by Russell Moore, 2023
Saddening, maddening book by the editor in chief of Christianity Today and former president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. It’s about the steep fall from grace of the Evangelical church. He writes with firsthand knowledge about the despicable leaders who want power and money at any cost. They have become a church of Satan. There is nothing Christ-like remaining in the church leadership. They support Trump and explain away his deep, deep character flaws and crimes, and they cover up their own horrendous wrongdoing, including sexual abuse and racism. Russell Moore was openly against Trump and refused to keep silent about sexual assaults. He was threatened, shunned, condemned. This book tells how far the evangelical church has fallen. He believes that true revival can happen when this sham of a church is destroyed. God will raise up in its ashes a church which is true to Him and the Gospel. God does not need us to fight His battles. The evangelical church has become a tool of Satan, using abortion and gay rights as weapons to destroy it – separating people from a loving God. The evangelical church in America has made God look so bad to unbelievers. There actions are only serving to entrench the very ideas they oppose. Why don’t we pray for God to change individual hearts instead, and love them and leave the judging to God?
There are two verses that come to my mind when I think of this church. First, Matthew 7:22-23: Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’
Second, this verse which the Evangelical Church likes to use against the rest of America, but really applies to them, 2 Chronicles 7:14: ‘If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.’
God wins, has already won, and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, will make all things new again. Come, Lord Jesus, Come!
He describes in detail different events and they are even worse than I thought.
Page 10: His wife tells him, “I love you. I’m with you to the end. And you can do whatever you want,” she said, as we walked out of a particularly hostile Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee meeting. “But if you’re still a Southern Baptist by summer, you’ll be in an interfaith marriage.” He has a “burdened conscience, recognizing complicity in participating for so long in something that now seemed both inane and predatory.”
Page 11: “The issues–political fusion with Trumpism, Christian nationalism, white-identity backlash, the dismissing of issues such as abuse as “social justice” secularism, and several others–are (some of them or all of them) dividing almost every church, almost every family, almost every friendship I know. Every institution–from the presidency to local churches to family dining room tables–seems to be in crisis, almost to the point of breakdown.”
Page 12, quoting an editorial in The Guardian, of January 15, 2017: “A religion that is responsive to the pressures of the market will end up profoundly fractured, with each denomination finding most hateful to God the sins that least tempt its members, while those sins that are the most popular become redefined and even sanctified. In the end, a market-driven approach to religion gives rise to a market-driven approach to truth, and this development ultimately eviscerated conservative Christianity in the US. and left it the possession of hypocrites and hucksters.”
Page 19: “What if, when I am addressed as a sinner, this is not just a generic category of fallen human nature but is directed at me–for my sins, no matter how I spin or justify them. What if there really is a Judgment Day, and what if on that day I am not hidden in a nation-state or a family tree or a political tribe or a religious institution? What if I stand there alone, as a person, to account for my sins?…One acknowledges not only that “God loves the world” or that “Christ died for humanity,” but “Jesus loves me; Jesus died for me.”
He likes Wendell Berry. He quotes him on page 21: “The great problems call for many small solutions.” That must start with honesty to name things as they are, and the imagination to see that it doesn’t have to be this way…”Some will find it an insult to their sense of proportion, others to their sense of drama.” (Wendell Berry, “The Way of Ignorance”)
On page 25, in the conclusion to his Introduction: “Maybe “losing our religion” is just another way of saying what Jesus commanded a first century church in crisis–a rekindling of our first love (Rev. 2:4). If the stories are true–and I believe they are–then maybe we should listen to what they’ve told us all along. Only when something is lost can it be found. Only when something dies can it be born again.”
Chapter One is called Losing Our Credibility: How Disillusion Can Save Us from Deconstruction.
When he was 15 years old, he “contemplated suicide due to the fear of losing my religion…some of it was because of the raw racism around me in the Bible Belt, which I couldn’t reconcile with the Bible.”…”The real issue, though, was none of these matters on its own. Behind all of that was a dread deep within me that Christianity might just be southern culture of politics, with Jesus affixed as a hood ornament.”
