President of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission Russell Moore recently spoke to the New Orleans Seminary and said Christians should advocate for the Gospel — and religious freedom:

The apostle Paul provides a model for how pastors and other Christians are to maintain “the centrality of the Gospel and the defense of religious liberty at the same time,” Moore told the seminarians.

Preaching from Acts 26:24-32, Moore said Paul both defended his religious freedom and proclaimed the Gospel…

“Paul here understands that freedom itself is not enough,” Moore said. The freedom Paul sought — and Christians today should seek — “is a freedom to do something … the pushing and the pressing and the pleading of the Gospel,” he said.

While some have advocated for Christians to abandon the political realm — an attitude of which Moore was even accused — Moore clearly says Christians have a duty to advocate for religious liberty.

Moore also had words of warning for military chaplains: 

Moore told future chaplains in the audience they would be “on the front lines of these sorts of questions.” The ERLC has worked with the North American Mission Board, which commissions Southern Baptist chaplains, in the effort to defend the freedom of military chaplains…

Chaplains will be told to pray generic prayers, not ones in Jesus’ name, Moore said. The problem with agreeing to do so is “you have allowed the government to set up a generic religion that you are a minster of,” he said. “When it comes to prayer, the government does not have jurisdiction there.”

He’s not the first to say chaplains are on the “frontlines” of issues of religious liberty and the government.  Some have recognized its not just the chaplains…

ADVERTISEMENT