Book Review: Russell Moore, Onward

A short review of Russell Moore, Onward: Engaging the Culture without Losing the Gospel (B&H Publishing, 2015), for NetGalley:

Having only recently learned of Russell Moore’s work, when I began wading through the post-Obergefell debate over questions of culture war and “exile” that the North American church faces today, I was excited to read his new book. Onward is, for the most part, a pleasant surprise: though I don’t consider myself a “liberal” Christian, I don’t often find myself agreeing with Southern Baptists, but I often agreed with what Moore says here. From his opening indictments of American civic religion (noting an atheist friend’s entrance into politics: “Finding Jesus was his way of asking America into his heart, as his personal lord and savior”) to the poke he takes at Joel Osteen (describing the Gospels’ rich young ruler wanting “a religion that would promise him his best life now”!) and his comparison of “pop-dispensationalist” depictions of the Rapture with American culture’s perception of the post-Christendom church, Moore’s critique of Christian culture is enjoyably wry and incisive. As Moore has blogged against the misuse of the “exile” trope as an excuse for nostalgia and despair, it’s good to see him expand that argument here. The church, he reminds us, “is never a majority—in any fallen culture—even if we happen to outnumber everyone else around us.” And elsewhere: “If the church believes the United States is a sort of new Israel, then we become frantic when we see ourselves ‘losing America.’ We then start to speak in gloomy terms of America as, at best, Babylon, a place of hopeless exile, or, at worst, Gomorrah, slouching toward the judgment of God. This leads to a siege mentality…”

Moore does make a few missteps. For example, yes, it’s important to see that the “world system around us, the cultural matrix we inhabit, is alien to the kingdom of God”; but it’s also vital, in learning to live into our new (or perhaps reclaimed) calling “to an engaged alienation,” that we remember that we are not in charge of our own alienation. God, through his gospel and his calling, is the One who alienates us—and the One who has the right to alienate himself, to absent himself, from us if he so chooses, if his seeming absence will help us to grow. So I agree, once more, with Moore when he says, “The church is not to be walled up from the broader culture but to speak to it (1 Pet. 2:12), but that can only happen if, as sojourners and exiles, we have something distinctive to say (1 Pet. 2:11).” I only want to make certain, in recommending this book, that we remember that it is not our prerogative to call ourselves into exile: God is the only One who may call or send us there. I think Moore knows this, but it should be a clearer point in this ongoing discussion.

Inspired, with a Medium-sized "i"

On and off for the past several months, I've been slogging through deeply enjoying N. T. Wright's 2013 book, Paul and the Faithfulness of God.  On page 1370 (just 150 pages to go!), I came across this:

"To approach the frontier between the human and the divine is also to approach the borders of language. The problem emerges, for instance, when [Paul] talks about 'the divine spirit bearing witness with our spirit' [Rom. 8:16], and the problem is only slightly alleviated when he talks instead about the divine spirit residing in a person's 'heart'. The questions English-language exegetes [interpreters] sometimes ask, as to whether 'spirit' should have a capital letter or not, indicating the divine spirit rather than the human one, shows well enough that there is fluidity of thought at this point."

This struck me particularly because of two recent items; bear with me, since they take a moment to join together.  Item One: a conversation I recently shared with a few colleagues, concerning whether or not God still calls people to be apostles today.  Leaving aside the more prickly questions of whether (and how) spiritual gifts like prophecy, healing, and speaking in tongues still function today, we talked about what it was that made Jesus' original apostles, well, apostles: they were commissioned as such, and sent as such; they were first among Jesus' companions and witnesses; empowered by Jesus' commissioning, and later more directly by the Holy Spirit, they did some pretty amazing stuff ("that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach and to have authority to drive out demons," Mark 3:14-15). But then of course there's somebody like Paul, who gets to define himself as apostle to the Gentiles/nations, talks about himself as the least (and most undeserving) of the apostles, yet also tries to dictate what kind of spheres of authority he and other apostles have.  (And, Paul might well add, he also added letter-writing to the apostolic job description!)  All of that is to say that if we were to imagine an "apostolic" calling today, there might be considerable variations in what that would look like between those called.  To take some of the loaded-ness out of that term, apostolic, maybe we should place it within the current conversation of the mission of God and his people: where those original, capital-A Apostles were commissioned in some sense directly by Jesus himself, today a lowercase-a apostle could be one who is sent on a mission, not unlike a missionary, as part of the larger mission that God has given his people, the mission that reflects and expresses God's own mission to this beautiful but broken world.  For the individual, that's a powerful incentive to do the things one is called to do, to live out a commission most faithfully (in some cases probably including, but not limited to, blogging more consistently).

Item two: a nearby Christian TV station has been using the Twitter hashtag "#inspiring" to promote discussion of its programming -- including its reruns of, say, Gilmore Girls and The West Wing.  I happily admit that there are plenty of "inspiring" moments in these and other shows, and West Wing more than most.  But it's almost always lowercase-i inspiring.  Not that anyone can decide firmly where the break should be between capital and lowercase inspiration, much as Wright says about the use of Spirit and spirit above.  The most stirring, Capra-esque moment of compassionate politics in Jed Bartlet's White House is still a far cry from the literal in-spiration of the first Pentecost; but who's to say that the Spirit cannot or would not move in and through that former moment, at which point inspiration becomes, arguably, Inspiration? 

So: what do you think?  What do you make of Wright's point about the limits of human language here, or my reflection on them?  How are we supposed to work out these questions of big and little A's and I's (without getting too far into Dr. Seuss's ABCs!) that can make such a big difference in our spiritual formation and mission?  Is there a happy medium-sized expression between the two extremes -- and if so, what does it look like?