His cure was to read everything C.S. Lewis wrote. “What made the difference for me were not his arguments. My problems weren’t primarily intellectual. What made the difference for me was the tone of voice I could almost hear in his writing. He was not trying to mobilize me or market to me, and I was able to follow that voice right through the wardrobe and into the broader streams of the broader church that spans heaven and earth, time and eternity, awesome as an army with banners.”
His subheadings for Chapter One: Embrace the Disillusionment – he talks about C.S. Lewis’s book, The Weight of Glory. Then, he says Recognize Apocalypse. Apocalypse actually means unveiling and it is the beginning of a renewal. Like when Jesus says to the church in Rev 2:9 “One church believed itself to be poor when it was really rich” and in Rev 3:17 “another believed itself to be rich, prosperous, and in need of nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.”
“To another church, perhaps eerily consistent with our present American moment, the risen Christ said, “You have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up, and strengthen what remains and is about to die” (Rev.3: 1-2).”
Then, he says to Recognize Judgment and talks about Jesus cleansing the temple. We can’t use that to justify “almost any kind of quarrelsome and meanness imaginable.” Jesus is calm in so many situations – boat near capsizing, when arrested, when on trial. “Here, though, in the temple courts, we see something we rarely see–Jesus visibly angry. Seeing the traders in the court there, Jesus seemed to be in meltdown, undoubtedly confusing to the merchants who were routinely in that very place…Jesus, though, could see a crisis of integrity there. He said, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers'” (Mark 11:17). The lack of integrity was both vertical (“a house of prayer”) and horizontal (“for all the nations”).”
He ends that chapter with, “And ask, as your illusions fall, what it is that God wants you to see. It might be that, through your tears, you can’t see that the gardener in the graveyard with you is the One whose absence you are grieving. That’s disillusionment too. You can decide to lose your illusions that way, in order to see something that is not visible, but is nonetheless real. And, with that, we can choose to be the people who embody a credible gospel, a gospel that is more than an illusion, more than a useful means to some end. Somewhere out there there’s at least one disillusioned fifteen-year-old, losing his religion, who needs to see that. Maybe his life depends on it. Maybe yours does too.”
Chapter 2 is called, Losing Our Authority: How the Truth Can Save Us from Tribalism. This is how this chapter begins:
“Two words filled me with rage: Jesus Saves. On January 6, 2021, the president of the United States assembled a mob in Washington–promising a “wild” time–and told them to march to the Capitol in order to halt the constitutional process for the United States Congress to certify a presidential election the president insisted, falsely, had been stolen from him. The mob tore through barricades, broke through windows and doors, beat police officers with flagpoles and fire extinguishers. Some chanted “Hang Mike Pence” as others constructed a makeshift gallows in order to do just that–believing the vice president of the United States to be a traitor based on what President Trump had just told them, that Pence had the power to unilaterally overturn the election. American flags were thrown down and replaced with Trump and Confederate flags. Congressional leaders hid while the doors buckled from mobs seeking to attack them. And there, held aloft over the churning horde of people, was a sign–“Jesus Saves.” That the two messages, a gallows and “Jesus Saves” could coexist is a sign of crisis for American Christianity.”…
“Survey after survey showed alarming numbers of white evangelicals believed the lie that mobilized the mobs–that a vast left-wing conspiracy (somehow including the conservative Republican governors and election officials in Arizona and Georgia) stole a presidential election. And, even worse, alarming numbers of white evangelicals tell pollsters they believe that violence might be necessary in the future.”
He asks, “So what can you do as you stand and stay in a post-truth culture?”
“Maintain Attention.”
“Tell the Truth.”
“Avoid Foolish Controversies.” …”Paul told Timothy, “Have nothing to do with foolish, ignorant controversies; you know that they breed quarrels” (2 Tim. 2:23). Jesus recognized when his opponents were seeking to “trap him in his talk” (Mark 12:13) and would refuse to engage in such controversies on the terms this kind of people were setting. Sometimes he would answer a question directly. Often he would reframe the question, ask a different question, or just leave.” Moore advises, when dealing with loved ones who embrace disinformation or conspiracy theories: “Try saying: “You and we see things differently on this. We love you, and we want to see you. Can’t we just leave the politics aside and talk about other things?”
