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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.

Famous books

The Authorised Version of the Bible (or the King James’s Version) was published in 1611. The precise date when copies began to roll off the presses of the King’s printer seems to be unknown, but it must have been early in the year, as two further editions followed in 1611. It was first published as a large folio volume, intended for public reading in church, and was sold loose-leaf for ten shillings or bound for 12 shillings. It was the work of teams of scholars, whose brief was to revise the Bishops’ Bible of 1568, itself largely based on the work of William Tyndale.

Famous events

Pierre Viret, a Swiss/French Protestant Reformer, was born in 1511 at Orbe, a small town now in the Swiss canton of Vaud, and was converted from Roman Catholicism while studying at the University of Paris. A close associate of John Calvin, he was dubbed ‘The Smile of the Reformation’ for his sweet and winning demeanour and preaching.

What is superstition? ‘To believe in spite of evidence or without evidence. To account for one mystery by another. To believe that the world is governed by chance or caprice. To disregard the true relation between cause and effect. To put thought, intention and design back into nature. To believe that mind created and controls matter.’ It is all to do with living in a spooky, chancy who-knows-what- might- happen-next kind of universe.

Before Christianity came onto the scene, the ancient world was very much a world of magic, astrology, amulets, charms, curses, and love potions. Often they were associated with religion — especially seeking the aid of certain gods and goddesses. Every village had ‘wise ones’, who dispensed to people’s needs. Archaeologists have found magical curses scratched on lead tablets and papyri offering recipes and instructions for black sorcery.

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/).

In 1969 I was studying for teaching at De La Salle Roman Catholic Teacher Training College at Hopwood Hall, Middleton, Manchester. I was in my third and final year. The college was run by the De la Salle brothers, Vatican 2 was in progress and there were welcome winds of change blowing through the institution.

I had been baptised as an infant and had attended Catholic schools throughout my education from convent to grammar school. I had been told that I was a child of God and a member of God’s true church on earth. I had faithfully gone to mass each week but had begun to question the church’s teaching after meeting a Brethren couple a few years before.

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).

In 50 years as missionaries, my wife and I have become familiar with immigration laws and offices in the countries where we served: Argentina, Brazil, Canada, the United States and now Spain. As recently as 2007, in Valencia, we were standing in line for hours, filling forms and asking God for patience to cope with bureaucratic slowness. In those queues you hear amazing stories of joys, tragedies, dramatic expectations and disappointments for migrant people.

Churches in Spain have had to face the challenge of a massive wave of migrants from Latin America, Africa and Eastern Europe. It is a missionary challenge, forcing churches to go to the roots of their faith.

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).

One of the most respected chains of American department stores is the J.C. Penney Company.

Its origins can be traced to a store started in 1902 by James Cash Penney, the son of a Kentucky Baptist minister, in Kemmerer, Wyoming.¹ It was incorporated under its present name in 1913 and by 1929 Penney himself was worth 40 million dollars.

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.