority who would make their will known and make their will happen.

MARTIN: So, you’ve written many books about, you know, theology and the culture and the church and the direction you would hope the church or the country or, you know, would go. What would you describe as the purpose of this book?

MOORE: It largely came out of the fact that I find myself having this conversation every day with people who are in the kind of crisis in which they say, I’m not wanting to lose my faith, but I’m right on the precipice because they’re looking around and they’re starting to wonder whether the church is just using Jesus as a means to an end. And so, I’m trying to help people to guard against cynicism really in either direction. Because one can be cynical just by shutting down and numbing oneself, or one can become cynical by saying, well, this is the way the game is played. I’m just going to play it. And I think there’s another way in a better way and a less exhausting way for people.

MARTIN: What’s resonating to read in the book that, you know, earlier in your life and career, you know, as a pastor, you talked about how you were often called upon by parents who were sad about the direction that they saw their kids going in. You know, they’re not faithful. They’re not church goers. They’re not hewing to the standards that we hope for them. Now, you say you are often called upon to counsel young adults —

MOORE: Yes.

MARTIN: — who are worried about their parents going down this kind of rabbit hole. Would you talk a little bit about that?

MOORE: Well, this is a conversation that happens all the time where someone will say, my parents have become radicalized on social media or I don’t even recognize my parents anymore, they’ve become involved in conspiracy theories of various kinds. And then, the thing that’s striking to me is that none of these people are asking me, how do I win an argument with them? All of these people are saying, I love my parents or I love my mentors or whoever it is, I really want a connection with them, but everything turns into an argument about some conspiracy theory or so forth, how do I connect with them without giving into that? And that comes up all the time now.

MARTIN: Well, the book does a number of things. It is a kind of a meditation upon on your own faith journey at this stage of your life and how you reconcile your moral compass and your deeply held beliefs with the way the institutions that you have lived through have changed. But it’s also a broader meditation on, what has happened to Evangelical Christianity in the United States. How would you describe kind of the state of Evangelical Christianity for people who are not as familiar with it as you are?

MOORE: We are the people Jesus warned us about. We have we have spent many years warning about secularization as though it’s something on the outside, and what we didn’t see is the way that we have become secularized. And so, the aims and objectives and even our emotional temperature is being driven by something other than the gospel of Jesus Christ. And that’s one of the reasons why we’ve lost our credibility to the outside world. The outside world often wonders if they aren’t more moral than we are. And they have they have good evidence to bring forward. Well, one can’t credibly bear witness to a gospel under those circumstances.

MARTIN: What happened? When did this start?

MOORE: I think it’s been happening for quite a while with the level of rhetoric that came along with political involvement. And so, in order to mobilize people, there had to be this rhetoric of imminent threat. And so, desperate times call for desperate measures. You’re about to lose everything. The outside world is going to destroy you. And there are genuine challenges that people need to be equipped to handle. But that kind of rhetoric, I think, turned us into an apocalyptic people in all the worst kinds of ways and not in the best kinds of ways. And then if one adds to that a social media atmosphere that’s able to very quickly give information, misinformation, disinformation to the point that people can’t sort through the difference between truth and falsehood, we end up in this place.

MARTIN: You use the metaphor of the lizard brain, you know, it’s where — it’s kind of a — it’s an idea of sort of human psychology that’s constantly alert to threat and danger. And you say that this could be particularly toxic when it’s merged with religious identity and a church that is afraid of extinction. How do you see that playing out in the Evangelical circles right now?

MOORE: Well, it’s dangerous to a person because if one is in a state of constant alert and in an adrenal crouch, there’s no way to reflect and to contemplate and to pray and to engage with one’s neighbors. But it’s also dangerous for everybody else and for our democracy and for our church because we end up being driven from one fear and one crisis to the other in a way that strips us down. And I think it gives to people an illusion of vitality if they get that adrenal jolt that comes with hating their enemies, it can almost substitute for life for a little while.

MARTIN: There are people of tremendous stature who have given their lives to the church, but because they disagree about something or other, are literally cast out. Like, for example, Saddleback Church has been — you know, I don’t know what’s the right term, kicked out of, excommunicated from the Southern Baptist Convention because they have given women the authority to preach in that church. And I just — and a lot of people where I’m thinking about — I’m thinking about a number of ministers, for example, who, for example, said that they didn’t support Donald Trump or who raised questions about his conduct, raised questions about his personal conduct, raised questions about the vulgarity and his coarseness and his attitude of kind of hatred toward other people who have been disinvited from their own — separated from their congregations, disinvited to speak. And I just — a lot of people wonder, like, how is that possible? Like why is this figure who seems very loosely attached to the core principles of Christianity is so much more powerful than people who’ve given their lives to the church?

MOORE: Well, that’s the central question right now. I mean, there — one person said to me just the other day, can there be one part of my life that is not completely dominated by conversations about Donald Trump? And you think about the way this one figure has emerged, whatever one thinks of this person, the way that every family, church, community has been split apart by our opinions of this person, I just don’t think we would have ever imagined that a decade ago or 20 years ago.

