It is important to remember that three months before his departure, a Southern Baptist task force determined that Moore’s organization was “a source of significant distraction from the Great Commission work of Southern Baptists.” The report cited things like participating in the partially Soros-funded Evangelical Immigration Table, filing an amicus brief to support a mosque, failing to support the religious liberty of California churches during Covid-19, and a general tone of condescension and unresponsiveness. Moore’s opposition to President Trump was only factor in determining mission drift. [2] This lack of self-awareness on Moore’s part can almost be considered the theme of his book.

Russell Moore, the Editor in Chief of Christianity Today, recently authored a critique of the current state of evangelicalism called Losing Our Religion: An Alter Call for Evangelical America. In decades past, rank and file evangelicals might take someone with Moore’s credentials seriously. Moore served as the President of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention for eight years. Before that he taught theology at the largest Protestant seminary in the country. Yet in 2023, this pedigree can actually serve to decrease one’s credibility in the minds of many conservative evangelicals.
Some of Moore’s own former supporters now see his brand of evangelicalism as controversial. The obvious question is, “What happened?” How did someone who climbed their way to the top of conservative Christianity find themselves on the fringes? The question stretches beyond Russell Moore. Other evangelical elites like Beth Moore, David Platt, and Matt Chandler could ask the same question as they have watched their audience divide and shrink for the past few years. Moore’s answer can be summed up with the reverse of a common breakup line: “It’s not me, it’s you.”
As the title of the book suggests, evangelicals are in the process of losing their religion to a false political gospel and need to come back to the faith. Unlike them, Russell Moore and those who agree with him “never changed.” He writes, after undergoing lengthy “heresy trials” during his time working for the Southern Baptists, “I hadn’t changed my theology, or my behavior, at all. What I had done, as the president of my denomination’s public policy agency, was refuse to endorse Donald Trump.” In Moore’s mind, he “paid the price” for the sharp political divide President Trump exposed. [1]
It is important to remember that three months before his departure, a Southern Baptist task force determined that Moore’s organization was “a source of significant distraction from the Great Commission work of Southern Baptists.” The report cited things like participating in the partially Soros-funded Evangelical Immigration Table, filing an amicus brief to support a mosque, failing to support the religious liberty of California churches during Covid-19, and a general tone of condescension and unresponsiveness. Moore’s opposition to President Trump was only factor in determining mission drift. [2] This lack of self-awareness on Moore’s part can almost be considered the theme of his book.
If Moore were to apply many of his critiques against politically conservative evangelicals to himself he would be found guilty. For example, Moore accuses Trump-supporting evangelicals of relativism when they justify their endorsement using the lesser-of-two-evils approach. He thinks these conservatives believe “immorality is necessary to combat even worse immorality.” That is certainly not the rationale most Christians who voted for Trump used. Yet, Moore himself employed a similar approach to shame evangelicals for failing to sacrifice popularity in order to “preach the gospel” like Martin Luther King Jr. In this case, Moore preferred a man with heretical theology and major character deficiencies over his own evangelical siblings who did not publicly support the Civil Right’s Movement. [3]
Moore also critiques “ends justifies the means” thinking, yet supports things like attending gay wedding receptions in order to be a witness. He attacks what he calls “conflict entrepreneurs” who seek to gain an audience based on controversy. Yet, this could be an apt description of what Moore did to rise to the level he now holds. Moore believes people in the church are normalizing “crazed and irrational conspiracy theories” yet he aggressively promoted the Covid vaccine and thinks white supremacy is a pervasive threat. One might ask Moore: “And if I by Beelzebul cast out demons, by whom do your sons cast them out?” [4]
Of course, Moore does not see himself as engaged in the very thing to which he objects. Instead, he is one of the heroes of the story courageously accepting the position of underdog for the purpose of telling the truth. He draws a parallel between his situation and the situation of Outlaw Country artists like Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings. They were exiled from Music Row, free to write more authentic songs “that seemed real to them.” They breathed new life into a failing genre by breaking established rules and embracing something pure. In the same way, Moore says “American conservative Protestantism [is also] seeking revival.” [5] In order to get there, evil and corruption must be opposed.
In accomplishing this, Moore awkwardly promotes “winsomeness” while simultaneously describing his political enemies in terms severe enough to make the most boisterous Fundamentalist blush.
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[Hypothetical Universalism] betrays not just a few but several core features of Reformed soteriology, and cannot make good on its own claim upon the efficacy of Christ’s death for the elect. But why should that be surprising given the intricate nature and interdependence of Reformed Christian doctrines?

An entailment of the Reformed doctrine of limited atonement is p:
If Christ died for S, then S will be saved.
Therefore, if p is true, S’ salvation is guaranteed by Christ’s death on behalf of S. Which is to say, it is impossible that Christ’s death for S does not result in S’ salvation given p.
Davenant Hypothetical Universalism (HU) rejects p by affirming that (a) Christ died for all and (b) not all will be saved.
The force of the argument is, He who willed and ordained that Christ the Mediator should sustain the wrath of God due to the sins not of certain persons, but of the whole human race, He willed that this passion of Christ should be a remedy applicable to the human race, that is, to each and every man, and not only to certain individual persons; supreme power being nevertheless left to himself, and full liberty of dispensing and applying this infinite merit according to the secret good pleasure of his will.Death of Christ
Furthermore, HU alleges that it is truly possible that a non-elect adult freely (and savingly) believes:
The death of Christ is applicable to any man living, because the condition of faith and repentance is possible to any living person, the secret decree of predestination or preterition in no wise hindering or confining this power either on the part of God, or on the part of men. They act, therefore, with little consideration who endeavour, by the decrees of secret election and preterition, to overthrow the universality of the death of Christ, which pertains to any persons whatsoever according to the tenor of the evangelical covenant.Davenant, Loc. Cit.
If the only freedom that can account for moral responsibility and do justice to the Reformed doctrine of total depravity is compatibilist freedom, then it is not possible for a non-elect person to believe freely and responsibly unless it is also possible for God to incline a person’s will to Christ after he has determined not to do so. Consequently, unless God can deny himself by acting contrary to his decree, HU consigns itself to incompatibilist freedom, which entails an implicit denial of the need for effectual grace to cause one to believe freely.*
Philosophically speaking, incompatibilism, which is not a Reformed position, does allow for the possibility of a non-elect person to believe by exercising libertarian free will. Consequently, HU implies libertarian freedom given HU’s axiom that “the condition of faith and repentance is possible to any living person.”
An Ironic Twist:
Only incompatibilism makes room for the possibility of saving faith for the non-elect. Or as Davenant would have it, the decree of predestination “is in no wise hindering or confining this power either on the part of God, or on the part of men.”
What must be grasped is that libertarian freedom cuts two ways. If it is truly possible that a non-elect living person freely believes the gospel, then it is equally possible that an elect adult will forever freely reject the gospel. (In which case, saving faith is uncaused and according to resistible grace.) Consequently, HU cannot consistently maintain that Christ’s death is effectual for the elect given the possibility of an elect person not believing according to libertarian freedom. In other words, the libertarian freedom that is required for the possibility of the non-elect to believe and be saved ends up undermining the need for effectual grace upon the free will of anyone who would believe. Therefore, by establishing the possibility of a non-elect person believing, Christ’s death cannot be effectual for the elect when there is nothing left to causally guarantee the requisite faith that’s needed to appropriate the benefits of Christ’s death. Or, more generally stated, (a) the metaphysical assumptions entailed by the possibility of any living person freely believing undermines (b) the causal guarantee that any living person will certainly believe.
If we try to introduce the necessary condition of irresistible grace for any living person to believe, then the possibility of any non-elect living person freely believing is confounded along with HU! That’s because the non-elect, after having been passed over in the eternal decree, cannot possibly be the recipients of irresistible grace, which in Reformed theology is a particular bestowal upon the elect that is, also, necessary for the efficacy of the cross.
