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Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Oct 2011

To even attempt to broach this demanding topic in a few hundred words is to rush in where angels fear to tread.

So first a preliminary word: this will not be exhaustive. It will not be ‘exhausting’ either, for which you may breathe a sigh of relief, because of its appropriate brevity.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Jul 2011

The American economy has had a lower than expected increase in employment.

Other indicators from around the world seem to contribute to an expectation that if this economy is improving, it is doing so slowly.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 May 2011

One of the most interesting pieces of news is perhaps a little buried beneath the headlines.

An Illinois court has made the ruling that pharmacists will not be required to stock the morning after pill. This is a remarkable victory for some battling Christian small business owners who have been threatened with going out of business because of their commitment to Christian values. As part of the process it emerged that the original mandate to force all pharmacies to carry Plan B was actually autographed by Planned Parenthood. Under the instruction of the previous Mayor of Chicago the wheels were set in motion. But now, though of course the ruling will be appealed, there is reason for celebration. Much prayer, faithfulness, clarity has allowed Christians to continue to operate within this area of medical practice.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Apr 2011

(Warning: flagrant self-promotion to follow.) My book No Other Gospel (Crossway, 2011) has just been published and I have duly been doing the rounds of radio interviews on Christian radio in the US.

They have certainly been fascinating. Whereas in the UK there is Premier Radio listened to by a loyal audience, no doubt, in the US there is a very large population of Christians who listen to Christian talk radio, with news and music, and regular preaching programming. Some of it perhaps classifies as ‘naff’ or ‘cheesy’, but much of it is genuinely edifying and helpful.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Dec 2010

The financial crisis of 2008 caused many a surprise, but perhaps none as unusual as the recent discovery made by John Bollen of Indiana University.

Bollen has analysed messages sent through the website Twitter during that crisis. He expected that the emotional content of these ‘Tweets’ would mirror the market. But he was wrong. The Tweets did not reflect the market; they predicted it by two to three days, and at an accuracy of about 86%.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Jan 2011

Some remarkable new studies have emerged about the changing patterns of marriage in America.

For decades, it has been assumed that the more educated elites tended towards being more liberal in this and many other ways, while the lower echelons, the less educated with minimal if any college education, are assumed to be more conservative with relation to marriage and anything else.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Oct 2010

After Glenn Beck (a Mormon Fox News commentator) organised and led a massive rally in Washington DC recently, calling on the need for reviving America, many discerning Christian commentators were disconcerted — to say the least – to discover that evangelical Christians seemed able to embrace Beck as one of their own.

Justin Taylor has since posted a repeat of the ESV Study Bible’s teaching about what is different between Mormonism and Christianity¹, and Russell Moore has opined successfully that the problem is not that Beck is an effective leader, nor that he is allowed to speak his mind in religiously free America, but that some evangelical Christians are so undiscerning.²

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Nov 2010

John Piper is one of the most influential of his generation of evangelical leaders, and this month Crossway have come out with a ‘festschrift’ in his honour.

The book lists a remarkable catalogue of friends and colleagues with whom Piper has collaborated over the years. And it is surely a testament to the way God has used John Piper that such a book could be put together.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Jul 2010

The growing environmental crisis in the (Mexican) Gulf, following the breakage of the BP oil pipe, is doing something unexpected to evangelical environmental concerns: there is a developing tenderness.

Dr. Moore, Senior Vice President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, writes winsomely and captivatingly about his epiphany after his recent exposure to the issue in the Gulf area (http://www.russellmoore.com/2010/06/01/ecological-catastrophe-and-the-uneasy-evangelical-conscience/).

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Jun 2010

I understand the normal apologetic narrative of evangelicalism’s standard engagement with contemporary culture, and by and large agree with it.

