Hello, fellow wayfarers โฆ Whatโs at stake for your soul as you vote (or donโt) this November โฆ Where you can listen to a set of amazing songs about the โAmerican Gospelโ โฆ Why Iโm glad I forgot, for a minute, about a friendโs recollection of sending his son off to college โฆ A former fundamentalist kid, now all grown up, shows us his Desert Island Playlist he could never have played at home โฆ This is this weekโs Moore to the Point.
Will Your Presidential Vote Send You to Hell?
Since by nature of my work Iโve had to weigh in on a lot of controversial issues over the years, Iโve been cussed out a time or two. Sometimes, Iโve been yelled at with, โGod damn you!โ When an unbeliever says that, itโs one thing. Christians, though, mean it literally.
A family I know and love was rattled recently to get a note from someone they considered a longtime friend suggesting that the family was going to hell. The cause for the impending brimstone was not that the family denied the faith, embraced some heresy, or adopted some unrepentant life of immorality. At issue was that the family did not support a presidential candidate.
The note-sender put in all the provisions of โIโm only saying this because I love you,โ which works for cruelty the same way โThis doesnโt actually count as sexโ works for people who want to sleep with each other without giving up their purity rings. Adding a โbless your heartโ to the โGod damn youโ doesnโt really change it that much.
This sort of situation comes to me at least once a week these days and, in some ways, itโs jarringly new in our history. I canโt think of churches splitting over whether Dwight Eisenhower or Adlai Stevenson should sit in the Oval Office, for example. I canโt imagine family members refusing to speak to one another over who voted for Jimmy Carter and who for Gerald Ford. That has changed over the past decade or so, and some of us arenโt used to it yet. I pray we never will be.
Much of this has to do with larger divisions in American lifeโthe polarization of the populace, the tribalization of the parties, the trivialization of politics itself. And some of it has to do with changes in the American church.
A market-driven religion seeks to appeal to โfelt needsโ and especially to what drives the passions of the people to whom it wants to appeal. When the concern is what happens after death or how to be forgiven of guilt, a market-driven religion emphasizes those things.
And when the market secularizes to caring more about how to thrive in the workforce or how to spice up a marriage, a market-driven religion will reflect that. When the market further secularizes to the point that what people want is โred meatโ about why their political or ethnic or racial โenemiesโ are bad, a market-driven religion can do that too. And it has.
Thatโs why we end up with an American religion in which people can gladly partner with prosperity gospel teachers who would be thrown out of a Billy Sunday crusade, not to mention the Council of Nicaea. These same people simultaneously denounce as maybe-not-even-regenerate those who are orthodox on every article of the faith but who wonโt violate their consciences on supporting political causes or candidates they believe to be wrong.
In a politicized, secularized American Christianity, some seem to think that the apostleโs admonition to make your calling and election sure (2 Pet. 1:10) has to do with posting the right pop-political opinions on social media.
We live in a time when religious experience has grown cold and dead, and political affiliation feels alive and invigorating. Plus, itโs easy. Trolling your neighbors on social media for their politics may cost you some self-respect, but you can budget for that.
On the other hand, bearing witness to Christ and persuading your neighbors to give their lives to him requires something of you. Modeling Christ in word and life for your Haitian immigrant neighbors fleeing violence and poverty will require you to interrupt your life and comfort. Reposting memes falsely accusing them of eating household petsโbecause somebodyโs cousinโs friend from high school said they didโtakes only a few seconds.
While this might feel new to many of us, we should recognize that itโs rooted in something very old: an Americanized version of one of the earliest heresies in the church.
Much of the New Testament, especially Paulโs letters to the churches in Rome and Galatia, addresses a dispute about what it means to follow Christ and to be united to him in faith. Those the apostles pronounced to be false teachers suggested that the Gentiles seeking to follow Christ must first become Jews, with the marks of circumcision and the observance of diets and days. Concerning the teachers who insisted on circumcision for these Gentiles, Paul wrote to the Galatians, โTo them we did not yield in submission even for a moment so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for youโ (2:5, ESV throughout).
For the apostle, those who added to the gospel were not thereby practicing addition but subtraction. A gospel of โChrist andโ is another gospel altogether (1:6). Paul speaks of those who wish to add additional entrance requirements to the gospel of Christ crucified and resurrected as โanathema,โ as those who should be cursed (vv. 8โ9). If one is united to Christ, the old categories are broken down, and people who ordinarily wouldnโt be united togetherโJew and Gentile, rich and poor, zealot and tax collectorโfind themselves in this mystery where the only defining category is Christ and Christ alone (Col. 3:11).