“Don’t Self-Censor.” He says there is a danger in not speaking truth to the lies. When people don’t speak truth to the liars, the power-hungry, the lunatics, but instead silently fade into the background, those who live for power and conflict control social media, the air waves, the congregations, the political parties, the family reunions, the associations. He says: “Are you withholding something out of love or out of fear? If the latter, abandon your timidity and tell the truth.”
“Question Authority.”
“Inhabit the Bible.” …”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. The people of God had failed in the wilderness before; the Son of God would not.”
He ends Chapter 2 with this: “”If you see someone building a gallows, no matter where you are, leave,” I said. A biblically literate Christianity will not so much have guidebooks and policy papers but a 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 fit it” sounds like “Thus saith the Lord.”
Chapter 3 is Losing Our Identity: How Conversion Can save us from Culture Wars. He quotes Christopher Freiman, “Politics now is about whether you prefer Walmart Supercenters or Whole Foods Markets, whether you prefer stock-car racing or soccer, whether you drive a clean-energy electric vehicle or a pickup truck, and so on. This, he notes, is exhausting. It’s exhausting to define ourselves not by who and what we love but by who and what we hate.”
He talks about Christian nationalism. “The gospel according to Jesus is not an external affirmation of generic belief, from a heart still untransformed. The gospel according to Jesus is not accepting Christianity as a ticket of admission into society. The gospel according to Jesus means that there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus (1 Tim. 2:5). One can stand before God at judgment only by union with the crucified and resurrected Jesus Christ. And can only come into union with Christ through faith (Rom.3:21-31).”
“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.”
…”Christian nationalism cannot save the world; it cannot even save you.”
“Anyone who has worked with or lived with a severely narcissistic personality can testify that one of the most dangerous times for an eruption of temper–whether of the “hot” kind of rage or the “cool” kind of manipulation–comes when the person feels himself or herself to be humiliated. Why? This is because, when self is at the center, humiliation feels like an existential threat.” …
“That sort of powerlessness leads a people who feel this way to seek the kind of leaders who can fight off the enemies who have overrun their inheritance, who have humiliated them, and who threaten to take their children away.”
Under the heading, Refuse to Secularize, he quotes an atheist, “We should aim to get to where belief in God and faith-based thinking are considered so obsolete that they bear no relevance on the functioning of our societies and academies.” (James Lindsay, Everybody Is Wrong About God)
Recognize True and False Frames of Spiritual Warfare. “Spiritual warfare is biblically revealed to be against “the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Eph. 6:12).
“Watch, though, when culture wars are defined as spiritual warfare, with human beings as the “demons” to be opposed.”…
“Demons are to be opposed–full stop. When we confuse this spiritual struggle with our already-existing tribal rivalries, awful things can happen–if only just our ongoing rage and inability to love and pray for and even evangelize those with whom we disagree.”
“Believe and Share the Gospel.“…”And yet, personal evangelism is, at its best, an ongoing reminder to evangelical Christians that their neighbors represent a mission field, not a battlefield, and that the gospel goes forward by persuasion, not by intimidation.”
“Cultivate Loyalty in Community. For all their talk of “rootedness” and locality, both the leadership and the grassroots of the various blood-and-soil movements are surprisingly rootless. Christian nationalism, blood-and-soil identity politics, and every other self-defining cultural or political category is really rooted in something God created and declared to be good–the longing for membership. And, like every other created reality, this longing can be twisted into something devilish and self-destructive.”
…”I would argue that where one is most likely to find a community that transcends the tribal and political idolatry of the moment is serving among those who are genuinely hurting. Serve in a rescue mission or a home for abused women or among recovering alcoholics. Find a people not just with whom to identify yourself, but to lose yourself in by serving them. And find a people who really know what it means when they sing, “I once was lost but now I’m found.” You’ll be more likely there to be reminded that the same is true of you.”