Typically, we are told, that we now live in an age where ‘modern’ scientific certainty has given way, or is in process of giving way, to more ‘postmodern’ relativistic assumptions about the meaning of life. Along with this shift, and at its root, is an epistemological issue, which impacts how our language, conversation, preaching, evangelism and truth claims are made, or heard to be made at the least.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Apr 2010

Josh Moody interviews Professor Douglas Moo on this important issue.

JM: Dr. Moo, would you explain to us (in 100 words or less!) what the current state of play is ‘theologically’ with regard to the issue of justification?

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Sep 2009

Another holiday season is coming to an end as I write and I wonder ‘What is the point of it all?’

If I remember rightly from my early modern history at Cambridge, summer holidays (as a distinct and expected season of rest for a large majority of the population) is a fairly recent invention.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Mar 2010

It wasn’t long after the current crisis in Haiti broke that I was sent the following YouTube clip of Pat Robertson ascribing the devastation of Haiti to the work of the devil, indeed a pact of the devil (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59NCduEhkBM). Cue usual snorts of derision from non-Christians (and many Christians no doubt too), and cue usual despair that the rather more sophisticated — it’s not hard to be rather more sophisticated — apologists are not given the same airtime.

Then there was also the link I was sent of some former evangelical professor who seemed to suggest that the ‘clever ones’ (or some such phrase) offering an attempted theodicy would be trying to so do by saying it was all a ‘mystery’.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Feb 2010

Whether or not — and to what extent, and at what speed — the international market economy is recovering is beyond the scope of this paper, and certainly beyond my expertise as a writer.

But from the ground up it still looks like, to say the least, we are in ‘interesting’ financial times, and some list it as ongoing through 2010 at least (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_crisis_of_2007%E2%80%932010). What does this mean for the church?

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Jan 2010

The city ‘that never sleeps’ and which is the cure for ‘small town blues’ has rather incongruously become the location for a gathering of evangelical, Roman Catholic, and Orthodox ministers to issue a joint statement against the current cultural moral decline called the Manhattan Declaration. Since then, a firestorm!

Those evangelicals who signed it are accused of compromising because throughout the Manhattan Declaration the term ‘Christian’ is used to define all three groups. Plus, very little mention is made in the declaration about the gospel itself (inevitably given the different views on the gospel the original signatories of the document hold).

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Dec 2009

The current story of Pope Benedict inviting Anglicans to Rome (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125615995448599769.html?mod=article-outset-box) is no doubt covered elsewhere, but it has a particular ring within the context of the US.

In certain circles of American evangelicalism, being more high churchy, if not downright sacramental, has become a little bit attractive. I am told that for every one evangelical who moves to Rome, three move from Rome to evangelicalism, so it’s not as if we have a major issue, but nonetheless it does make you scratch your head. Coming recently from a part of America (New England) where the Roman Catholic churches are struggling after the disaster of the priest child abuse cases, it is — let us say — downright astonishing to find a good ol’ Bible bashing evangelical getting all funky about candles, bells, and men in dresses (I mean ‘cassocks’, excuse me, brethren).

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Nov 2009

Every Saturday millions of Americans watch their little tykes play soccer, little league baseball, or the equivalent.

The suburban parks are full of mini-vans, the parents shout and cheer each tiny kick or hit, holding expensive name brand lattés in their hands. Is this wicked? What does the gospel have to say to such folk? Pack up and go to the inner city? Or is there something redeemable about living ‘in the world but not of the world’ in the suburb land of the city (and not just the inner city).

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Oct 2009

A movie that few men of my generation have not seen at least once, if not multiple times, Clint Eastwood’s Spaghetti Western The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly makes a fitting summary of the conclusions reached by a stellar panel at Southern Theological Seminary.

There’s a link to the hour-long discussion at Justin Taylor’s http://theologica.blogspot.com/ posted on Friday September 4 2009.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Jul 2009

Twitter is, as it self-defines, ‘a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?’ As a web page resource it appears to be becoming increasingly popular for fast paced interaction.