The gospel, of course, works itself out in lifeโboth in terms of how we live our lives personally and how we live our lives together, socially, culturally, and politically.
People can be committed, though, to the same goals of justice but differ as to how to get to them. The Bible mandates care for the poor. On some matters, the application is explicit and clear-cut: One should not exploit the pay of oneโs laborers, for instance (James 5:1โ6). On other matters, believers may disagree on exactly which public policies benefit the poor and what unintended consequences might actually hurt them. Somebody on that will likely be wrong. Thatโs why we have debate and moral persuasion.
Some Christians believe the pro-life vision of care for the unborn always requires voting for the Republican ticket, no matter what. Others believe the pro-life vision is harmed long-term by tying it to sexual anarchy, misogyny, contempt for the vulnerable, and mob violence. Some believe their consciences require them to vote for a candidate with whom they disagree, even on major issues, but who will respect the rule of law and the constitutional order. Others donโt believe they can vote for either candidate in good conscience.
As you know, I have very strong views on the presidential election. I have and will continue to make those views known. To do otherwise would be to violate my own conscience, and my own sense of what it means to love my country. Some people disagree with meโeven up to half the country. I do not believe those viewpoints are morally or rationally equal, of course, or I wouldnโt hold the views I do.
That doesnโt mean, though, that I think that those who disagree with me are, by definition, not Christians. To do so would be to add to the requirement of faith in Christ a commitment to see the political and cultural stakes of the moment the way I do. That would be veering close to the Galatian heresy. And that, the Bible says, really does endanger our souls.
We have the obligation to speak out when support for any partisan movement or personality is conflated with Christianity itself. Itโs especially odd when those who defend slaveholding or white supremacist Christians of the past as โmen of their timeโ or as good Christians with โblind spotsโ are nonetheless willing to say that only those who vote the way they do can be genuine Christians.
More serious than all of the issues combinedโmore serious even than the future of the American Republic itselfโis the conflation of the gospel with a human personality or power. When the church yawns at Trinitarian heresy or scoffs at what Jesus defines as the fruit of the Spirit but unites around a partisan identity, we are heading toward something closer to the imperial cult against which the risen Christ warned the first-century churchesโcongregations persecuted by that cult for refusing to say, โCaesar is Lord.โ
Decisions one makes on Election Day have implications for Judgment Day. But if we confuse one day for the other, weโve lost more than an election. Itโs bad enough when we say to our political opponents, metaphorically, โGo to hell.โ Itโs even worse when we think thatโs the gospel.
Jon Guerra Sings the American Gospel
Some of yโall know how much I love the music of singer/songwriter Jon Guerra. He was part of the gathering of musicians, writers, and thinkers that we brought together last year for The After Party projectโwith collaboration that amazed me in both excellence and in spirit. And Iโve often quoted here songs heโs written, such as โCitizens.โ
Jon has a new EP out as of last week, and itโs incredible. The song โAmerican Gospelโ includes lyrics such as this:
Blessed are the powerful
Blessed are the rich
Blessed are the merciless
And the hypocrites
They will inherit the empireโs passing
Itโs the American gospel
Blessed are the superstars,
Blessed are the famous
Blessed are the ones
Who make their faces ageless
They will inherit the magazine covers
Of the American gospel
This is more than a jeremiad, though. In classic Guerra fashion, he takes us to a different place:
Blessed are the powerless
Blessed are the poor
Blessed are the merciful
Blessed are the pure
For they will inherit the kingdom of heaven
And thatโs the heart of the gospel
I also love his song โNothing to Say to The New York Times,โ in which he sings:
Iโve got nothing to say to The New York Times
Nothing to say to Fox News
Iโve got nothing to spin
To lose or to win
Iโve got nothing to say but the truth
You can check out The American Gospel songs wherever you listen to music.
18 Years Is Not Enough
I mentioned here last week about how dropping off my son Samuel to his dormitory room at college was one of the hardest things Iโve ever done. In talking about that with my friend Peter Wehner, Pete said, โRemember Mikeโs column about that?โ Suddenly I did. I said, โOh my word. I am glad I didnโt think about that column last week or I would have cried even harder.โ
I went back and reread that column, which the Washington Post reran after Mikeโs death from cancer. It hit even harder, after having had such an experience firsthand.
Of his son, Mike Gerson wrote:
He will be homesick, as I was (intensely) as a freshman. An education expert once told me that among the greatest fears of college students is they wonโt have a room at home to return to. They want to keep a beachhead in their former life.
But with due respect to my sonโs feelings, I have the worse of it. I know something he doesnโtโnot quite a secret, but incomprehensible to the young. He is experiencing the adjustments that come with beginnings. His life is starting for real. I have begun the long letting go. Put another way: He has a wonderful future in which my part naturally diminishes. I have no possible future that is better without him close.
