Russell Moore on the Vulnerability of "Bible Belt Near-Christianity"

Russell Moore just posted piece entitled "Is Christianity Dying?" The post responds to the recent Pew Center report that Christianity in America is on a steep decline. As the NY Times summarizes the report, "Seventy-one percent of American adults were Christian in 2014, the lowest estimate from any sizable survey to date, and a decline of 5 million adults and 8 percentage points since a similar Pew survey in 2007."

Moore, however, notes that what is most in decline is cultural Christianity. His description and explanation of the vulnerability of "Bible Belt near-Christianity" or "Almost Christianity" in the current cultural moment is superb:

People who don’t want Christianity, don’t want almost-Christianity. . . . Almost Christianity, in the Bible Belt, looks like a God-and-Country civil religion that prizes cultural conservatism more than theological fidelity. Either way, a Christianity that reflects its culture, whether that culture is Smith College or NASCAR, only lasts as long as it is useful to its host. That’s because it’s, at root, idolatry, and people turn from their idols when they stop sending rain.[1]

I recommend reading his full post here.

Jonathan

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[1] Emphasis added.

Praying with Confidence when We Are Anything but Confident

I have been praying for wisdom lately on a number of issues. James 1:5 says, 

If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.

The following verses state that such a request must be made in faith without doubting. This often makes so much sense to my mind, but seems like the farthest thing from possible to my heart. After all, life is pressing in! I need direction! What should I do?! How does one pray with confidence when he or she is in the throes of the waves of doubt?

J. A. Motyer's comments on this verse bear repeating:

In conformity with his practical approach to things, there is a beautiful directness and simplicity about the teaching of James: whoever lacks wisdom can ask for it, and God will give it. Just like that! Such simplicity is either totally unrealistic, or else finds is justification in what is known about God. For James, it is the latter. His doctrine of God is such that he can afford to make large promises in his name, and to affirm that those promises will be honoured. He teaches us, first, that God’s nature it to give. He writes (literally) ‘… let him ask from the giving God …’. The requirements of English make it impossible for us to leave the words just like that, because we have to accommodate the remainder of what James writes within the framework of English grammar. But this is, in fact, how he sees God in himself: he is ‘the giving God’. No one attribute expresses all that is true about God, but each expresses something about him that is true all the time. If we speak of him as ‘gracious’ there are very many other things to say before the divine nature is fully described. Yet there is never a time when we could come to him and find that he was no longer gracious. So it is, also, when he is described as ‘the giving God’. His attributes are as infinite as he himself is, but there is no war among them: they are as perfectly one as he himself is. When we come with our prayers, he never replies, ‘Come back tomorrow. Perhaps I will then be able to be “the giving God” again, but today I must occupy myself with being something else.’ ‘Giving’ is not the whole truth, but it is ceaselessly true. He is more than ‘giving’, but he is always ‘giving.’[1]

How does one pray with confidence when he or she is in the throes of the waves of doubt? The secret, I believe, is found in looking outside ourselves. Confidence in the character of God leads to confidence in our praying. 

"I believe [Lord]; help my unbelief" (Mark 9:24).

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[1] J. A. Motyer, The Message of James (The Bible Speaks Today; ed. John R. W. Stott; Accordance electronic ed. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1985), 38.