“Rekindle Awe.”…””Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips” (Isa. 6:5). Framed by the Christian gospel, this understanding calls the community to walk away from the tyranny of the ego and to stand before the vastness of the mercy of God in Christ.”…
“We can so seek an “experience” in worship that we neglect the truth that God is most often present in the ordinary, not in ecstasy.”
“Make Peace with Homelessness. By this I don’t mean the unhoused around you, but the metaphorical sense of “homelessness” many now feel–with their political parties, with their religious traditions, maybe even with their own extended families or churches. The upheavals of the past few years have done just that.” …
“Once you own your exile, the threat of exile is meaningless. No one can do to you what’s already been done. That can give you the freedom, then, to unclench your fists and love–even those who are threatening you with exile.”
“And we can be freed from the emotional expectations of political identities of various sorts, which are posed in terms of exuberant triumph (“We won!”) or apocalyptic despair (“We are about to lose our entire society!”). Both the exuberance and the despair are exhausting and, even worse, either can be used to justify all sorts of things we never thought we would affirm, or things we never imagined we would deny. 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.”
Chapter 4 is Losing Our Integrity: How Morality Can Save Us from Hypocrisy. “As one congregant said to his pastor, “We’ve tried the ‘turn the other cheek’ stuff. It doesn’t work; it’s time now to fight.” 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?”
“Around the world right now, if one asks what comes to mind when a person hears the words American evangelical, the answer probably will not be “justification through faith alone,” or “the people who do prison ministry and disaster relief.” The answer probably won’t even be “a commitment to traditional family values and the sanctity of human life.” The answer will very likely be “Donald Trump.” When I hear of a college campus ministry taking the word evangelical out of their name, it’s virtually never because they think people will be uncomfortable with biblical inerrancy or world missions, or even with the more controversial aspects of traditional Christian sexual ethics. It’s almost always because new students who arrive on campus assume an “evangelical” ministry will be handing out red “Make America Great Again” baseball caps with the paperback Bibles and the praise chorus sheets. The reason this identification sticks with so many people is not because of the overwhelming majority of white evangelicals who voted for this particular candidate, but the seeming cognitive dissonance of choosing a promiscuous, profane, thrice-married casino magnate to restore morality to America. While some people outside the church might just shrug their shoulders at the perplexity of that, others will say that it proves what they’ve suspected all along–that evangelical Christians are hypocrites and interested not in morality but in political power and cultural dominance. That’s not an unreasonable assumption. After all, for decades, they heard evangelical Christians say that “character matters.”…
“By 2016, this was clear, even to some of us who hadn’t wanted to believe it before. Perhaps this was most clearly seen in October of 2016, only weeks before the election, when audio was released of Donald Trump boasting of the fact that he moved on a married woman “like a bitch.” This part was no surprise. He had, after all, consistently bragged of his sexual exploits–in his own books and on shock-jock radio shows. What was different here was that Trump was glorifying sexual assault. “I’m automatically attracted to beautiful–I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait,” he said in leaked audio from behind the scenes on the Access Hollywood television show. “When you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.” I realize as I write this that this must be the first time that I have typed some of those words before. That’s one more way that Donald Trump has changed my life.
“Another way that it changed my life was the fury with which my fellow evangelical Christians responded to my comments that Trump was morally unfit for leadership…Within hours, the old-guard Religious Right was out defending Trump, even when his own running mate was refusing to do so publicly and his own political party was running legal scenarios for replacing him on the ballot. As soon as I made critical comments about the atrocity of sexual assault and harassment, a fellow Southern Baptist entity leader was on the phone screaming that I had betrayed “our side,” before hanging up on me. More disorienting was when an elderly lady who had taught me the Bible in Sunday school as a child sent me a message denouncing me for betraying our people.”
Page 174: “When I asked a friend, a keen analyst of American culture, why we have devolved into the cruelty and craziness of the present moment, he suggested it was because of a loss of a sense of sin, replacing it with a nonjudgmental sense of self-esteem and personal authenticity. I’m not sure I agree. It’s not that we have moved into a time of a utopian sense of the goodness of human nature (although that would be bad enough). We don’t deny human depravity; we take reassurance from it. We sense that everyone is really just about power and appetite, and therefore only those who guard their power and feed their appetites can survive.”