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For those of us longing and praying for awakening today, on this side of the greatest renewal in history — the coming of God’s Word incarnate and the pouring out of his Spirit at Pentecost — what might we take away from these remarkable renewals in Scripture? First, God will see to it that his people, in the ups and downs of their spiritual journeys in this sin-sick world, are renewed and revived. Even in our longing and praying for revival is already a great glimmer of God’s sovereign work. Then, second, when the Spirit’s fire comes in power, it falls on the wood of God’s word. 

I grew up in a revivalist church in the South. Every few years, we had a “crusade” with special weeknight services and a dynamic, out-of-town speaker. I remember singing “Revive Us Again” as our theme during one of those rallies. I didn’t realize at the time that we were singing Scripture, from Psalm 85:
Will you not revive us again,that your people may rejoice in you? (verse 6)
The history of God’s people, from the first covenant into the new, is a record of various seasons and undulations, corporate backslidings and surprising renewals. Easy as it might be to criticize aspects of the revivalist tradition, something is profoundly right and healthy in the Christian heart that longs for, and prays for, revival — that God’s people would freshly rejoice in him.
In every generation, our sense of the spiritual climate of our times is subjective, yet real. We find ourselves living in days either where true religion seems to be on the rise, or declining. When the tides are rising, we might pray that it become more than it already has. In times of apparent decline, we pray for the tide to turn. Either way, we pray for revival, broadly defined.
But then what do we do next? When our hearts swell with the longing, and with prayers, for God to send corporate renewal to his church, what might we devote our lives to, as we pray and wait?
Revival’s End and Means
An insight right there in Psalm 85, borne out across the Scriptures, gives us a critical and central component of every true revival of genuine religion. Verse 6 asks God for spiritual renewal (“Will you not revive us again . . .”) and clarifies what the heart of that renewal is (“. . . that your people may rejoice in you”). The end, or goal, of biblical revival is God’s people enjoying God, rejoicing in him, having him as our joy of joys.
Then verse 8 gives us a striking glimpse of God’s vital means in bringing about that end of his people rejoicing in him:
Let me hear what God the Lord will speak,for he will speak peace to his people, to his saints. (Psalm 85:8)
So, revival begins with God — through his speaking, his voice, his word. Man does not produce true spiritual revival; God does. And the way in which he does so is through his word. When God sends the fire of his Spirit to fall on the hearts of his people in some blessed local or regional renewal, the fire falls on the wood of his word.
Lay the Kindling
Psalm 85 is a precious testimony, but only one — and we have far more evidence across Scripture that God makes himself central in revival through his word. In every lasting renewal of true religion, God makes his own speaking, his own word, to be fundamental and prominent. Psalm 19:7 celebrates that the law of the Lord — his teaching, his word — revives the soul. The Spirit’s flame does not land without the kindling of his word, and so rallying to God’s word is a plain next step for those who long and pray for revival.
The central place of God’s word is pronounced in the revivals of true worship under the prophet Samuel and later under King Josiah. Samuel’s ministry begins with the acknowledgment that “the word of the Lord was rare in those days” (1 Samuel 3:1). So enter the young prophet, with God’s revealing himself “by the word,” and God’s word coming to all Israel through Samuel’s ministry (1 Samuel 3:19–4:1).
So too with Josiah, who became king in his youth, and walked in the ways of righteousness, but for years his efforts at reform only went so far, until “Hilkiah the priest found the Book of the Law of the Lord given through Moses” (2 Chronicles 34:14). As stunning as it is to us, somehow they had misplaced the Book! Apparently, spiritual dullness had led to neglect, and neglect led to misplacing God’s word. But when the priest and king discovered the Book and read aloud to the people “all the words of the Book of the Covenant that had been found in the house of the Lord” (verse 30), then the fire of national renewal fell.
Grant Us Some Reviving
We see the centrality of God’s word in the spiritual renewal of his people yet again (and with special emphasis) in the after-exile revivals under Ezra and Nehemiah.
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