Russell Moore penned an article posted at the Washington Post [A year after Ferguson, have white Christians learned anything?]. He summarized it with the following:
- The answer to racial injustice is precisely the way the Hebrew prophets once framed the answer to all social evil. It means working for courts and systems that are fair and impartial. But it doesn’t stop with policies and structures. It must also include people who are transformed, not just by greater social awareness, but also by consciences that are formed by something other than our backgrounds. For that, we need more than national conversations and policy proposals (as important as those are). We need, nationally, what Abraham Lincoln called “a new birth of freedom.” But we also need, personally, a new birth.
So what was Moore trying to say? Was he imply that we should be born again or calling for total reform through other means? Lincoln was praising the heroes who had died trying to do just that....in the middle of a Civil War.
I doubt Moore was calling for anything that drastic. And based on his comments about "conscience" which lead up to the final sentence, he may have been suggesting the true transforming of a Christan's mind through being born again.
Now, why did I bother to bring this up? Because I was just wondering why he didn't just come out and say it. Did he think that the Washington Post's primarily secular audience that maybe they wouldn't get it? Or maybe they would be offended or turned off by it? IF he was suggesting a born again experience, he may have missed a chance to just say it.....when it would have reached a large audience. It's an important message.And an important part of why it was called "good news.!"
The Gettysberg Address
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863
