The Simple Gospel
It is hard to challenge the tribe in which you have been raised and built your career. Doing so without whitewashing your own contribution to the dysfunction requires hard deconstructive work. Take, for example, Russell Moore’s critical self-assessment when reviewing the Southern Baptist Convention’s policies regarding Women’s leading in the Church:
“A new generation of Christian men and women is coming. When it comes to teaching them how to stand together, and how to equip one another to teach and lead, I trust Beth Moore much more than 2004 Russell Moore to show them the way.”[1]
When I read the above quote last year from Moore’s article, “Rethinking Evangelical Gender Wars” in Christianity Today it was the first time I had ever heard of him. His willingness to question his own long-held assumptions caught my attention- an approach he carried into his recent book: Losing Our Religion. In this book, he tells of a “reverse altar call”: his questioning if “what [he] thought was the Shire was Mordor all along.”[2] Using issues like institutionalized racism as case studies, he applies a remarkably clear-eyed review of patterns observed through his lifetime:
“Much of what they assumed turned out to be, just what I feared, a mixture of southern honor culture, American patriotism, Republican politics, white racial backlash, and on and on. If I don’t face that squarely, I cannot be honest with myself or with you. But everything they told me about Jesus was true.”[3]
Moore’s willingness to publicly deconstruct the layers upon layers of cultural interpretation that he inherited from his Baptist upbringing while remaining faithful to scripture is so badly needed in this day where the Church is under siege both from within and without. It is a challenge to us all to honestly assess where our faith ends and culture begins. I think there are 4 important postures that Moore models in his work that can be instructive for me as I navigate my own murky waters:
An Exilic Identity: Perhaps one of the ways that Moore is able to do this unflinching review is his assumption of an “exilic identity” which he describes as follows:
An exilic identity does not mean “Oh no! We’re marginalized! How can we fix it?” An exilic identity asks, “Why do I not seem more marginalized than I do? Is it because I’ve adapted my own appetites to the degree that I can no longer feel the longing that drives me onward into the unknown?” The danger for us at the moment is not that Christians will see themselves as exiled in a far country, but that they will see the United States or Canada or wherever they are as the Promised Land.[4]
Abandoning a presumption of entitlement is a powerful way to remind ourselves that we are all strangers and aliens in this fallen world.[5]
A Battling of Cultural Pessimism[6]: When observing the large and small dysfunctions in the historic and current Church, it is easy to get discouraged. However, Moore’s repeated prodding for us not to abandon the endeavor of Church is a countercultural exercise in optimism. While not ignoring the layers of whitewash that have been slathered on the Christian experience for generations, I also sense that Moore has an optimistic belief that it can get better and a commitment to kingdom building similar to what we heard in Wright and Bird’s Jesus and the Powers:
“the Church… has a duty to bear public witness. Our job is not to build the kingdom on earth. Only God can do that… But we are to build for the kingdom, to prepare for it, to anticipate it, to turn our communities into signposts displaying it.“[7]
A reexamination of who is in our tribe: Finally, Moore highlights a truth we in this cohort have also recently observed. That is that the tribe in which we practice our Christianity is probably bigger than we recognize. He summarized this attitude in the CT article from earlier:
“Many of us are rethinking who we once classified as “enemy” and as “ally.” Maybe the lines of division were in the wrong places all along. Those who hold to believer’s baptism, for example, have more in common with evangelicals who practice infant baptism than with Latterday Saints who immerse adults. Those who disagree on how Galatians 3:28 fits with Ephesians 5 but who want to see men and women fully engaged in the Great Commission have more in common with each other than with those who would make gender either everything or nothing.[8]
Humility as a Path to Renewal
In Humble Leadership,[9] Schein and Shein suggest that humble curiosity is a key leadership differentiator. Furthermore, if we go back to the comments I surfaced last week from David French,[10] How might an attitude of humble curiosity from Evangelicals bring renewal to the Church? to our world?
Right now, we need leaders to model commitment to the deep essentials of a true Christian walk over and above the cultural patterns of Evangelical, American, or Westernized Christianity that can cause unnecessary and sometimes even destructive distractions. Yesterday, I had the privilege to attend a chapel at George Fox with hundreds of undergrads. Phones were put away, and young adults were singing song that appeared to resonate with them. United Pursuit wrote Simple Gospel[11] back in 2015 that I think summarizes Moore is saying we need now:
“I used to think that I could box You in….But I’m laying down…all my religion…I want to know You, Lord. I’m laying down all my religion. I will rejoice in the simple gospel, I will rejoice in You, Lord”
_______________________________________________________________________________________
[1] “Let’s Rethink the Evangelical Gender Wars,” ChristianityToday.com, February 13, 2023, https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2023/march/lets-rethink-evangelical-gender-wars.html.
[2] Russell Moore, “Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America” (New York, New York: Sentinel, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2023), 10.
[3] Moore, 249.
[4] Moore, 150.
[5] 1 Peter 2:11
[6] Kenan Malik, Not so Black and White: A History of Race from White Supremacy to Identity Politics, 1st ed. (London: Hurst & Company, 2023), 303.
[7] N. T. Wright and Michael F. Bird, Jesus and the Powers: Christian Political Witness in an Age of Totalitarian Terror and Dysfunctional Democracies (Zondervan, 2024), 176.
[8] “Let’s Rethink the Evangelical Gender Wars.”
