Russell Moore Says if the Church Wants to Be More Missional, It Needs to Look More Like Sesame Street
Now, some of you might read that headline and instantly think this is a satirical post. I assure you, it is not. Russell Moore recently published an article essentially agreeing with the New York Times that Sesame Street is "messianic" and that the Church could learn a lot from it.
In a recent article titled What the Church Can Learn from Sesame Street, ...
(I'm sorry, I can't believe I just wrote that sentence. It's just too stupid for words. Let me try again.)
In a recent article titled What the Church Can Learn from Sesame Street, Russell Moore, head of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) invokes the name of Bert and Ernie to make a case for church-wide affirmative action and reverse discrimination. In the article, he writes,
As the New York Times puts it, this was a “messianic show,” with a “mission” to remake the way children envisioned the world.
Okay. Yes. Sesame Street certainly had a mission to remake the way children envision the world -- and it is not a biblical worldview. Sesame Street is a far-left propaganda machine designed to indoctrinate children into a progressive worldview. Of course, this is what we would expect a former Democrat staffer like Russell Moore to embrace.
Sesame Street -- who hosts liberals like Michelle Obama to promote liberal talking points -- is a hotbed of anti-Christian activism. Yet, Russell Moore feels the need to compare Sesame Street to God's intended design of the Church.
Yes, Big Bird and Bert and Ernie and Grover and Oscar the Grouch and their human co-stars would teach you about letters and numbers and safety tips. But, more than that, they would show you, by the characters they featured and the plotlines they put forward, a new way of seeing things on issues ranging from racial equality to obesity prevention to the global fight against AIDS.
Oh..okay. Social justice. So, Russell Moore wants the church to learn how to be a social justice-oriented organization from the progressive children's television show, Sesame Street.
Sesame Street was effective because the program didn’t just contexutalize to the present; it contextualized to the future.
Yes, Sesame Street was very effective at contextualizing the future of social justice activism. So now we know where Russell Moore gets his vision for the church. Sesame Street promoted Critical Race Theory, identity politics, and intersectionality long before the world and the Church accepted it, and Russell Moore wants the Church to have that same prophetic voice that Sesame Street does.
What if our children were accustomed to seeing black pastors of majority white churches, and vice-versa? What if a hotel janitor were named chairman of deacons in a wealthy suburban megachurch, because all recognized his spiritual maturity and nothing else mattered? What if our churches pioneered tort reform, not by arbitration alone, but by Christians agreeing cheerfully to be defrauded (1 Cor. 6)?
And what if all that started to seem normal to us?
What if Russell Moore turns the Church into Sesame Street?