Hearing The Gospel Again

Can Jesus Save Christianity in America?

It's been a busy month of August for me but in a good kind of busy. First of all, I turned 50 years old. But more importantly, my wife and I celebrated our 25th anniversary and we moved our daughter to Nashville, to begin her college career at Lipscomb University.

Turning 50 is easy because there’s only one alternative to not getting older and frankly it’s not an attractive alternative at my young age. Entering into the 25th year of marriage and seeing my daughter blossom into a young adult follower of Jesus are things I’m proud of because neither marriage nor child-rearing is without challenge. That’s not a negative statement about either, just a matter-of-fact.

However, as I hit the half-century mark, I have other concerns. I am committed to following Jesus, whom I confess as Lord and am called to serve as a minister of the gospel. But I bear this commitment and calling in a cultural context where the Christian faith is increasingly irrelevant to many in society. I’m commissioned to proclaim a gospel that seems to have taken a back seat to ideologies that are played out in a socio-political culture war.

I’m currently reading Russell Moore’s newly published book Losing Our Religion. If you’re not familiar with who Russell Moore is, he currently serves as the editor in chief for Christianity Today and previously served as president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. Moore served in the latter position until he was removed by his own denomination after speaking out against matters pertaining to racism, political ideology, and sexual abuse scandals within the Southern Baptist Churches.

Moore is not a liberal in any sense of the imagination, as he is a conservative both theologically and politically. However, his allegiance is to Jesus. And even though there are particular theological matters that Moore and I disagree on, I admire his resolve to live as a follower of Jesus. In fact, as far as I can tell, Moore exhibits what I consider to be three great qualities of Christian leadership: Courage, Compassion, and Conviction.

The reason I mention reading Moore’s book is because I believe he’s naming the crisis facing Christianity in America. In his introduction to the book, Moore writes:

Some are panicked about rising secularism, and what they fear will be hostility to the church, but act in ways that tie the witness of the church, to forms of power that actually fuel secularism. Some of you are tempted towards cynicism, then, when you see people, you thought you knew taking positions you never could imagine them taking, because of politics or culture. The first group sometimes speaks as though the church will collapse if ‘the culture’ collapses. And members of the second group, sometimes think that the church will not survive the scandals of what passes for Christian ‘influence’ at the moment. Wherever you fit in the spectrum, though, we should all heed exactly what happened at Caesarea Philippi. Jesus rebuked Peter for seeking to adopt the way of Herod and of Ceasar and of Baal—power apart from the cross. In fact, Jesus said this was Satan (Matt. 16:23). What Jesus builds is different altogether—a church that cannot be bought with Caesar’s coin and cannot be stopped with Caesar’s cross.¹

Yes, Moore is trying to speak primarily to Evangelical Christianity in America. However, the exchange of God’s power, the wisdom of Christ-crucified (cf. 1 Cor 1:23-24), for that which is adversarial (satanic) to the kingdom of God is, in general, a gospel crisis confronting nearly all of Christianity in America.

Like Moore, I don’t believe there is any quick or large scale solution. The gospel crisis confronting Christianity in America is not a problem that appeared overnight and it is unlikely one that will disappear overnight. But I am hopeful because I believe in Jesus and therefore do believe there is a way beyond this quandary. The way forward is to hear the gospel once again.

But don’t think the simplicity of saying the way forward is to hear the gospel again makes this hearing easy. This is difficult because hearing the gospel again means allowing the gospel to prophetically critique and call us into an expression of the gospel that is different than what we see getting labeled as Christianity today, with an exchange of God’s power for adversarial powers.

So to ask the question of whether Jesus can saved Christianity in America? Yes, of course, he can. But it begins with hearing the gospel addressed to us in the context of the misplaced loyalties and ideologies at work in the present.

The good news is that we’re not the first generation to have misplaced loyalties and ideologies. In the first century, there were Jews and Gentiles believers. To them, the apostle Paul wrote a letter that we call Romans and one of the more well known passages of that letter reads, “I’m not ashamed of the gospel: it is God’s own power for salvation to all who have faith in God, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.”² But don’t let familiarity fool us. The salvation Paul is speaking of is not merely forgiveness of sins and the promise of an eternal after life but a sharing in very divine character of God.³

The gospel of/about Jesus Christ is more than just what is often meant by the revival language of “getting saved.” Salvation is to participate with God as people who have, through baptism, been buried in death with Christ and raised into an entire new life in Christ (cf. Rom 6:3-4). That’s why our faith is not merely a confession or belief expressed in intellectual ascent but is “allegiance” to King Jesus.⁴

If we are going to hear the gospel again, then we might need to hear Romans 1:16 with a slight variation that takes into account our own context:

I’m not ashamed of the gospel: it is God’s own power for salvation to all who have faith in God, to the [conservative/Republican] first and also to the [progressive/Democrat].

or perhaps…

I’m not ashamed of the gospel: it is God’s own power for salvation to all who have faith in God, to the [progressive/Democrat] first and also to the [conservative/Republican].

What might change if we hear the gospel addressed to us in this manner? How might the Gospel bring a fresh perspective if we read Romans addressed to Christians who also identify as conservative/Republicans and progressive/Democrats? Perhaps we might more fully embody the glory that Paul speaks at the end of Romans when he writes, “May the glory be to God, who alone is wise! May the glory be to him through Jesus Christ forever! Amen.”⁵

May we have the eyes and ears to see and hear the gospel!

1. Russell Moore, Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America, New York: Senital, 2023, 24-25.

2. Romans 1:16; Unless otherwise noted, all scripture quotations are taken from the Common English Bible, copyright 2011. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

3. Michael J. Gorman, Becoming the Gospel: Paul, Participation, and Mission, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015, 276-277.

4. Matthew W. Bates, Salvation By Allegiance Alone: Rethinking Faith, Works, and the Gospel of Jesus the King, Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2017, 77.

5. Romans 16:27.