Christianity Today and Russell Moore: A Match Made in Hell

David Morrill

‘I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.’ Revelation 3:14-15 (ESV).

Call me old-fashioned, but I still think words should mean something. Take Christian for instance – a word which identifies a person who believes in and practices the doctrines of Christianity. A Christian is a person saved by faith in Jesus, and who bears fruit in keeping with true repentance. And not just any “Jesus,” but the Word who became flesh (John 1:14) and whose authority comprises the entire counsel of holy scripture (Revelation 22:18). Christians believe and practice God’s truths.

So imagine my surprise when the long-published evangelical magazine Christianity Today (CT) made the decision to promote their most notorious unbeliever – “Baptist” grenade tosser Russell Moore – to the position of editor-in-chief. After all, if the word Christian means anything at all, having non-Christian employees at a Christian publication would seem to undermine the supposed purpose – especially if those employees held a position as important as editor-in-chief.

Obviously, I wasn’t surprised at all.

In truth, CT is being consistent with its original purpose, which according to founder Billy Graham was to, “plant the evangelical flag in the middle of the road, taking a conservative theological position but a definite liberal approach to social problems.” According to Graham, CT would “combine the best in liberalism and the best in fundamentalism without compromising theologically.” While Graham’s understanding of liberalism was undoubtedly different in 1954 than the unapologetic Marxism the term denotes today, the magazine was purposefully founded to stand in the middle of the worldly road and bridge the divide between truth and falsehood – a biblically offensive concept (2 Cor. 6:14). Rather than shine a light into a darkened world, Graham’s evangelicals and the newly-defined evangelical establishment embraced a middling third way that more closely resembled the Christian Democracy-style communitarianism that defines the ethics of Russell Moore. In other words, having an editor-in-chief who advances social justice, bullied Christians into submitting to compelled vaccination, and ripped churches that grew due to their faithfulness in not closing down during the “pandemic” fits CT perfectly.

Moore himself who claims to have begun reading CT at age 15, being “electrified” by columnists like gay-partnering former CT editor-at-large Philip Yancey, who helped Moore see the racism, immorality, violence, and legalism occurring in “Christian subcultures.” Moore’s life as a confessional and convictional chameleon (Democrat to Republican, Baptist to Presbyterian and/or Anglican, Calvinist soteriology yet world capitulation) prepares him perfectly to head up a publication whose name implies sensitivity and concern with the latest thing, and Moore’s jaw-bending southern delivery is primed to disarm all but the most vigilant Bereans.

Much like founder Billy Graham, Russell Moore sees CT as the voice of the evasive third way – conservative on paper, liberal in practice – befriending all and loving none. Rather than the Christianity once and for all delivered to the saints (Jude 1:3), CT will continue to promote a “Christianity” of today – bending to the desires and lofty ideas of the culture it inhabits. Russell Moore is an ideal person to lead a publication that has one foot in the church and the other in the world, and an ideal representative of modern evangelicalism’s unholy union between light and darkness.