Moore to the Point
By Russell D. Moore. Russell D. Moore serves as the teaching pastor at Highview Baptist Church in Louisville, Ky. In addition, Dr. Moore is the Dean of the School of Theology and Senior Vice President for Academic Administration at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Find sermons and other resources to help Christians engage the culture from a biblical worldview at www.russellmoore.com.

Culture of Adoption Video

— Thursday, March 1st, 2012 —

Below is a video I did for the Christian Alliance for Orphans, on how & why to create an “adoption culture” in your church. I’ve found a lot of churches, when God pierces their hearts for orphans, want to download a ready-made program to do so.

But I think adoption and orphan care have to [...]

Is It Right for a Christian to Take Anti-Depressants?

— Tuesday, February 28th, 2012 —

Dear Dr. Moore,

Not long ago, my doctor prescribed me as having a (relatively) mild form of depression. He put me on an anti-depressant. I hate the side effects, and I don’t like the way it makes me feel, but maybe I’ll get used to it. My biggest struggle is whether it is right [...]

Does Typology Require Sovereignty?

— Monday, February 27th, 2012 —

If Greg Boyd held to a classically orthodox view of God, he’d be my favorite contemporary systematic theologian. Boyd, a pastor in Minnesota, gets something that I think is crucially central in the Bible, what he calls a “warfare worldview” of the triumph of Christ [...]

Thoughts on Midnight in Paris

— Sunday, February 26th, 2012 —

In light of tonight’s Academy Awards, I thought I’d revisit my thoughts from last year on Woody Allen’s film Midnight in Paris. The movie is nominated for best picture and best director. Win or lose, I think the film matters.

If the [...]

Johnny Cash at Eighty

— Saturday, February 25th, 2012 —

This Sunday would be Johnny Cash’s eightieth birthday. Unlike many celebrities whose name dies out with the obituaries of their fan base, Cash continues to matter. And I think it matters that we understand why.

Cash remained—to the day of his death—a subject of almost morbid [...]

“If Heaven Ain’t a Lot Like Dixie” by Hank Williams, Jr.

— Friday, February 24th, 2012 —

This week on “The Cross and the Jukebox,” we’ll take a look at a song by Hank Williams, Jr., called “If Heaven Ain’t a Lot Like Dixie.” In this song, Williams expresses his love for the place where he grew up, and insists that “if Heaven ain’t a lot like Dixie,” then God [...]

Always Mardi Gras and Never Easter

— Tuesday, February 21st, 2012 —

There’s nothing quite as bleak as a city street the morning after Mardi Gras. The steam of the humidity rises silently over asphalt riddled with forgotten doubloons, broken bottles, littered cigarettes, used condoms, clotted blood, and mangled vomit. This sight was, for some of the convictional Evangelicals in my hometown, a parable of what was wrong with Roman Catholicism. I wasn’t so sure.

I am a product of “Evangelicals and Catholics Together.” By that I don’t mean the 1994 statement of cultural co-belligerency led by Chuck Colson and Richard John Neuhaus. I mean that since my father was the son of a Southern Baptist preacher and my mother was a Roman Catholic, I am, quite literally, the product of an Evangelical and a Catholic, together. Half my family was Southern Baptist and the other half Roman Catholic, and my family divide perfectly summed up the larger community around us.

Biloxi, my quirky little strip of home on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, was discovered by the French, and supplemented in that heritage with an influx of immigrants drawn to work in the seafood industry. “Vuyovich,” “Stanovich,” and “Nguyen” were as common of names on my class roles as “Smith” and “Jones.” This meant that my hometown was an outpost of a Catholic majority situated right at the bottom of the Bible Belt of the old Confederacy.

Being situated just over the state line from the Big Easy, we were more New Orleans than Tupelo, and I lived in the worlds of both southern Evangelicalism and southern European Catholicism. I could see the best side of either and the dark sides of both. I saw Catholic casino-night fundraisers and contentious Baptist business meetings, and neither seemed to look much like the Book of Acts.

When it came to the ecclesial divide between the Catholics and Evangelicals all around me, I was sure there must be some big differences that resulted in something as historic as the Protestant Reformation. But I never heard the names of any of the Reformers in my Baptist Sunday school, let alone the so-called solas at the heart of the sixteenth-century controversies. We were told that Catholics didn’t have a personal relationship with Jesus and that they paid too much attention to Mary, but neither of those things seemed to describe my devout Catholic relatives.

“Drive On” by Johnny Cash

— Friday, February 17th, 2012 —

This week on “The Cross and the Jukebox” we’ll take a look at a song by Johnny Cash called “Drive On.” The song itself is about a soldier who has returned from the Vietnam war, thinking about the friend he lost in battle, but more than that, about the mentality drilled into soldiers [...]

Gambling and the Common Good

— Wednesday, February 15th, 2012 —

Kentucky, the state where I live, is abuzz these days with discussion over expanded gambling.The governor here wants it, and conservative Christian groups don’t. This argument is hardly limited to here. I lived through it in my ancestral home on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, as [...]

Let’s Have More Worship Wars

— Monday, February 13th, 2012 —