Page 177: “Jerry Falwell Jr., the chancellor of the largest evangelical university in the country, was taken down by, among other things, allegations from a former pool boy that he benefited financially after agreeing to have sex with Falwell’s wife while the Religious Right leader watched. This was a particularly salacious scandal, but not unheard of in the history of religious institutions. What was different, though, was that, after being caught, Falwell’s defense was that he never claimed to be religious. He was a businessman, he said, and a lawyer, not a preacher. The argument should have sounded familiar to those who paid attention to the justifications Falwell and others had made all along for Trump.”
Page 180: “That made sense to me as an evangelical Christian, where I had been taught that personal character, which in the case of the church was to be rooted in the gospel and cultivated by the Holy Spirit and by the discipleship of the church, was necessary not just for the individual to be holy, but for the church itself.”…
“The wreckage of all this creates much more of it. Sociologist Brian Klaas notes that, in almost every endeavor, a disproportionate number of leaders displays what’s called the “dark triad” of narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism.”
page 182: “If a lack of shame is what it takes to succeed, then sociopaths will proliferate. This means not only leaders without character but also followers who come to see character as itself a lack of the strength needed to fight whomever one deems one’s enemies. Those who will shamelessly employ internet-troll tactics–whether on the actual internet or in church congregational or denominational meetings–have an advantage over those who would feel shame if they were to employ falsehood or rancor or what the Bible calls “an unhealthy craving for controversy” (1 Tim. 6:4). 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.
“But, of course, shame never really goes anywhere but underground. Those who can’t feel it still bear it. They find fig leaves to cover it, even as they project their shame elsewhere (Gen. 3:7-13). Behind those quivering bushes, there are men and women scared of the presence of God–a fear they can easily translate into hostility toward those less shameless (Gen. 4:5-8) or boasting in their shameless dominance over those still weak enough to feel shame (Gen. 4:23-24). And so we end up concealing shame with more shamelessness, the lack of character with more cruelty, and with the very shorts of people the Bible commands us not to put in leadership. And so the cycle continues. Disintegrated persons lead to disintegrated institutions, and disintegrated institutions lead to disintegrated persons.”
page 184: “Cain perceived an injustice, that he felt as an insult, but directed his rage not at the invisible and invulnerable God but at his innocent brother in front of him. Thus, the apostle John equates the spirit of murder at work in Cain with those who say they love God but hate their brothers and sisters (1 John 3:11-18). And when found in murder, Cain’s immediate thought goes to potential murders out there who might seek to do to him what he did to his brother (Gen. 4:14).”
page 184-185, the story of “Judas accusing a woman of wasting money that should go to the poor (John 12:4-5). Interestingly, John writes: “He said this, not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief, and having charge of the moneybag he used to help himself to what was put into it” (John 12:6). Note that John did not write that Judas said this even though he was a thief but because he was a thief.
“…The problem was not just the deception of others, but the deception of self. Thus, some people who devote their lives purportedly to the objectivity of truth turn to the subjectivity of truth when telling vulnerable women that they are “helping the ministry” by their being abused. And some who loathe themselves for their immorality turn their rage against those innocent people they deem “temptations” rather than seeing where the guilt and shame really resides–within themselves.
“I’ve seen over and over again people who cover their own internal shame and guilt with a seeming mission to shame others for the very things to which they are secretly in bondage. This is not irony or coincidence; it is a key aspect of how depravity works.”
He recommends: “Prioritize Long-Term Integrity Over Short-Term Success.” “Pay Attention to Means, Not Just to Ends.” “Expect Better from Institutions (Especially the Church).” “Protect Your Own Conscience.” “As Martin Luther put it, “We do not become righteous by doing righteous deeds but, having been made righteous, we do righteous deeds.””
