Welcome to our podcast, Think Biblically. Conversations on Faith and Culture.

I'm your host Scott Ray, Professor of Christian ethics and dean of faculty at Talbot School of

Theology here at viola University.

We're here today with a very special guest, Dr Russell Moore, one of the leading voices today at the intersection of Christian faith and culture.

Dr Moore is also president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission for the Southern Baptist Convention, the public

policy arm for the largest Protestant denomination in the United States. He is also the

author of several books, one on adoption that I highly recommend, but also his most recent book called Onward

engaging the culture without losing the gospel. Dr Moore thanks so much for being

with us today and really appreciate your time with us.

In that, I want to start on a more personal note if we could.

In a lecture you gave about a year ago called the Erasmus Lecture, which I would encourage all of our listeners to get.

If you just Google Russell Moore first things, it will come up first things there.

You describe your own spiritual journey, what you called your own spiritual crisis, and how that

shaped you in both positive and negative ways.

Tell us a little bit about that spiritual background, how it's energized the things that you're passionate about today.

Well I grew up in a very Christian Christian well in what Flannid O'Connor would call Christ Haunted sort of Bible Belt community.

My grandfather had been pastor of the church I grew up in.

So, at a very good time of Christian nurture as a young believer in my congregation.

It's wise leadership there. But when I turned 15 or so I had a major spiritual crisis.

Wundering, as I looked around I saw many of the things going on under the name of Christ,

including racism and other things. I wondered, is this all just some sort of a

hood ornament on top of a southern culture or American culture rather than an actual word from God.

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