in which Russell Moore, Mike Cosper, Clarissa Mall, and your humble servant have a frank exchange of views.

August 18, 2025.

Introduction. Perhaps you might allow me to begin by describing one of my first evangelistic endeavors.

This was sometime in the late 50s, early 60s, and so it was when I was just a wee kid.

My parents subscribed to Christianity Today, which at that time looked like a serious scholarly

journal with a plain cover.

Carl Henry, a genuine standfast character, was the editor back then, and the magazine

represent evangelicals who you know

believe things anyhow there were a bunch of back issues around our house which i rolled up like

newspapers secured them with the rubber band and delivered individual copies up and down the street

to all the neighbors this evangelistic outreach effort had not been pre-approved by my parents, and my memory is hazy

over what happened after that. I bring this up merely so you might recognize how much things

have changed. How they introduced the topic. Last week, the Christianity Today podcast devoted

some time to the CNN interview, and the link is here. So Mike Cosper gave the CT podcast folks

some background on me. He said there was a brief moment back in the day when I was kind of

mainstream. He mentioned that my novel, Even Jellyfish, had won a CT Book of the Year award

and fiction. He said that I had debated Christopher Hitchens and had acquitted myself well in those

exchanges. I was able to speak at

desiring God conferences, but then I had an online debate with Tabiti over my book, Black and Tan,

and that derailed me from the mainstream. Now, I am grateful for the kind words here, but it is not

quite accurate to say that I had my respectable period, followed by any kind of fall from grace.

Our ministries here in Moscow have been under embargo for decades, almost from the beginning. that I had my respectable period, followed by any kind of fall from grace.

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