Recently (http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/article_print.html?id=81195), pastor Rob Bell was asked to ‘Twitter’ the gospel. A Twitter post has to be 140 characters or less, so the challenge is not incommensurate to the challenge to summarise the gospel very briefly. It gets at the issue: what is the gospel at its heart? If you had to leave out everything but 140 characters what would you say? No doubt the challenge to Twitter the gospel also gets at the difficulty of offering the gospel (preaching the gospel) in an appealing way in such short compass. Is that possible? Can you actually summarise the essential elements of the biblical gospel in just a few short sentences? What would you write?

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Jun 2009

Josh Moody talks to Ben Peays

JM: Ben, tell us briefly what the original vision was behind The Gospel Coalition (TGC)?

BP: The vision for TGC came during a lunch in Manhattan between Don Carson and Tim Keller. They discussed the questions, ‘What would it take to recover, or rejuvenate, the centre of confessional, Reformed evangelicalism?’ and ‘What could be done to stop the endless drift of evangelicalism?’ The last couple of decades had seen the erosion of the gospel in many churches. They decided to initially call together 40 pastors, from a broad group of denominations, generations and racial groups. These were all people committed to the ministry of the word. From here they began to think and pray about what could be done. That was in 2005.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 May 2009

Military theorists will often espouse that the tendency of all armies is to be prepared to fight the last battle. Because it takes time for large institutions to change, because humans typically respond to experience, there is an inertia towards preparedness for yesterday’s battles. The classic example of this is the French army’s readiness to fight a World War 1 style of battle on the eve of World War 2.

Well, new data from the American Religious Identification Survey (March 2009) shows, it claims, that ‘the challenge to Christianity in the US does not come from other religions but rather from a rejection of all forms of organised religion’. If that is true, and it seems to have some purchase, then what we need as a church is a way of doing church that answers that question about organised religion. Instead, of course, what we find is a highly organised mega or traditional church that is geared to answer the question of felt needs through a multitude of programmes. We have an army ready to fight World War 1 on the eve of World War 2.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Apr 2009

Various trends within evangelicalism, and the surrounding culture, seem to be combining to present, if not the perfect storm, at least a tipping point where things could either move forward in exciting new ways or backwards alarmingly.

David Olson, the director of the American Church Research Project, has come out with a new book called The American Church in Crisis. In this book he catalogues the gradual decline in church attendance in America, and predicts that by 2050 there will be around 10% of the population in church. You can find an interview of Olson at http://www2.journalnow.com/content/2009/feb/28/study-finds-attendance-at-churches-still-falling/living/ In a slightly different take on the same issue, the Southern Baptist pastor Bob Pearle has written The Vanishing Church. He writes that the biblical church in America is being replaced with ‘Wal-Mart’ churches which are geared towards providing what their consumers want. There’s a discussion of this book at http://www.star-telegram.com/religion/story/1230235.html

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Mar 2009

I don’t know whether it is conscious or not (and I trust not), but, in my observation, more and more of the discussion in Christian circles is generated by a concern to establish, and then develop, a market niche.

First, you have had a spate of books which are either manoeuvering for religious market share or debating theological angels on a pinhead. I don’t propose to list the titles, but those of us who keep track of such things can nod in agreement now at the numerous books of that form, as well, of course, as the many wonderful books being produced alongside. Then you have the ever-growing Christian conference season. Perhaps it is less pernicious in England, but on this side of the Atlantic while there are worthy conferences, and probably a need for more of that ilk, on the other hand you only have to sneeze to give birth to another conference which is pushing a particular niche brand of Christianity.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Feb 2009

A new Barna poll (January 12 2009) claims to show that most American Christians are adopting a pick and mix attitude towards Christianity and (indeed) other faiths.¹

In itself, such a claim might not appear particularly surprising. It is certainly part of a long observed trend from objective truth to subjective interpretation, and from acceptance of authority to individual choice of belief.