Signposts with Russell Moore

McKay Coppins spent one year and $10,000 of The Atlantic's money to find out the truth about sports betting. Watch this conversation on YouTube. Russell welcomes McKay Coppins to talk about his latest for The Atlantic, a deeply personal and unsettling experiment with online sports betting, which opened a window into the addictive architecture of modern gambling, and the quiet ways it can take hold of a life. Together, they explore not just the mechanics of gambling, but its deeper implications: how it alters our attention, distorts our relationships, fuels anger and illusion, and increasingly reshapes everything from sports to politics to everyday life. Coppins–a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints–even remarks at the ways the experiment affected his prayer life. If you've wondered how sports betting has become so popular, or why younger men are being held tightly by its grasp, you might find this episode enlightening.  This is a conversation about more than just betting, it's about desire, discipline, and the kinds of guardrails we don't realize we need until they're gone. Resources mentioned in this episode: Sucker: My Year as a Degenerate Sports Gambler (The Atlantic) 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 how we can pass our Christian faith heritage to our children without making it weird. 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

How should the church address infertility and childlessness? In this special episode filmed as a livestream for Christianity Today subscribers, Russell Moore sits down with Karen Swallow Prior to talk about her recent CT Magazine article, “The Birds and the Bees, Babies and Me.”  Drawing from her own experience, Prior reflects on the deeply personal nature of infertility—not just as a medical or social issue, but as a spiritual and communal one. But this conversation is not only about loss, it's also about rethinking fruitfulness, calling, and blessing.  In answering questions taken live from viewers, Prior points to the unexpected ways God shapes lives outside of cultural expectations, while Moore considers how churches can become places that recognize spiritual motherhood and fatherhood beyond biology.  Along the way, they wrestle honestly with the tension of unanswered prayers, offering a vision of community that bears burdens together rather than explaining them away. Resources mentioned in this episode: Walking Through Infertility by Matthew Arbo 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

Trust Me, I'm a Doctor. ⁠Watch this episode on YouTube⁠. Russell reads his latest article for Christianity Today – read it here.  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

Malcolm Guite and Russell meet in Andrew Peterson's Chapter House–Guite's pipe smoke billowing–on the occasion of Guite's new book, Galahad and the Grail, the first volume in the Merlin's Isle trilogy from Rabbit Room Press.  Guite argues that myths and old stories aren't just relics of a pre-modern imagination, they're carriers of truth we've forgotten how to see with modern eyes. From King Arthur to the Holy Grail, these stories don't distract us from the real world, they reveal it. Guite suggests that our cultural moment—fragmented, distracted, and flattened by endless scrolling—has left us dismembered. We no longer see our lives as part of a coherent narrative. And without story, we lose not just meaning but identity. At the center of it all is a claim both strange and familiar: that the greatest story ever told is not one among many, but the one that gives meaning to all the others.  Along the way, Russell and Malcolm talk about how Guite has found a new audience on his wildly popular YouTube channel hosted out of his home library, the definition and origins of chivalry, and even the role Guite played in Martin Shaw's conversion (find Russell's interview with Shaw, here). King Arthur, the Grail, Merlin…these aren't just literary devices. They and other mythical tales echo something real about sin, redemption, and the hope that what is broken in us and in the world can be made whole again. Resources mentioned in this episode: Galahad and the Grail by Malcolm Guite Malcolm's YouTube Channel 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 church policies should include reporting abuse to local law enforcement. (Spoiler alert: yes, you should.)  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 if the justice we rely on to bring closure is actually keeping us from it? Watch the video of this episode on YouTube here. *At 23 minutes, a question is asked about the physical realities of the death penalty. That section is over by 26 minutes.* Malcolm Gladwell joins Russell to discuss his recent 8-part podcast series, The Alabama Murders (from the Revisionist History podcast), which tells the story of a church leader who hires two men to kill his wife. In the search for closure, their judgment–penalty by death–is stretched out over decades. Gladwell believes forgiveness would have been the better option.  What becomes clear in this conversation is that justice, as we often imagine it, doesn't resolve things nearly as cleanly as we think. And in that waiting, we're forced to confront something deeper: whether we really believe in the possibility of redemption, or whether we've quietly decided that some people are simply beyond it. This conversation may invite you to think more carefully, to see more clearly, and to wrestle honestly with what it means to seek both justice and mercy in a broken world. Russell also asks Malcolm about his favorite Revisionist History episode King of Tears, which tells the back story of the famous George Jones song “He Stopped Loving Her Today”. Resources mentioned in this episode: The Alabama Murders from Revisionist History 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 trusting God when your anxiety won't go away. 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

