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ONWARD

ENGAGING the CULTURE without LOSING the GOSPEL

RUSSELL MOORE

nashville, tennessee

978-1-4336-8617-7

Published by B&H Publishing Group

Nashville, Tennessee

Dewey Decimal Classification: 261.1

Subject Heading: CHURCH AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS \ CHRISTIANITY \ POPULAR CULTURE

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture is taken from The English Standard Version® (esv), copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Also used: New American Standard Bible (nasb), the Lockman Foundation, 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, used by permission.

Also used: King James Version which is public domain.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid.

To my son Jonah Yancey Moore. Born on Mardi Gras, with a prophet’s name, May you carry the sign of Jonah, onward, into the future.

(Matt. 12:39–41)

By remaining faithful to its original commission, by serving its people with love, especially the poor, the lonely, and the dispossessed, and by not surrendering its doctrinal steadfastness, sometimes even the very contradiction of culture by which it serves as a sign, surely the Church serves the culture best.

—Walker Percy

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter One: A Bible Belt No More

Chapter Two: From Moral Majority to Prophetic Minority

Chapter Three: Kingdom

Chapter Four: Culture

Chapter Five: Mission

Chapter Six: Human Dignity

Chapter Seven: Religious Liberty

Chapter Eight: Family Stability

Chapter Nine: Convictional Kindness

Chapter Ten: A Gospel Counter-Revolution

Conclusion

Acknowledgments

INTRODUCTION

He always said he’d been “born just fine the first time.” This joke was his way of waving off our coffee-shop debates about the existence of God. We were both college students in Bible Belt America; I a born-again Christian, he a once-born atheist. He wasn’t so much antagonistic to religion so much as he found it sort of strange and out of touch with real life, along the lines of discussing the habitat of elves. He didn’t believe in God, and found the idea of heaven to be the most boring thing imaginable. At least the Muslims had virgins waiting in Paradise for sex, he said, but who would want to play a harp, at any time, much less for all eternity? And then one day, out of nowhere, he asked me to recommend a church.

“Can you find me a good Southern Baptist church?” he said. “But one that’s not too, you know, Southern Baptist-y?” Surprised to find myself here in the turn-lane of someone’s Damascus Road, I stammered that I didn’t even know that he had become a Christian. I was waiting for his eyes to well up with tears, as he would recount how my rendition of the theistic argument for design had clinched the ...

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About Onward: Engaging the Culture without Losing the Gospel

Christianity Today "Beautiful Orthodoxy" Book of the Year in 2016.

Keep Christianity Strange.

As the culture changes all around us, it is no longer possible to pretend that we are a Moral Majority. That may be bad news for America, but it can be good news for the church. What's needed now, in shifting times, is neither a doubling-down on the status quo nor a pullback into isolation. Instead, we need a church that speaks to social and political issues with a bigger vision in mind: that of the gospel of Jesus Christ. As Christianity seems increasingly strange, and even subversive, to our culture, we have the opportunity to reclaim the freakishness of the gospel, which is what gives it its power in the first place.

We seek the kingdom of God, before everything else. We connect that kingdom agenda to the culture around us, both by speaking it to the world and by showing it in our churches. As we do so, we remember our mission to oppose demons, not to demonize opponents. As we advocate for human dignity, for religious liberty, for family stability, let's do so as those with a prophetic word that turns everything upside down.

The signs of the times tell us we are in for days our parents and grandparents never knew. But that's no call for panic or surrender or outrage. Jesus is alive. Let's act like it. Let's follow him, onward to the future.

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Table of Contents