We Don’t Need Mayberry

In a recent interview with Mike Allen of Politico, Russell Moore makes a stunning point on the history of Christianity. In the case you were wondering about what the church will do as it is increasingly marginalized within greater society, Moore comments . . .

When the church sees itself as part of a moral majority, or a silent majority, we stop emphasizing the things that are distinctively Christian in order to attempt to become more normal in whatever society in which we exist. 

That’s the reason so much of Christian political activism over the last generation really hasn’t been theologically defined at all. It has been in terms of values — in terms of traditional family values and principles. We don’t need Mayberry in order to thrive. Christianity didn’t start in Mayberry. It started in a very hostile Greco-Roman empire, and this gives us the opportunity to reclaim the freakishness of Christianity that the New Testament tells us causes Christianity to thrive. . . .

We believe even stranger things [than God’s vision for sexuality]. We believe a previously dead man is going to show up in the sky on a horse. That is pretty strange and freakish to a natural mindset, and it was strange and freakish in AD 40. 

Check out the 1:03–1:09 mark of the interview.

[HT: @MattSmethurst]