Moore: Church's views 'seem freakish' to culture

American evangelicals' view of themselves should resemble more closely that held by the church in the first century than that held by Christians in recent decades, Southern Baptist ethicist Russell D. Moore said in a nationally televised interview.

Moore, in an appearance on C-SPAN's "Washington Journal" Monday (July 8), said there was a message for evangelicals and other social conservatives in the U.S. Supreme Court's invalidation of a federal law defining marriage as only between a man and a woman.

"For a long time, social conservatives in America had a kind of silent majority view of ourselves, and conservative evangelicals and conservative Roman Catholics had a moral majority view of ourselves, as though we somehow represent the mainstream of American culture -- most people really agree with us except for some elites somewhere," the president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission said. "That really isn't the case."

Instead, Moore said, Christians "need to start seeing the fact that we're very similar to the way the Christian church was at the very beginning of its existence -- a minority of people who are speaking to the larger culture in ways that are going to sometimes seem freakish to that larger culture. I don't think that's anything that should panic us or cause us to become outraged or despondent. I think it's a realistic view of who we are."

Asked about the church and politics, Moore said Christians need to find a path between two erroneous approaches. Read more

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