[9] Edgar H. Schein and Peter A. Schein, Humble Leadership, Second Edition : The Power of Relationships, Openness, and Trust, Second Edition, The Humble Leadership Series (Oakland, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2023), https://research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=cfcf765a-0126-3f66-83ab-2b2883d96624.
[10] “Micah 6:8 – Played Backwards,” accessed October 27, 2024, https://blogs.georgefox.edu/dlgp/micah-68-played-backwards/.
[11] Simple Gospel (Official Video), 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcJV7j5D3PU.
About the Author
Jennifer Vernam
11 responses to “The Simple Gospel”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Well, I knew I wouldn’t be disappointed reading our cohort’s “most academic” or “smartest” student’s blog post (wasn’t that the name of the award you won at our Advance?) If it wasn’t that either of those names would have been accurate.
I enjoyed reading your post – as usual – but especially this time, which I think was due to how you pointed out how difficult it is to critique the environment in which one grew up and by which one was shaped. Yet, as you also acknowledge, Moore seemed to be able to do this with grace.
You write, “Moore’s willingness to publicly deconstruct the layers upon layers of cultural interpretation that he inherited from his Baptist upbringing while remaining faithful to scripture is so badly needed in this day where the Church is under siege both from within and without. It is a challenge to us all to honestly assess where our faith ends and culture begins.” I so appreciate this – and I’ve been challenged in this way by all of you in our cohort. I’ll forever been untangling faith and culture – as will all of us, I hope.
I am curious, are there elements of your journey of faith that need untangling from culture? If so, do you mind sharing one or two?
Thanks for the ego boost, Kally! I am glad you appreciated the post. And, I am so excited to read how Moore’s work is resonating with our cohort- the importance of separating faith from culture is really important to me.
To your question: I think one big untangling I am currently going through is the issue of women in leadership in the Church. It is one that I happily have stuck my head in the sand about for years and am now beginning to make up my own mind about.
As I read your post, I was hoping you were going to tie in “Humble Leadership” and you did!
Moore is a big time political, evangelical leader. He has clout. People listen to him. And yet, I sensed a humility in being able to admit where he got it wrong. I don’t see that enough. I see “doubling down.”
I wish that wasn’t the case. I hope it isn’t the case in my heart and leadership.
On another note…you struck me with the GFU worship time, and students “putting their phones away.” Was that requested from the stage, or was it just something you observed? I’m curious, because it speaks to the seriousness of young people wanting to encounter Jesus.
Hey, John!
Nope, there was no request. I noticed it because I was actually distracted by a work thing in the service and kept looking at MY phone! And I noticed that everyone else seemed to be paying closer attention than I had been. Now, I am learning from my son that kids at FOX are in all different places in their spiritual journey, so don’t make too many inferences from my casual observation 🙂
Jen,
As always, you bring such great insight, but also weave in your own wrestlings and musings. I was pulled in immediately and challenged by your two opening sentences:
“It is hard to challenge the tribe in which you have been raised and built your career. Doing so without whitewashing your own contribution to the dysfunction requires hard deconstructive work.”
Part of why dysfunction is hard to see, is because we remain in the same pool where thinking a certain way is not challenged. I can see now why God led me to this program and not to one of our seminaries. Not that they aren’t good, but for whatever reason, it has been grit and growth-producing to read a wide spectrum of thoughts and philosophies. I feel like I need to wrestle more but I’m tired. Lol! We plan to take a Sabbatical in April through June. Perhaps there I can lean in a bit more.
Esther- I love that this program has provided you a chance to move outside your normal pool and into another. It has done the same for me. Is there one area you want to dig more into? Post sabbatical, of course!
I’d like to lean more into authors like Jonathan’s Haidt’s who are defining the upcoming generations with great psychological insight. The more we understand, the more my generation can build bridges to listen, coach, understand, learn, and feed back into the younger generations. Perhaps this summer…
Hi Jennifer,
Thank you for your brilliant and enlightening post. I am stunned by your sharp opinion. You stated, “Right now, we need leaders to model commitment to the deep essentials of a true Christian walk over and above the cultural patterns of Evangelical, American, or Westernized Christianity that can cause unnecessary and sometimes even destructive distractions.” In your view, what is the root cause of this situation? What is preventing Christian leaders from committing to the deep essentials of a true Christian?
Hi Dinka- Yours is a good question. At first glance, I wonder if one answer may be that leaders feel between a rock and a hard place with the people who follow them. Take pastors, for example, who are getting pressure from their congregants to deliver messages that reinforce what they WANT to hear instead of what they NEED to hear. I am not a pastor, so I can not testify to this, but I have heard this is a regular concern.
Another thought is akin to Esther’s comment: it is hard to see the water in which you are swimming. It is hard to diagnose the dysfunction of our own culture! Your question highlights for me the need for God’s intervening grace just to get started on this path.
What do you think?
Hi, Jenn, thank you for getting back to me. I appreciate it.
I resonate with your opinion. It often happens among pastors that the attitude of pleasing many people is better than preaching and acting as Christ did. As a result, Christianity is experiencing degradation and decline. Indeed, God’s grace is needed to enlighten all hearts and souls and guide us to rediscover God’s will’s true essence and purpose in our lives and ministries.
Your question at the end : “How might an attitude of humble curiosity from Evangelicals bring renewal to the Church? to our world?
Right now, we need leaders to model commitment to the deep essentials of a true Christian walk over and above the cultural patterns of Evangelical, American, or Westernized Christianity that can cause unnecessary and sometimes even destructive distractions.”
Humble curiosity. Brilliant. If only more of us were curious!