In this special Easter edition of the Russell Moore Show, Russell draws from past episodes to explore how the resurrection of Jesus reframes everything: from scientific belief and intellectual doubt to embodied life, unexpected joy, and suffering. Featuring clips from episodes with Francis Collins, Michael Wear, David Taylor, Christian Wiman, Kate Bowler, and Tim Keller, this episode draws out our Christian hope: if Christ is raised, then reality itself is different.  Across stories of cancer diagnoses, intellectual conversions, poetic insight, and quiet moments of joy, the episode insists on a central truth: the resurrection is not metaphor. And if it happened, then even in grief, uncertainty, and death—everything is going to be okay. 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 commercialization has ruined country music. 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

The American experiment has never been about achieving perfection, but facing a task always unfinished. Watch the video of this episode on YouTube here. At a moment when many Americans feel fearful, exhausted, or tempted to despair, Russell Moore welcomes Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Jon Meacham for a conversation about the moral and spiritual meaning of democracy. Drawing from Meacham's new anthology, American Struggle: Democracy, Dissent, and the Pursuit of a More Perfect Union, Meacham argues that the American experiment has never been about achieving perfection, but about the difficult and unfinished task of seeking a more perfect union. Throughout the conversation, Moore and Meacham discuss the 1619 Project, the myth of an idyllic Christian nation, the Scopes Trial, the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s, and the recurring temptation to treat political opponents not as rivals but as enemies. Meacham makes the case that democracy depends on humility, compromise, and a willingness to resist the politics of destruction. Together, he and Meacham consider whether reconciliation is still possible in a culture shaped by vengeance, fear, and performative power. Even so, the conversation does not give way to fatalism. Their exchange is a sober but hopeful reminder that history is not destiny, that political renewal remains possible, and that the future of the republic depends on ordinary people choosing courage over cynicism. Resources mentioned in this episode: American Struggle: Democracy, Dissent, and the Pursuit of a More Perfect Union — Jon Meacham 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

The civil rights leader treated love of God and love for others as inseparable. Watch this 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

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Russell answers a listener question about what algorithms miss about heartbreak. Watch the video of this episode on YouTube here. Links mentioned: Previous episode about Martina McBride's song “Independence Day” Song, Dean Summerwind's “Parked Out By the Lake” Malcolm Gladwell's Revisionist History episode “The King of Tears”  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

Former Harper's Magazine editor Christopher Beha on his journey from skeptical Atheism to skeptical Christianity. Watch the video of this episode on YouTube here. For many people, faith and skepticism are opposites, but novelist and former Harper's Magazine editor Christopher Beha argues that the two may be more intertwined than we assume. In this conversation about his new book, Why I'm Not an Atheist, Beha reflects on his journey from a devout Catholic upbringing to atheism and eventually back to Christian faith. Beha describes how an early mystical experience and later personal tragedy pushed him into deep questions about suffering, prayer, and the nature of belief. In college, those questions led him to identify as a skeptic, valuing reason and intellectual independence. Yet over time he came to see that skepticism itself has limits. The turning point came not through philosophical argument but through life itself, like falling in love and becoming part of a family. Those experiences prompted Beha to return to church, where he began hearing familiar Christian teachings in a new way: not primarily as moral demands or metaphysical propositions, but as a story centered on love and relationship–without setting aside his questions. Together, Russell and Chris reflect on what it means to believe while still wrestling with doubt, how parents might talk with children who are questioning faith, and why the path toward belief often begins not with certainty but with simply showing up. If you've wrestled with the Christian life being sold as putting aside all questions and doubt to choose unwavering certainty, you may appreciate hearing from Chris.  Resources mentioned in this episode: Why I Am Not an Atheist by Christopher Beha Essays by Michel  de Montaigne 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

