Moore: Church returning to oddness in culture

Russell Moore and family

The ongoing collapse of the Bible Belt will help the church recover its oddness and thereby further its mission, Southern Baptist ethicist Russell D. Moore told a gathering on Capitol Hill.

Moore encouraged the audience of Christians who work in congressional offices to approach the "next new reality" after the breakdown of the Bible Belt in a "Gospel-centered" manner.

The nominal Christianity that marked the Bible Belt of the South and Midwest and provided social benefits in the past is giving way to a Christianity that has "a social, a cultural, a political, an economic cost," the president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission told the gathering of more than 40 people in the Capitol Sept. 13.

While the Bible Belt's collapse "is bad news for America, because the Bible Belt hemmed in a lot of things from happening that were socially destructive," Moore said, it "is very good news for the church. It will enable the church to reclaim the freakishness of Christianity in a way that I think is going to be helpful in moving forward with the mission."

Such a dramatic recovery of the church's oddness may not be far off, he said. Keep reading

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Russell Moore: End of Cultural Christianity in America Is Opportunity for Church to Recover the Cross