How Should Christians Engage Culture? Book Review: Onward

SeanMcDowell.org

In certain circles of society, Southern Baptists don’t have the best reputation. I have personally heard complaints about SBs being judgmental, reactive, and harsh from Mormons, Muslims, atheists, and even a CNN program director! While this stereotype may be true for some SBs, it is certainly not the vision of cultural engagement proposed by Russell Moore, head of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, in his recent book Onward.

While his loyalties are unquestionably to the gospel, Moore purposefully lays out a path of cultural engagement that involves “convictional kindness.” In fact, what may surprise some, is that Moore is in favor of the collapse of the Bible Belt, critiques various aspects of the Right and the Left, emphasizes the need for appropriate gun measures, calls Christians to defend the religious liberty of Muslims to be Muslim, and recognizes that non-believers are often “kinder, gentler, more rational, and more intelligent than Christians” (229). Specifically, in terms of climate change, Moore says, “The Bible doesn’t reveal a specific policy on how Christians ought to address climate change, so Christians can disagree, based on prudential judgment, on whether a cap-and-trade policy on carbon emissions is the best way to care for the earth” (p. 126).

One of the most valuable aspects of Onward is that it includes some important corrections to biblical misunderstandings about cultural engagement. For instance, Christian leaders often cite 2 Chronicles 7:14 as a plea for American Christians to repent: “If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will heal their land.” While we certainly want our nation to repent, Moore rightly points out that this is a promise to Israel not to the United States. The U.S. is not in covenant with God as Israel was before the time of Christ [p. 91].

While Moore emphasizes the need for Christians to be civil and kind in their interactions with non-believers, he does rightly recognize that many critics will not be gracious in turn:

“Sometimes church leaders will ask me to tell them how they can engage on controversial issues, usually related to the sexual revolution, without appearing mean or evil. I always respond that I can’t do that. If they stand for biblical principles, and if they call people to repentance, they will indeed seem to be mean, and bigoted, and evil” (234).

So much more could be said about the book. Overall, I found Onward enlightening, challenging, and very timely. I recommend it for Christians who want to know how to thoughtfully and biblically move forward in our times that seem increasingly hostile to traditional values. And I recommend it for non-Christians who care enough to properly understand where many conservatives are genuinely coming from.

Here are some of my favorite quotes from the book:

• “If adapting to the culture were the key to ecclesial success, then where are all the Presbyterian Church (USA) church-planting movements, the Unitarian megachurches?” (24)

• “If we see ourselves as only a minority, we will be tempted to isolation. If we see ourselves only as a kingdom, we will be tempted toward triumphalism” (41).

• “Our vote for President is less important than our vote to receive new members for baptism into our churches” (75).

• “There is a day of judgment, but the church warns of this judgment; the church does not carry it out (1 Cor. 5:12).” (79)

• “Often at the root of much of our engagement with culture lies an embarrassment about the ‘oddity’ of this strange biblical world of talking snakes, parting seas, emptied graves. But, without that distinctive strangeness, what’s Christianity for?” (108)

• “Let’s feed the poor, house the homeless, shelter the widow, adopt the orphan, advocate for the unborn, and steward the environment. But as we do, let’s, most importantly, preach peace and justice for individuals and for the whole world, found in the bloody cross and empty tomb of Jesus” (133).

• “In the short term, we have lost the culture war on sexual and family issues…Long-term, though, we ought to stand by our conviction that marriage and family are resilient because they are embedded into the fabric of creation and thus cannot be upended by cultural mores or by court decrees” (220).

• “Whenever we are tempted to despair about the shape of American Christianity, we should remember that Jesus never promised the triumph of the American church. He promised the triumph of the church” (256).

If you care about engaging our culture biblical and effectively in a post-Obergefell world, then Onward is a book you need to read.

Sean McDowell, Ph.D. is an assistant professor of Christian Apologetics at Biola University. He is a best-selling author of over 15 books, and is an internationally recognized speaker. He also teaches part-time high school classes on theology and worldview. Follow him on Twitter: @sean_mcdowell. He blogs regularly at seanmcdowell.org.