MARTIN: What is the whole though? I mean, what’s the appeal?

MOORE: Well, I think that there is a sense that he’s a fighter. That he doesn’t have weakness because he’s willing to take it to the people who are perceived to be enemies. And so, that kind of fighting language, I think, is energizing to some people. And then you add to it, there are people who would say, well, he promised that he would appoint a certain kind of a judge and justice, and he did, and so they’re willing to overlook a lot of other things. But I think largely it’s the same reason why other Americans who are supporting Trump do, which is that they think he speaks for a kind of resentment that’s lashing back and lashing out.

MARTIN: It’s interesting that there’s sort of these two competing strains that we — you’ve talked about — that you also talk about, you know, in the book, which is, you know, on the one hand, 76 percent of white Evangelical Christians identify as Republican today, that’s up from 53 percent 20 years ago. This is according to the Survey Center on American life. And I think that — I think it’s pretty well known by now that white Evangelical Christians were and remain some of President Trump’s strongest supporters. On the other hand, the number of white Americans who identify as Evangelical Christians is dropping rapidly, according to the survey — the same survey that I just cited here. I’m just wondering, how do you — what do you — what do those two things mean?

MOORE: Well, I think it’s even worse than that. Because at the same time that we’re seeing people who are actual Evangelicals refusing to use the word and walking away from it. We have other people who are embracing the word who might not even go to church at all, but who think, I must be an Evangelical because of my political convictions. That’s not an even trade. And so, whenever someone says to me, I just don’t want to think of myself as an Evangelical, in almost every case, that’s somebody with a high view of the bible, a high view of Jesus, all of the classic markers of Evangelical Christianity, that’s really concerning to me.

MARTIN: You’re in the faith business. So, what’s, what’s giving you hope right now? Because I see this book both as a testament to your sadness and grief over what has happened, but it also is kind of a statement of your belief that other — something better is possible. So, why don’t we talk about that? Like, how you fix this thing?

MOORE: Well, every time that I start to get cynical, I encounter someone whose life is being transformed by the gospel. And so that’s happening all over the country. You look at what’s happening among? young Christians who really aren’t interested aren’t interested in a mascot for their political views or something else, but who really are seeking to follow Christ, that gives me great hope. When I look at what’s happening around the world and the way that there’s a vibrant growing kind of Christianity in Asia and Africa and Latin America and that’s becoming more and more — those of the leading areas of Evangelical Christianity, that gives me a lot of hope. And then, I’m a Christian. I believe in the holy spirit. So, I can be somebody without hope.

MARTIN: The book is titled “Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America.” So, for people who aren’t familiar with the concept, what’s an altar call? And why is your book that?

MOORE: Well, an altar call is when, at the end of the service, the church invites people to come forward, to repent their sin and to confess faith. And so, the reason I chose the language of altar call is because it is bad news, you have to first recognize something is not going right with my life. And it’s also good news, there is another way. There is hope for new birth. And that is what I’m hoping to say in this book.

MARTIN: But what does it look like?

MOORE: I think it looks like — what’s happening right now, we are in a time of great change and you have a lot of the old coalitions that are breaking down, but a lot of new alliances and coalitions that are emerging. People who are fighting each other. And so, I think that looks like a different kind of Christianity that really is much more in touch with ancient Christianity, and I think we’ve seen that happen repeatedly in the history of the world, the Wesley brothers and others, who have come in and revitalized Christianity by saying, let’s get back to the basics of what is we believe.

MARTIN: We’re not here is to sort of decide for people or to kind of tell people what they should believe or not believe, but reality of it is that there is an increasing secularization of the United States and the West. I mean, if you look at kind of the rates of connection to Christian faith in Europe, for example, or western Europe in particular, it’s very low. And then, there are a lot of people who would say that this is exhibit A of why this is kind of a toxic force and really, we all would be better off if more people walked away from it. I mean, obviously, you’re not in the business of trying to persuade people who believe that firmly. That’s not kind of who the book is for. But for those who do feel that way, who might be listening to our conversation, do you have a message for them?

MOORE: Well, I would say, fundamentally, the question is, is it true? And by it, I mean, the gospel, the resurrection of Christ, that changes the way that we see everything. But secondly, I would say, it’s important even for people who are outside the church what happens within the church. They are going to be religious Americans forever, and that has a lot to do with the help of the rest of the nation. So, even if you were somebody far distant from Evangelical Christianity, you ought to be hoping for a healthier Evangelical Christianity. It affects everyone. What’s happening — and that’s especially true when we look around and we see institution after institution after institution in crisis. You can’t — the rest of the country can’t come in and replicate what churches have brought to communities and to persons. And so, when that becomes unhealthy, that’s dangerous for everybody else. It’s also dangerous when people use religion for authoritarian or demagogic ends. That’s always been the case, because if you can use religion, you can give one — you can give yourself an extra kind of authority that says, if you disagree with me, you disagree with God. That matters to everybody.

MARTIN: Pastor Russell Moore, thank you so much for talking with us.

MOORE: Thank you.