There is no use brooding about it. Iโm sure my father realized it at a similar moment. And I certainly didnโt notice or empathize. At first, he was a giant who held my hand and filled my sky. Then a middle-aged man who paid my bills. Now, decades after his passing, a much-loved shadow. But I can remember the last time I hugged him in the front hallway of his home, where I always had a room. It is a memory of warmth. I can only hope to leave my son the same.
He closed with these words:
The cosmologists, even with all their depressing talk about the eventual heat death of the cosmos, offer some comfort. They point out that we live in the briefest windowโa fraction of a fraction of the unimaginable vastness of deep timeโin which it is physically possible for life to exist. So we inhabit (or are chosen to inhabit) an astounding, privileged instant in the life span of the universe.
Well, 18 years is a window that closed too quickly. But, my son, those days have been the greatest wonder and privilege of my life. And there will always be a room for you.
No matter how many times I read that, it tears me up, especially knowing thatโmuch too short of a time laterโMike himself would be saying a longer goodbye, into the place where Jesus promised to save him a room (John 14:2โ3).
You can read the whole thing here, but if youโre the parent of a kindergartener or a young adult, you might want to wait a little while to do so.
Desert island Playlist
Every other week, I share a playlist of songs one of you says youโd want to have on hand if you were stranded on a desert island. This weekโs submission comes from reader Alan Rydman in Mount Pleasant, Michigan, who writes:
When I look at my list, I notice that only the one classical and the one Big Band piece would have been allowed to have been played in my childhood home (at least when our parents were around!). That fact meant that my exposure to nonreligious music was defined by my older brothers, and I have no idea what was behind their selection of classic rock as our favorite forbidden genre.
To me, it seemed to be mostly about our own rebellion against the fundamentalist rules imposed on us, but to this day it is harmonies and rhythms like these that just plain make me feel good. Reading other peoplesโ reasons for their individual selections seems to show that I had a pretty shallow appreciation of the broader and deeper messages that were in other types of music. Also, I was only thirteen years old when my sources of musical contraband moved out of the house.
After that, I dove into the Independent Baptist fundamentalism of my parents and church with all my might, and swore off secular music (and CCM) for thirty years. Then, when the leaders and institutions I revered (and had paid my tuition) crashed and burned in moral failure, one of the things I deconstructed was my musical legalism, and on one particular family vacation, I introduced our teenage daughters to all my favorites from childhood. They were a bit stunned, but loved it all at the same time. Music suddenly became a medium for significant connection in our family. Some of the list below were the ones I remembered and shared with them that day in the car.
Hereโs Alanโs list:
- โYou Make My Dreamsโ by Daryl Hall and John Oates: I think I heard this on the radio while driving a school bus. I almost have to dance every time I hear it, and it speaks the truth about my wife of thirty-four years! I think it would lift my spirits even when it reminded me of my loneliness on the island.
- โHallelujahโ by Leonard Cohen; the more stanzas the better: This song isnโt from my long ago, either. In fact, I may have been reintroduced to it (as opposed to periodically overhearing it while Shrek is playing) from one of these earlier island lists. This speaks so profoundly to me of the reality of redemption for deeply broken places and people.
- โKnee Deepโ by Zac Brown (featuring Jimmy Buffet): This is my wifeโs favorite song. She wants it played at her funeral. As Michiganders who try to go to Lake Michigan in the summer as much as possible, we donโt worry about the tide reaching our chair, but we get it! BTW, for those who have never been there, Lake Michigan is nothing specialโplease continue to go to the ocean ๐ Anyway, Iโll be able to think of her, while I stare at the waves!
- โOne of These Nightsโ by the Eagles: This is one of the songs I played for our daughters on that day of deliverance! Our younger daughter once said this was one of her favorites. โYouโve got your demons, youโve got desires; and Iโve got a few of my own!โ resonated with her, and I like the perception and honesty she expressed when she told me. I would remember her and hope to be reunited while enjoying these rhythms!
- โShotgunโ by George Ezra: Our older daughter shared this with us a few years ago. Besides betraying our familyโs love for the beach (something else we reclaimed from IFB), it is an example of the means of connection shared music of any kind can be. With this song I would remember and dream of being reunited with her to ride to our little west coast again!
- โWhen We Were Youngโ by Andy Black and Juliet Simms: No disrespect to Adele, but I like this version much better. Our older daughter and son-in-law shared it with us. I love the way they do it as a couple. During a tough time in our marriage, we were working through some deeply entrenched patterns that were not helping, and we were challenged by Brenรฉ Brownโs writing to select some anthems for each relationship. This song by these artists reminded me powerfully of my wife when we met as teenagers. Itโs been our anthem since that struggle, and itโll work great on the island to keep her on my heart and mind.
- โAdagio in G Minorโ attributed to Tomaso Albinoni: Although sometimes reminding me of The Godfather soundtrack, this long plodding yet flowing, then ebbing, then building to crescendos must be perfect for island sunsets. Weeks after my parents passed within two months of each other, I listened to this song while drinking my morning coffee on our back deck. I sensed such a present beauty and joy that made me fear for my own survivalโor at least sanity. This experience came with an intuition that I was being allowed to experience just a momentary sliver of the pleasure of Godโs gaze in which my parents endlessly indulge. Until I cross over to join them in that unapproachable Light, I hope and pray I never forget that momentary peek through the veil. I do not now feel โitโ as I listen and type, but I do remember.
- โDance with Meโ by Orleans: In some ways my most favorite. It repeats the deep longing God placed in me and has kept alive between me and my wife to do this dance together. On that island, I think I would want to hear and sing this a lot.
- โChattanooga Choo-Chooโ by Glenn Miller and His Orchestra: One of the songs my mom would have approved. She used to sing it around the house long before I ever heard the recording. I think she may have kept us from hearing it because, even today, when Glenn Millerโs Orchestra gets to that last reprise, I have to pound the table and stomp my feet! In other words, how could she and dad have kept us little Baptists from dancing if we heard that!? I love this memory of my mom, and I love the song (as a Michigander, I love โKalamazooโ tooโbut mom didnโt sing that one).
- โReminiscingโ by Little River Band: Gotta have this on the island, donโt you? Brings back memories of me and my lifelong best friend โillegallyโ listening and singing this together (and me wondering what in the world the word โreminiscingโ meant!).
- โHotel Californiaโ by the Eagles: Strictly forbidden by our Baptist brethren. Wow! What a beautiful piece of music. As I recall, in an Eagles documentary, Glen Frey acknowledged that he was aware of many strange interpretations of this song, including a demonic one put forth by some preachers. I heard several of those preachers, but I loved this song on the sly! The ambiguous lyrics (as Frey called them) concluding with โyou can check out anytime you like, but you can never leaveโ describe so many shared human situations and experiences, theyโre almost prophetic, if not diagnostic.
- โMore Than a Feelingโ by Boston: My memories as a nine-year-old boy, of sitting in the back of my big brotherโs โ66 Chevy Impala, with the single blown-out speaker in the middle of the seatback, with the 8-track playing this song, are very vivid. In recent years, Iโve preached several sermons that have borrowed some from the theme of the title. I think love is more than a feelingโbut not less than one, either. I donโt know what he did to cause or allow Marianne to walk away, but I use this song to remind me that a strong marriage is more than emotionโit takes intentionality. I donโt know how Iโm gonna end up on that island, but I donโt want it to be because of my neglect. Bahโbahโbumpa, bumpaba, bahโbah!
Thank you, Alan!
Readers, what do yโall think? If you were stranded on a desert island for the rest of your life and could have only one playlist or one bookshelf with you, what songs or books would you choose?
For a Desert Island Playlist, send me a list between 5 and 12 songs, excluding hymns and worship songs. (Weโll cover those later.)
For a Desert Island Bookshelf, send me a list of up to 12 books, along with a photo of all the books together.
Send your list (or both lists) to questions@russellmoore.com, and include as much or as little explanation of your choices as you would like, along with the city and state from which youโre writing.
Quote of the Moment
โWe reject the false teaching that struggle is the basic law of creation and, therefore, the combative stance is the law of God since the original creation. Fight sets the friend/enemy relationship above all. These relationships first arise with the face to good and evil. The goal of mutual annihilation placed within it is a consequence of the fall, after which good and evil are no longer unmixed in man.โ
โThe Bethel Confession of 1933, cited in Torbjรถrn Johansson, Faith in the Face of Tyranny, transl. Bror Erickson
Currently Reading (or Re-Reading)
- Ray and Jani Ortlund, To the Tenth Generation: Godโs Heart for Your Family, Far into the Future (B&H)
- Sam Allberry, One with My Lord: The Life-Changing Reality of Being in Christ (Crossway)
- Tyler Mahan Coe, Cocaine and Rhinestones: A History of George Jones and Tammy Wynette (Simon & Schuster)
- Robert Louis Stevenson, The Lantern-Bearers and Other Essays (Cooper Square)
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Russell Moore
Editor in Chief, Christianity Today
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