The Russell Moore Show

What if the church’s biggest discipleship problem isn’t disbelief—but disinterest in learning? Watch the video of this episode on YouTube here. In a recent subscriber-only livestream, Russell Moore welcomes Bible teacher and author Jen Wilkin to examine what her recent Christianity Today essay calls “the great omission”: the quiet disappearance of learning from the center of Christian discipleship. Wilkin contends that the church has often replaced structured, outcome-oriented learning with looser models built around community or immediate application. The result, she argues, is not deeper connection but a generation of well-meaning Christians who struggle to articulate even foundational doctrines. Through conversation and livestream chat questions, Moore and Wilkin explore how this shift happened—through the offloading of Sunday school structures, the fear of asking too much of busy people, and a reluctance to let learners sit in confusion long enough for understanding to take root.  Throughout, they underscore a central conviction: the church does not need gimmicks so much as it needs courage to teach again, trusting that truth learned deeply can actually be handed on. Get access to future subscriber-only livestreams! Subscribe to Christianity Today–Click here for 25% off a subscription. Resources mentioned in this episode: The Great Omission – Jen’s article Keep up with Russell: Sign up for the weekly newsletter where Russell shares thoughtful takes on big questions, offers a Christian perspective on life, and recommends books and music he's enjoying. Submit a question for the show at questions@russellmoore.com Subscribe to the Christianity Today Magazine: Special offer for listeners of The Russell Moore Show: Click here for 25% off a subscription Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Russell answers a listener question about whether a church’s differences over Calvinism and Arminianism mean it’s time to leave his church. Watch the video of this episode on YouTube here. Submit your own question for the show! Email questions@russellmoore.com — and remember: attach a voice memo! Keep up with Russell: Sign up for the weekly newsletter where Russell shares thoughtful takes on big questions, offers a Christian perspective on life, and recommends books and music he's enjoying. Subscribe to the Christianity Today Magazine: Special offer for listeners of The Russell Moore Show: Click here for 25% off a subscription. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What can we do when we love our country, but feel exhausted by politics and unable to understand how the government actually works? Watch the video of this episode on YouTube here. In this episode, Russell–who this guest would lovingly call a “governerd”–welcomes Sharon McMahon, who has been called “America’s government teacher,” known online as Sharon Says So and through her Substack The Preamble. They talk about why so many Americans feel either helpless or furious in the public square, and what it would look like to rebuild sanity without sliding into cynicism.  McMahon explains how she stays out of partisan leanings by anchoring herself to the Constitution and to moral commitments that can critique both sides—without dehumanizing the people who vote differently. The conversation ranges from digital burnout and practical tools to build better habits to what genuine civic hope looks like, and McMahon makes a case for a “small and mighty” faithfulness: history is shaped by ordinary people who keep doing the next needed thing. Ultimately, the conversation ends with a heed: spend less energy proving you’re right and more energy living in a way that makes love believable. If the churn of back-and-forth political rhetoric has you feeling whiplash, anchor yourself in this conversation, which reminds that democracy isn’t sustained by viral takes or ideological purity, but by normal people doing the next faithful thing. Sharon says so. Resources mentioned in this episode: The Small and the Mighty by Sharon McMahon We Are Mighty by Sharon McMahon (releasing May 2026). Keep up with Russell: Sign up for the weekly newsletter where Russell shares thoughtful takes on big questions, offers a Christian perspective on life, and recommends books and music he's enjoying. Submit a question for the show at questions@russellmoore.com  Subscribe to the Christianity Today Magazine: Special offer for listeners of The Russell Moore Show: Click here for 25% off a subscription. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Russell gets a listener question about country music as he explores how a Martina McBride song helps us better love our neighbors. Watch the video of this episode on YouTube here. Submit your own question for the show! Email questions@russellmoore.com — and remember: attach a voice memo! Keep up with Russell: Sign up for the weekly newsletter where Russell shares thoughtful takes on big questions, offers a Christian perspective on life, and recommends books and music he's enjoying. Subscribe to the Christianity Today Magazine: Special offer for listeners of The Russell Moore Show: Click here for 25% off a subscription. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What does it mean to follow Jesus when the state is demanding your loyalty—and the church is tempted to comply? Watch the video of this episode on YouTube here. On the 120th anniversary of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s birth (February 4th), Russell sits down with Charles Marsh—author of Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer—to ask why Bonhoeffer still captivates Christians and what his witness demands from us now. Together, they explore how Bonhoeffer recognized the moral collapse of the German church earlier than most, and why he insisted that confessing Christ’s lordship must sometimes give way to concrete, costly action in history. The conversation widens to the pastoral dilemma Bonhoeffer never escaped: when is it enough to proclaim the gospel faithfully, and when must a preacher speak directly to the crisis at hand? Marsh reflects on the tension between shaping consciences slowly and naming injustice plainly, and how Bonhoeffer struck a balance. Marsh ultimately tells the story of his own father, a Mississippi pastor who preached “Amazing Grace for Every Race” at real personal cost, and of figures like Will D. Campbell and Fannie Lou Hamer, whose Christian witness fused tenderness with moral clarity. Their lives, Marsh suggests, reveal that faithfulness may not be loud, but it is never neutral. Resources mentioned in this episode: Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer by Charles Marsh Brother to a Dragonfly by Will D. Campbell Fannie Lou Hamer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You cannot hide a hardened heart behind the fact that you weren’t the one pulling the trigger. On occasion, we like to record audio versions of the latest from Russell’s weekly newsletter. Read this article here. Sign up for the newsletter, Moore to the Point, where Russell shares thoughtful takes on big questions, offers a Christian perspective on life, and recommends books and music he's enjoying. Submit a question for the show (and include a voice memo!) at questions@russellmoore.com  Subscribe to the Christianity Today Magazine: Special offer for listeners of The Russell Moore Show: Click here for 25% off a subscription Watch this episode on YouTube Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Why walk with God when answers don’t come quickly—and sometimes don’t come at all? Watch the video of this episode on YouTube here. Russell and Beth join forces again to embark on the Bible’s darkest terrain: Ecclesiastes and Job. Drawing from Beth’s current teaching on Job, her newly released Bible study, and Russell’s work through Hebrews 11, they explore why Scripture so often leaves suffering unresolved. Along the way, they reflect on faith as endurance rather than fragility, and the long, quiet formation that happens through daily obedience rather than spiritual breakthroughs. Beth shares wisdom shaped by decades of teaching, parenting, journaling, and marriage—including what she’s learned about letting God hold people we love and how stubborn grace can sustain a life and a marriage over time.  The conversation turns finally to Job, Gethsemane, and the cries of Jesus, who not only models lament, but gathers it up and answers it entirely with his death and resurrection. If you’re living through uncertainty, carrying grief you can’t yet resolve, or learning how to trust God without clarity—and you’re comforted by a conversation that refuses clichés while still insisting on hope—this episode is for you. Resources mentioned in this episode: Walking with God: A Five-Week Journey in Step with the Savior by Beth Moore First and Second Samuel by Eugene Peterson Thoughts in Solitude by Thomas Merton Keep up with Russell: Sign up for the weekly newsletter where Russell shares thoughtful takes on big questions, offers a Christian perspective on life, and recommends books and music he's enjoying. Submit a question for the show at questions@russellmoore.com  Subscribe to the Christianity Today Magazine: Special offer for listeners of The Russell Moore Show: Click here for 25% off a subscription. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Russell takes a listener question about how we can speak about our faith, and how we are influenced by it, in conversation about the everyday experience of being a human. Watch the video of this episode on YouTube here. Submit your own question for the show! Email questions@russellmoore.com — and remember: attach a voice memo! Keep up with Russell: Sign up for the weekly newsletter where Russell shares thoughtful takes on big questions, offers a Christian perspective on life, and recommends books and music he's enjoying. Subscribe to the Christianity Today Magazine: Special offer for listeners of The Russell Moore Show: Click here for 25% off a subscription. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What does American football reveal about who we are and who we’re becoming? Watch the video of this episode on YouTube here. Russell Moore talks with cultural critic and essayist Chuck Klosterman about his new book Football and what the sport tells us about masculinity, community, memory, violence, and belief. From Roman gladiator games to Super Bowl halftime shows, and from church attendance to television economics, Klosterman argues that football is more than entertainment: it’s one of the last truly shared experiences in American life—and one that may not survive the century. Even for listeners who don’t care about football at all, this conversation is about the deeper question beneath the spectacle: what happens when a culture’s rituals outlast its imagination? Moore and Klosterman discuss football as a made-for-television phenomenon, the way fandom shapes identity and irrationality, and how football functions as an unofficial secular holiday—one that churches once resisted, then accommodated, and eventually surrendered to. Along the way, they examine agency, violence, masculinity, and why moral critiques of football provoke more outrage than theological disagreements ever could. The conversation widens to include politics, class, religion, and even Billy Joel—ending with the question: when future generations judge our era by one piece of football culture, what will they see? Keep up with Russell: Sign up for the weekly newsletter⁠ where Russell shares thoughtful takes on big questions, offers a Christian perspective on life, and recommends books and music he's enjoying. Submit a question for the show at ⁠questions@russellmoore.com⁠  Subscribe to the Christianity Today Magazine: Special offer for listeners of The Russell Moore Show: ⁠Click here⁠ for 25% off a subscription —  “The Russell Moore Show” is a production of Christianity Today Executive Producer: Clarissa Moll Host: Russell Moore Producer: Leslie Thompson Associate Producer: McKenzie Hill Senior Producer: Matt Stevens Audio engineering by Kevin Morris Video producer: Sam Cedar Theme Song: “Citizens” by Jon Guerra Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Believers often use Romans 13 to wave away state violence, but that’s the opposite of what Paul intended. ⁠Watch the episode on YouTube. On occasion, we like to record audio versions of the latest from Russell’s weekly newsletter. Read this article here. Sign up for the newsletter, Moore to the Point, where Russell shares thoughtful takes on big questions, offers a Christian perspective on life, and recommends books and music he's enjoying. Submit a question for the show (and include a voice memo!) at questions@russellmoore.com  Subscribe to the Christianity Today Magazine: Special offer for listeners of The Russell Moore Show: Click here for 25% off a subscription. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What do myth, wilderness, and ancient story have to teach a culture drowning in information but starving for meaning? Watch a video version of this episode, here. Russell Moore sits down with mythologist, storyteller, and author Martin Shaw–called our “greatest living storyteller”–in a conversation centered on Shaw’s upcoming book, Liturgies of the Wild (releasing February 3). Drawing on folklore, wilderness tradition, and Christian theology, Shaw argues that Christianity is not merely a belief system but an initiatory path—one that modern culture has domesticated into something safer, quieter, and far less demanding. Shaw reflects on his own journey from Baptist church pews to decades spent studying myth, living in a tent, and eventually returning—reluctantly—to Christianity through Eastern Orthodoxy. Their conversation touches on his 4-day-retreat-turned-conversion, myth versus fact, the resurrection as “disturbingly strange,” the dangers of cynicism and sarcasm, the rise of psychedelic spirituality, and how practices as simple as memorizing a poem or sitting by a fire can begin to re-form the soul. If you’re beginning the year considering longing, risk, and what it means to become fully human in a world that prefers comfort to transformation–and you’re wanting to hear poetry recited in a British accent–this conversation is for you. Resources mentioned in this episode: Liturgies of the Wild — Martin Shaw The Moviegoer — Walker Percy The Pilgrim’s Regress — C.S. Lewis Against the Machine — Paul Kingsnorth (Listen here for Paul’s interview with Russell) The Hero with a Thousand Faces — Joseph Campbell Keep up with Russell: ⁠Sign up for the weekly newsletter⁠ ⁠⁠where Russell shares thoughtful takes on big questions, offers a Christian perspective on life, and recommends books and music he's enjoying. Submit a question for the show at ⁠questions@russellmoore.com⁠  Subscribe to the Christianity Today Magazine: Special offer for listeners of The Russell Moore Show: ⁠⁠⁠Click here⁠ for 25% off a subscription⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Believers can disagree on migration policies—but the Word of God should shape how we minister to vulnerable people. On occasion, we like to record audio versions of the latest from Russell’s weekly newsletter. Read this article here. Sign up for the newsletter, Moore to the Point, where Russell shares thoughtful takes on big questions, offers a Christian perspective on life, and recommends books and music he's enjoying. Submit a question for the show (and include a voice memo!) at questions@russellmoore.com  Watch the episode on YouTubeSubscribe to the Christianity Today Magazine: Special offer for listeners of The Russell Moore Show: Click here for 25% off a subscription. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We begin 2026 with a question: What if the most decisive battles in our time aren’t fought with ballots or bombs—but with the imagination?Watch the full conversation on YouTube Russell Moore talks with historian and author Joseph Loconte about The War for Middle-earth, his book on how World War I and World War II forged the friendship, faith, and fiction of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. Together they explore why The Lord of the Rings and Narnia weren’t escapist detours from reality, but a deliberate counter-assault on cynicism, propaganda, and the will to power—written by men who had seen the trenches up close and knew exactly what modern darkness looks like. Loconte and Moore talk about why World War I has slipped from our cultural memory, what protected Tolkien from the disillusionment that swallowed so many of his peers, and why both writers keep insisting that deeds done in the dark are “not wholly in vain.” They also discuss Lewis’s warning about the “cataract of nonsense” in modern media, and why genuine friendship is almost never built by chasing “community”—but by pursuing a shared mission so compelling you find yourself fighting alongside someone. Loconte shares the origin story of the Lewis–Tolkien friendship, why grace—not grit—is the hinge point in both Middle-earth and Narnia, and where to start if you’ve never read either author: The Screwtape Letters for Lewis, and Tolkien’s short, haunting “Leaf by Niggle.” Resources mentioned in this episode: By J.R.R. Tolkien The Lord of the Rings The Hobbit Leaf by Niggle The Fall of Gondolin “Beren and Lúthien” (legendarium story) By C.S. Lewis The Screwtape Letters The Chronicles of NarniaOut of the Silent Planet That Hideous Strength The Space Trilogy The Four Loves Spirits in Bondage (early poetry collection) “Learning in Wartime” (sermon/essay) By Joseph Loconte The War for Middle-earth A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War Other Literary & Historical Works Referenced All Quiet on the Western Front — Erich Maria Remarque Paradise Lost — John Milton The Odyssey — Homer The Aeneid — Virgil The Divine Comedy — Dante Plato’s Cave (from The Republic) — Plato Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Russell shares his favorite reads of the year, an annual tradition on the Russell Moore Show. Watch the video of this episode on YouTube here. You can read a version of this list from the newsletter here.  Russell’s top ten books (in alphabetical order by author): Leslie Baynes, Between Interpretation and Imagination: C. S. Lewis and the Bible (Eerdmans) Wendell Berry, Marce Catlett: The Force of a Story (Counterpoint) Nicholas Carr, Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart (Norton) Catherine Conybeare, Augustine the African (Norton) Stephen King and Maurice Sendak, Hansel and Gretel (HarperCollins) Ian McEwan, What We Can Know: A Novel (Knopf) Daniel Nayeri, The Teacher of Nomad Land: A World War II Story (Levine Querido) Adam Plunkett, Love and Need: The Life of Robert Frost’s Poetry (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) Jonathan Rauch, Cross Purposes: Christianity’s Broken Bargain with Democracy (Yale University Press) Graham Tomlin, Blaise Pascal: The Man Who Made the Modern World (Hodder & Stoughton) Keep up with Russell: Sign up for the weekly newsletter where Russell shares thoughtful takes on big questions, offers a Christian perspective on life, and recommends books and music he's enjoying. Submit a question for the show at questions@russellmoore.com Subscribe to the Christianity Today Magazine: Special offer for listeners of The Russell Moore Show: Click here for 25% off a subscription Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Voices across Christianity Today join together to read the Christmas story found in Luke 2.  Keep up with Russell: Sign up for the weekly newsletter where Russell shares thoughtful takes on big questions, offers a Christian perspective on life, and recommends books and music he's enjoying. Submit a question for the show at questions@russellmoore.com Subscribe to the Christianity Today Magazine: Special offer for listeners of The Russell Moore Show: Click here for 25% off a subscription. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What does the phrase “6 white boomers” have to do with Christmas? Watch the video of this episode on YouTube here. Join us for a special Christmas episode as Russell joins the Being Human Podcast’s Steve Cuss and The Bulletin podcast’s Clarissa Moll to talk about what Christmas looks like in their own worlds. They discuss when they officially start listening to Christmas music, their favorite Christmas memories, nativity story characters that are meaningful to them, and what “Wombat Divine” means for Australians at Christmas (it may not be what you think). Keep up with Russell: Sign up for the weekly newsletter where Russell shares thoughtful takes on big questions, offers a Christian perspective on life, and recommends books and music he's enjoying. Submit a question for the show at questions@russellmoore.com  Subscribe to the Christianity Today Magazine: Special offer for listeners of The Russell Moore Show: Click here for 25% off a subscription. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Russell Moore talks with pastor and author David Platt (McLean Bible Church, Radical) about his new book All You Want for Christmas, which is built around one verse: “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve.” Together they explore why this claim stands apart from every other religion’s story of humans climbing their way up to God—and why the Christian story begins with God coming down the mountain to us. Platt and Moore talk about what it means to believe in a personal God in a culture that prays to “the universe,” how to face grief and doubt in the “happiest season of all,” and why the wonder of Christmas is both more comforting and more unsettling than we realize. They also discuss the difference between divine service and the prosperity gospel, the surprising role of dreams and magi in God’s self-revelation, and what it means to repent and trust when belief doesn’t come easily. Platt shares stories from a Southeast Asian temple, a Muslim Uber driver’s midnight conversion, and his own family’s Christmas traditions—complete with “giving jars” and a goat that wasn’t for the kid who thought it was. Resources mentioned in this episode: All You Want for Christmas by David Platt Radical by David Platt   Keep up with Russell: Sign up for the weekly newsletter where Russell shares thoughtful takes on big questions, offers a Christian perspective on life, and recommends books and music he's enjoying. Submit a question for the show at questions@russellmoore.com  Subscribe to the Christianity Today Magazine: Special offer for listeners of The Russell Moore Show: Click here for 25% off a subscription. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Russell and Leslie meander through the 2025 podcast episodes and share some of their favorite moments. Watch the video of this episode on YouTube here. See all podcast episodes for 2025 here. Episodes referenced: David Brooks on Moral Courage for a Soulless Age Joni Eareckson Tada on When God Shows Up in the Breaking Molly Worthen on Being Spellbinding Michael Luo on Strangers in the Land Paul Kingsnorth on the Dark Powers Behind AI Christine Emba on the Fantasy of Porn’s Harmlessness Jonathan Haidt’s Newest Thoughts on Technology, Anxiety, and the War for Our Attention A Poet and a Preacher: A Conversation with David Whyte Beth Moore on All Manner of Good Things Beth Moore on Falling in Love with Ecclesiastes Sho Baraka on Matters of the Soul Post-2020 Recovering Christian Vocabulary: A Conversation with Stanley Hauerwas Tim Keller on Hope in Times in Fear (Re-air) Keep up with Russell: Sign up for the weekly newsletter where Russell shares thoughtful takes on big questions, offers a Christian perspective on life, and recommends books and music he's enjoying. Submit a question for the show at questions@russellmoore.com  Subscribe to the Christianity Today Magazine: Special offer for listeners of The Russell Moore Show: Click here for 25% off a subscription. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Gather round ye listeners come…Andrew Peterson is back. Watch the full conversation on YouTube. Songwriter/author Andrew Peterson has been singing about the birth of Jesus every Christmas for over 26 years in the form of a Christmas concept album and tour called Behold the Lamb of God (LINK: catch the tour or livestream—available to watch until 1/31). In this special episode, Russell joins Andrew in the Chapter House–Andrew’s writing cabin–to talk about a tour that’s spent twenty-six years creating a Christmas tradition for thousands across the world. Together, they swap stories about the origins of the album, the strange power of minor-key Advent songs, and the backstage chaos you never see—covert clementines, nightly TED talks, and the annual fear of forgetting a song that might contain more names than any other song ever written. They also talk honestly about exhaustion, longing, and why the story of the incarnation keeps surprising them after all these years. Plus: Wingfeather cosplay, Randy Travis covering “Labor of Love,” British carol-singing that’ll blow your hair back, and why both of them have very strong opinions about the First Noel. If you’ve ever wondered what makes this Christmas tour feel more like liturgy than concert—or why the gospel still sneaks up on people who think they’ve heard it all—this conversation is a warm, funny, deeply human place to land. Resources mentioned in this episode: Get 10% off the Behold the Lamb of God Livestream on December 12th from the Ryman Auditorium (watchable until January 31) with code RUSSELL10. Get tickets for the tour and livestream here. Andrew Peterson’s The Wingfeather Saga Randy Travis’ version of Labor of Love Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Russell takes a listener question about whether some songs are better than others for worshipping in a congregational setting. Watch the video of this episode on YouTube here. Submit your own question for the show! Email questions@russellmoore.com — and remember: attach a voice memo! Keep up with Russell: Sign up for the weekly newsletter where Russell shares thoughtful takes on big questions, offers a Christian perspective on life, and recommends books and music he's enjoying. Subscribe to the Christianity Today Magazine: Special offer for listeners of The Russell Moore Show: Click here for 25% off a subscription. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices