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Losing Our Religion: An Alter Call for Evangelical America by Russell Moore
Published by Penguin Group Sentinel on 07/25/2023
Genres: Christian
Pages: 272
Format: eARC
Source: NetGalley
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Former Southern Baptist pastor and Christianity Today editor-in-chief Russell Moore calls for repentance and renewal in American evangelicalism

American evangelical Christianity has lost its way. While the witness of the church before a watching world is diminished beyond recognition, congregations are torn apart over Donald Trump, Christian nationalism, racial injustice, sexual predation, disgraced leaders, and covered-up scandals. Left behind are millions of believers who counted on the church to be a place of belonging and hope. As greater and greater numbers of younger Americans bleed out from the church, even the most rooted evangelicals are wondering, “Can American Christianity survive?”

In Losing Our Religion, Russell Moore calls his fellow evangelical Christians to conversion over culture wars, to truth over tribalism, to the gospel over politics, to integrity over influence, and to renewal over nostalgia. With both prophetic honesty and pastoral love, Moore offers a word of counsel for how a new generation of disillusioned and exhausted believers can find a path forward after the crisis and confusion of the last several years. Believing the gospel is too important to leave it to hucksters and grifters, he shows how a Christian can avoid both cynicism and complicity in order to imagine a different, hopeful vision for the church.

The altar call of the old evangelical revivals was both a call to repentance and the offer of a new start. In the same way, this book invites unmoored and discouraged Christians to step out into an uncertain future, first by letting go of the kind of cultural, politicized, status quo Christianity that led us to this moment of reckoning. Only when we see how lost we are, we can find our way again. Only when we bury what’s dead can we experience life again. Only when we lose our religion can we be amazed by grace again.

Losing Our Religion is a book that tells it like it is. The Church is rife with problems that stem from the fact that we view our faith as a religion rather than what it is – faith. At least that’s how I view it and how I perceived the book to be viewing it as well.

I have to say, I am relieved to find someone else who is a Christian, but like me, doesn’t support Donald Trump and is more than a bit unhappy with the current issues of racism and covering-up of sexual abuse going on in the Church. That being said…

Losing Our Religion tackles the tough issues such as the Church becoming embroiled in politics. It talks about how in many cases, Christian thought leaders will support a candidate who at least claims to support the same causes they do, while completely ignoring the causes they don’t support. Or the causes they support that the Church does not. It also talks about the way in which Christian thought leaders and churches excuse or ignore un-Christian behaviors exhibited by these political candidates.

There are a ton of examples of how the church is more or less contradicting itself, but Russell Moore doesn’t just tell us the problems, he gives practicable solutions to the issues. He doesn’t just tell us “hey, there’s a problem here”, he actually provides solutions that we can work on.

I gave this book 4 stars because it tells it like it is, provides solutions, and makes you think about how you and your church leaders are viewing faith, patriotism, nationalism, and more. I highly recommend this to anyone who is frustrated at the current state of the Church and wants to know what they can do about it. You may not be able to change the minds of the whole Church, but you can at least change your own!