I am excited to have my good friend Russell Moore speak at this year’s Forum14/Bible Conference March 9-11. Dr. Moore and I have had a growing friendship since he first delivered the Leroy Forlines Lectures at Welch College several years ago. He has since been back to our campus a number of times to visit and speak.
Dr. Moore was recently named president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. Before that, he was academic vice president at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. He is author of a number of books, including The Kingdom of Christ (Crossway) andTempted and Tried (Crossway).
It was a special privilege to be at Dr. Moore’s recent installation as president of the ERLC at Capitol Hill Baptist Church, Washington, D.C. (see his address “A Prophetic Minority: Kingdom, Culture, and Mission in a New Era” here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrVfcbRNpwo). In this new role, he will be one of the most visible evangelicals in public life, representing evangelical Christians on the major news networks and in other public venues.
One thing I like about Russell is his ability to speak the truth in love. Even when he says things that, to a secular public, are very difficult truths, he says them in a way that is loving and intelligent and deserves a hearing. He calls it “convictional kindness in the public square.”
Too many religious conservatives who have spoken to issues of public life have done so with a scowl, and too many others have put all their eggs in the political basket, almost believing that politics was the real savior in the modern world. But on the other extreme, too many evangelicals have been politically quietist, retreating from the public square and cultural engagement.
In his new role, Russell Moore will avoid both these extremes. He is taking on the mantle of Carl F. H. Henry in The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism. This balance is so needed in today’s evangelical environment, with people on one hand calling for evangelicals to be silent for a time in the public square, and people on the other hand redefining the mission of the church as much in terms of saving the whales as saving souls.
At his core, however, Russell Moore is simply a powerful preacher of the Word of God. I encourage you to come to Forum14 to hear him.