# Losing Our Religion — Russell Moore **Summary.** Russell Moore's 2023 book (Sentinel / Penguin Random House) on what he calls the contemporary crisis of American evangelicalism. The framing combines memoir (his own departure from the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission in 2021) and diagnostic claim (American evangelicalism has experienced an institutional crisis that has driven many faithful Christians away from evangelical institutions while not driving them away from the faith). The book is one of the most prominent recent works in the post-evangelical evangelical genre — staying Christian while publicly leaving evangelical institutional structures. **Source-page status**: This page is a roundup grounded in publicly available summary information and the broader Moore conversation engaged via [[2026-05-27-how-to-stay-christian-russell-moore-youtube|How to Stay Christian When Everything Seems Awful]]. Full primary-source Readwise ingest of the book itself remains future-cycle work; the page exists to close the immediate dead link and provide an anchored summary. ## What the book argues ### The diagnostic claim Moore's central diagnostic claim — based on what's publicly documented — is that American evangelicalism in the 2010s and 2020s suffered an institutional crisis that distinguished healthy evangelical Christianity from corrupt evangelical institutions. The institutional crisis includes: - Trumpism's absorption of evangelical political identity into Republican partisan identity - The SBC's mishandling of sexual abuse cases (the Guidepost Solutions investigation released in 2022) - The proliferation of Christian Nationalist political theology among evangelical leaders - The "deconstruction" exodus from evangelical churches by people whose faith remained but whose trust in evangelical institutions did not - The Q-anon conspiracy theory infiltration of evangelical networks - The January 6 mobilization in which Christian symbolism was prominently displayed ### The "stay Christian" framing Moore's distinctive contribution is the claim that the institutional crisis doesn't require leaving Christianity. The right response, in his framing, is to stay Christian while publicly departing the evangelical institutions that have failed. This is structurally different from: - The progressive Christianity exit pattern (typified by figures like Rachel Held Evans, Sarah Bessey, Diana Butler Bass — though these figures themselves vary) - The complete-deconstruction pattern (leaving the faith entirely) - The defending-evangelicalism pattern (claiming the crisis is exaggerated or critics are uncharitable) Moore models a fourth position: staying Christian, staying broadly evangelical in theology, but explicitly departing institutional structures that have failed. ### The Christianity Today move Moore's move from the SBC ERLC to *Christianity Today* (as Editor-in-Chief since 2022) operationalizes the position. CT functions as a non-denominational evangelical institution that has resisted some of the failure modes affecting denominational evangelicalism. Moore's editorial direction there has continued the diagnostic project the book makes explicit. ## Key themes from the book (per publicly documented summary) ### The "crisis of authority" - Evangelical authority structures (denominations, seminaries, parachurch organizations) have lost credibility through specific failures - The crisis is not theological in primary aspect; it's institutional and ethical - Recovery requires institutional rebuilding, not theological reformulation ### The role of Trumpism specifically - Moore engages explicitly with how Trump-era political alignment captured evangelical identity - His own SBC departure was partly precipitated by his critical position on Trump - The book treats this not as one isolated political dispute but as symptomatic of a deeper compromise ### The abuse-case dimension - Moore writes substantively about the SBC sexual-abuse investigation - The Guidepost Solutions report (2022) documented patterns of institutional cover-up - Moore's framing connects this to broader institutional-credibility loss ### Pastoral implications - The book is partly written for pastors and lay leaders trying to navigate the crisis - Practical advice for what to do when institutional structures fail - The framework: small-c catholic Christianity (the broader tradition) provides resources the institutional structures are failing to deliver ## Why Losing Our Religion matters to this wiki ### As one of the most substantial post-evangelical evangelical works - Moore's position is theologically and pastorally significant - The "stay Christian, leave the failed institution" framing is a model for many contemporary deconstruction-adjacent practitioners - Connects to [[Deconstruction]] concept page ### As contrast to the progressive-Christianity exit pattern - McLaren, Bessey, and others typify the post-evangelical → progressive trajectory - Moore typifies the post-evangelical → broader-Christian-tradition-without-progressive-identity trajectory - Both are real patterns; understanding the distinction matters for pastoral practice ### As engagement with Christian Nationalism - The book engages [[Christian Nationalism]] directly as one of the institutional failures - Moore's position provides theological grounding for evangelical Christians who reject Christian Nationalism while remaining theologically conservative ### As context for the Stay Christian YouTube source - [[2026-05-27-how-to-stay-christian-russell-moore-youtube|How to Stay Christian When Everything Seems Awful]] is Moore's conversation with [[Andrea Palpant Dilley]] about a different book but participates in the same broader framework - The "stay Christian" framing in the YouTube source is Moore's framework in action ### As potential bridge to broader tradition - Moore explicitly engages broader Christian tradition (mainline Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox) as resources for evangelical recovery - This is unusual for SBC-tradition figures; suggests the post-evangelical evangelical position involves substantive ecumenical engagement ## Reception - Substantial mainstream-media attention upon release - Mixed reception within evangelical circles — some treating Moore as betrayer, others as accurately diagnostic - Outside-evangelical reception has been substantial; the book engages secular interest in evangelical crisis without being a journalistic outside-account ## What's not in this page (gaps for future cycles) This source page is deliberately limited to publicly documented summary material. Full primary-source ingest would require: 1. **Reading the book directly** — the page should be re-grounded against the actual chapter structure and specific arguments after Readwise ingest 2. **Comparison with Moore's earlier work** — his SBC ERLC writings, his *Onward* (2015), would deepen the trajectory analysis 3. **Engagement with the reception literature** — both evangelical and post-evangelical responses 4. **Engagement with parallel post-evangelical works** — Beth Allison Barr's *Making of Biblical Womanhood*, Kristin Kobes Du Mez's *Jesus and John Wayne*, others Each would extend this page's grounding. The current page closes the immediate dead link; it does not claim to be a complete engagement. ## Related - [[Russell Moore]] · [[Christianity Today]] · [[Southern Baptist Convention]] · [[Andrea Palpant Dilley]] - [[Deconstruction]] · [[Christian Nationalism]] · [[Progressive Christianity]] (as contrast) - [[Brian McLaren]] (parallel post-evangelical trajectory) - See also: [[Faith & Theology MOC]]; [[NAR and Charismatic Authority Critique MOC]] (adjacent failure-of-evangelical-institutions thread)