On the war with Iran. 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 this 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

A bonus episode with bestselling author and friend, Jennie Allen, on the occasion of her new book, The Lie You Don't Know You Believe. Watch the video of this episode on YouTube here. Many people live with a persistent sense that something is not quite right—a low-grade hum of anxiety, insecurity, or striving that never seems to go away. In this bonus episode, Russell Moore talks with author and Bible teacher Jennie Allen about the hidden lies that can quietly shape our lives for years. Drawing from her brand-new book, The Lie You Don't Know You Believe, Allen argues that many of our struggles—whether feelings of worthlessness, being unlovable, or helplessness—can often be traced back to stories we began believing long ago. Russell and Jennie discuss how those beliefs form, often in childhood moments that seemed small at the time but quietly shaped a person's identity. Along the way, they consider how faith, self-reflection, and grace can help people see their stories more clearly without turning the process into an exercise in blame. The discussion also moves outward—from personal struggles to cultural ones—touching on why people crave recognition, why fear so often drives public life, and how Christians can respond without being ruled by anxiety. Ultimately, Allen points toward a simple but demanding path: recognizing the lies that bind us and fixing our eyes on Christ. Resources mentioned in this episode: The Lie You Don't Know You Believe by Jennie Allen 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

The author of Theo of Golden sits down with Russell in Andrew Peterson's Chapter House for a conversation on the breakout novel. NO SPOILERS! Watch the video of this episode on YouTube here. Russell is joined by Allen Levi, the author of the breakout novel Theo of Golden, to ask why so many readers are hungry for a story about kindness—and whether such a person could exist outside the pages of fiction.  Russell and Allen sit together in Nashville for a conversation based on questions RDM collected from listeners and friends. Without any spoilers, Levi describes Theo of Golden as a book not only about kindness, but about the reason for kindness—an ordinary holiness rooted in the reality of Heaven. Levi's clear-eyed theology of “glory and grime” found in Golden insists that darkness is real, but it doesn't get the last word.  To close, Russell offers for Allen to share a rare on-air prayer for listeners who are exhausted by suspicion and artificiality. If you're struggling to see how kindness is worth the cost, or if you're weary from cynicism, this episode is for you. Resources mentioned in this episode: Theo of Golden by Allen Levi “The Confession” by Leo Tolstoy “Think Little” by Wendell Berry  How to Know a Person by David Brooks 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

A thought experiment on the realness of aliens, and what what would mean. ⁠Watch this 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 happens to a society when its boys grow up without a script for becoming men? Watch the video of this episode on YouTube here. In this conversation, Richard Reeves—author of Of Boys and Men (selected as a 2024 Summer read by President Obama), and founding president of the American Institute for Boys and Men—walks through the data and the deeper cultural currents beneath the struggle of the journey of boys becoming men. From rising male suicide rates to widening education gaps, and from sports betting addiction to body-image pressures once thought to belong mainly to girls, Reeves argues that boys and men are not so much acting out as checking out. Reeves suggests that we tore up the old scripts of masculinity—and for good reason—but never replaced them with a compelling vision of what it means to be a man today. In that vacuum, some young men retreat to screens, pornography, and gaming; others gravitate toward louder, angrier answers. But Reeves sees something else underneath the check-out: a hunger for formation, for purpose, for being told not just what not to be, but what to become. The conversation turns to the church's unique opportunity at this moment. Russell and Richard reflect on Joseph as a model of quiet strength, the importance of rites of passage, the power of male friendship, and the simple but often neglected message young men need to hear: we need you.  In a time when many men feel optional, this episode is an invitation to recover a vision of manhood rooted not in dominance or drift, but in responsibility, community, and hope. Resources mentioned in this episode: Of Boys and Men by Richard Reeves 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

Watch the video of this episode on YouTube here. Russell answers a listener question about how we should perceive seemingly harmful political beliefs in our church congregations. 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 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? 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? 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. 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. 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 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

N.T. Wright joins Russell and Leslie to field a listener's question about the parable of the talents told in Luke 19, and why it's not all that it seems. 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

