Russell Moore Wants Us To Be Strange (But Not Crazy)
Good Faith
Good Faith
4.8 • 1.9K Ratings
🗓️ 11 June 2022
⏱️ 68 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Joining David and Curtis this week is Russell Moore, the director of Christianity Today's Public Theology Project. With the Southern Baptist Convention taking place next week in the immediate aftermath of a 3rd party report on sexual abuse and institutional coverup, Russell helps us unpack some of what went wrong in his former denomination. He also offers helpful guidance on how church leaders and all followers of Christ should be responding to such situations (hint: it's not to ignore it or cover it up). He also discusses the issue of "crazy as a church growth strategy," suggesting that while we are not called to crazy, we are called to the strangeness (in the world's eyes) of biblical fidelity, mixed with a healthy dose of rational thought.
Show Notes:
-Russell Moore (Christianity Today) - This Is the Southern Baptist Apocalypse
-David French (The Atlantic) - The Southern Baptist Horror
-Curtis Chang - The Southern Baptist Convention Sacrifices Congregants on the Altar of Power
-The Russell Moore Show: David Brooks Wants to Save Evangelicalism on Apple Podcasts
-Sign up for David's French Press newsletter
-Follow Curtis' work at RedeemingBabel.org
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hi, everyone. This is Curtis, and I am excited to tell you about a new feature of the GoodFaith podcast, and it's called Campfire Stories. |
| 0:11.0 | Now, in a great campfire, everyone has the opportunity to share their stories. And so, in Campfire Stories, we want to hear from you. |
| 0:20.0 | We want to hear a story about what you are doing along the themes of the GoodFaith podcast, perhaps it's something about how you're living out your relationships with political polarization, how you are trying to reflect the image of God in your institution and organization, or what you're doing with your money, or your vocation, anything that has been sparked by the themes that we've covered here in the GoodFaith podcast is fear game. |
| 0:47.0 | It doesn't matter if it's a big story, a small story, or something in between, as long as it's a story about what you are doing in your life. |
| 0:55.0 | We're not so much interested in hearing just thoughts, we want to hear stories of doing. |
| 1:00.0 | So, we'll put a link in the show notes where you can just click on it and then supply us the basic outlines of your story of doing, of living out the themes of GoodFaith podcast. |
| 1:11.0 | And we'll look at it and we may invite you to share that story on a GoodFaith blog, a social media, or perhaps even invite you to come on the GoodFaith show yourself and talk to me and share your story. |
| 1:25.0 | Like, how cool would that be? I'd love to hear from you. I'd love to talk with you. So, please consider joining the Campfire by actually joining actively and sharing your story with others gathered around the Campfire. |
| 1:38.0 | Thanks. |
| 1:41.0 | Welcome to the GoodFaith podcast. I'm David French with Curtis Chang. And Curtis, I'm really excited to say we've got a great guest today. |
| 1:58.0 | It is Russell Moore for those who don't know Dr. Moore, Dr. Moore, your biography. I don't know where to begin. You were you were provost right at Southern Baptist Theological Ceremony. |
| 2:11.0 | Then you became president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation's largest Protestant denomination. |
| 2:19.0 | And how would you describe the LLC, the kind of the public policy arm. Public policy and moral issues. |
| 2:25.0 | Yes, agency. Right. So already were one of the leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention. And then life changed, maybe a little in 2016 with the rise of Trump. |
| 2:42.0 | You expressed some qualms, some qualms about Donald Trump at that time, but that wasn't all perhaps much more, perhaps more important for a matter of sort of much more important over history and time. |
| 2:58.0 | You were also one of the leaders in calling out the problem in the crisis of sex abuse in the Baptist church faced a lot of blowback, a lot of blowback left the Southern Baptist Convention last year. And you're now what would be the precise title CTO chief theological officer of Christianity today. |
| 3:23.0 | Yeah, that works. So that's a great title chief theological officer. We need the chief theological officer is God, but I guess. |
| 3:38.0 | So, so welcome. Thanks. Thanks so much for joining us. Oh, thanks for having me. |
| 3:44.0 | Also, I wanted to just welcome you. We don't, I think you're have this obviously a closer friendship with David, but I want very much wanted publicly acknowledge and think Russell for his work on a variety of fronts that we will talk about today. |
| 4:00.0 | But in particular on the vaccine work, I, you know, kind of became stepped into the public sphere on the Christians, the vaccine project. And I like to tell people that that was really quite full with irony, right, because at the time when we started, I was not an expert on the vaccine. |
| 4:21.0 | I had to study up on it. But more to the fact, I really struggled with how much to claim that even the mantle of of evangelical in this project that's trying to reach primarily white evangelicals on the vaccine. So one didn't know much of the vaccine to as a Bay Area Christian, it was kind of a swallow a swallow a bit to say, look, I'm going to really go out there as an evangelical when that term is has so much baggage, especially in the Bay Area. |
| 4:50.0 | But the third for a project reaching white evangelicals, Russell, I'm not white and I'm not going to be anytime soon. And so the irony of me being a public leader to reach white evangelicals on the vaccine really spoke to the fact that nobody else with a couple of exceptions wanted that job. I mean, it was just like, okay, I guess I'm the guy because nobody and we tried very hard to recruit leading white evangelical voices. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Good Faith, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Good Faith and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.