Page 197: “A clear conscience does not lead, as we imagine, to inner tranquility, at least not right away. A clear conscience is a conscience that is alive–and thus is vibrating with prompts to repentance and redirection and pleas for mercy. But, in the long run, a clear conscience leads to peace–because it casts out fear. If your ambition is your standard, you are enslaved to whatever can take away your ambition. If your belonging in your tribe is your standard, then you will be terrified at any threat of exile. But if your mission lines up with your conscience and your conscience lines up with the gospel, then you have no need to live in paralyzing fear, and you also have no need to live in defense of yourself. That’s why Jesus told his disciples, “So have no fear of them, for nothing is covered that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. What I tell you in the dark, say in the light, and what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops” (Matt. 10:26-27). If you are aware that there is a Judgment Day to come, you do not need to call your own judgment day now. And if anyone asks anything of you at the cost of your integrity, know that the price is too high.”
Page 199: “The very first of the theses Martin Luther nailed to the cathedral door made the point: “When our Lord Jesus Christ said, ‘Repent’ (Matt. 4:17), he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.”…”…Christians usually are expecting o repent of a sin one time and then never grapple with it again. This is not how repentance works….What you’re expecting is to be something other than a sinner. That will happen, but when it does, you will be in the New Jerusalem in the presence of Christ.”
Chapter 5 is called, Losing Our Stability: How Revival Can Save Us from Nostalgia.
Page 211, “What is not repaired is repeated.
“What the church has experienced, and inflicted, over the past several years could only be described as a collective trauma. We see the implications in the wrecked lives, the split churches, the compromised witness.”
A.W. Tozer wrote in 1957, “A religion, even popular Christianity, could enjoy a boom altogether divorced from the transforming power of the Holy Spirit and so leave the church of the next generation worse off than it would have been if the boom had never occurred…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.”
Page 214: Robert P. Jones writes, “”Like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, resurrection by human power rather than divine spirit always produces a monstrosity.” Indeed, the fiery sword of the angel is placed at the entrance of Eden, the Bible tells us, to “guard the way to the tree of life” precisely because God did not want a twisted, fallen humanity to live forever in that state of death (Gen. 3:24).”
Page 225: “…US senator Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) meant when, at a speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation, he said, not of the church but of American civic life: “This is a government of the weirdos, by the weirdos, and for the weirdos. Politicians who spend their days shouting in Congress so they can spend their nights shouting on cable, are peddling crack–mostly to the already addicted, but also with glittery hopes of finding a new angry octogenarian out there.”
“We see the fractures facing not only American political life but also virtually every business, church, denomination, neighborhood association, and even family. And in almost all those settings, someone will inevitably ask,”How did we become so divided?” followed by “How do we get back to unity?” Those are important questions, but there are good and bad ways to answer them.”
Talking about Babel, “The confusion of the languages and the dispersal of the people was not a natural by-product of their situation or even of their actions. God did it.
“As we will see time and again, both in Scripture and in the history since, God often tears apart the unity of the people. . . in order to form a unified people. After all, unity around the wrong things is no real unity at all.”
Page 227, Peter and Paul at odds. “Two pillars of the church at odds with each other! But that was the reverberation from Pentecost. God was keeping his promise that “the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles” too (Gal. 3:14). This was not a Babel-like unity, though. This was something quite different. This was God coming down, not humanity building up. God was fracturing the community in order to create a new one–one in which, “Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all” (Col. 3:11). This was revival, not reconstruction.
“A remnant is usually the way that God brings about revival. He usually pares a people down, clears away the field, prunes the branches, and then starts again.”
Page 228, “Embrace New Communities and Friendships.” Awhile ago, he criticized Beth Moore as a “gateway drug” to feminism. Page 229, “But I really did not know Beth Moore until two world-shaking realities came to define much of my world: Donald Trump and church sexual abuse. She and I saw these things much the same way–and both of us were, I think, surprised to see that so few other people did. And so we found ourselves in the same orbit, and came to know each other. And, through that, I came to see that Beth Moore was no “theological lightweight,” but that I was.”
Excellent book – thoroughly dissecting the tragedy of the American evangelical church and thoroughly presenting a path forward.