In this episode, Professor N. T. Wright joins us to walk through Ephesians as a panoramic room with a view—sunrise to moonset—where heaven and earth meet, and spiritual warfare is real but not partisan. Drawing from his new book The Vision of Ephesians: The Task of the Church and the Glory of God, Wright argues that Paul's language about “predestination” is vocational before it's destinational: the church is chosen to live for the praise of God's glory in the present. RDM and Wright explore why Ephesians might have changed church history had the Reformers centered it as much as Romans and Galatians, how “principalities and powers” makes surprising sense in an algorithm-shaped age, and why unity and holiness aren't rival goods but twin commands. They also wade into the passages that spark the most questions—marriage in Ephesians 5, mutual submission, and the armor of God—insisting on careful reading, cultural context, and a refusal to demonize flesh-and-blood neighbors. Whether you're Christian-curious or deep in the commentaries, Wright offers a way to read Ephesians both fast (to catch the sweep) and slow (to trace the seams), with the church embodying a many-colored wisdom that refuses tribal sorting. Resources mentioned in this episode:   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's question about how a non-believer can meaningfully engage in a book group with Christians. 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! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What happens when a 17-year-old's dive into the Chesapeake Bay changes everything—and the healing never comes? ⁠Watch the full conversation on YouTube⁠. Fifty-seven years later, Joni Eareckson Tada sits across from me with an answer that might undo everything you think you know about strength, suffering, and the strange mercy of God. In this conversation marking the 35th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, we go where few dare: into the raw, daily reality of quadriplegia, chronic pain that would break most of us by breakfast, and a two-time battle with breast cancer. But this isn't inspiration porn. This is Joni—unflinching, funny, and fiercely honest about what it means when "I can do all things through Christ" meets 4 a.m. despair. We talk about the crushing loneliness of being the only wheelchair in a room full of chairs. The rage when well-meaning Christians promise healing that doesn't come. The particular exhaustion of advocating for your own existence. And why she tells God some mornings, "I have no strength for today. Can I borrow yours?" But we also discover something unexpected: how limitation becomes liberation. Why the disabled community might be the most honest place in America. And what happens when churches stop trying to "fix" people and start making room for them. Fair warning: Joni doesn't do platitudes. She'll tell you exactly what not to say to someone in chronic pain (spoiler: "everything happens for a reason" isn't it). She'll explain why she's terrified of a world that's editing out Down syndrome. And she'll make you rethink whether your church's "all are welcome" sign means anything if there's no ramp to the door. This is for anyone who's ever wondered where God is when the miracle doesn't come. For those caring for someone who's suffering and don't know what to say. For all of us who suspect our obsession with optimization and control might be making us miss the point entirely. Come for the practical wisdom. Stay for the kind of hope that only comes from someone who's been asking "How long, O Lord?" for nearly six decades—and still believes the answer matters. Keep up with Joni's work through Joni and Friends, here. 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's question about whether God can still use prayers, and the conversation broadens to mind-breaking theology about God's transcendence of time itself. 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

Ken Burns says the American Revolution is "the most important event in world history since the birth of Christ." That's a bold claim—especially in a moment when the word "patriot" has become a weapon and the experiment that revolution launched feels more fragile than ever. In this conversation, Russell Moore sits down with the legendary documentarian to explore what eight years of wrestling with the founders can teach us about our fractured present. How do you love a country—or a church—while being honest about its deep hypocrisies? Can you hold together progress and permanence, hope and clear-eyed realism? And what does faithfulness look like when certainty has replaced faith? Burns's new series, The American Revolution (premiering November 16 on PBS), attempts something audacious: telling a visual story from an era with no photographs, bringing to life the contradiction-filled men who proclaimed "all men are created equal" while many of them held other human beings in bondage. Using voices including Tom Hanks, Liev Schreiber, and Claire Danes, Burns creates a narrative that refuses both myth-making and cynicism. Burns discusses with RDM why labels such as “Heritage American” and “Christian America” fail and what the founders actually believed about divine providence (hint: it wasn't what you think). Along the way: Schoolhouse Rock nostalgia, baseball metaphors, and what it means to be a patriot when the word itself has been hijacked. Watch the full conversation on YouTube.Resources mentioned in this episode: Watch Burns' “The American Revolution” on PBS for free starting November 16th. 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