What does it mean to follow Jesus when the state is demanding your loyalty—and the church is tempted to comply?

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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:

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You cannot hide a hardened heart behind the fact that you weren’t the one pulling the trigger.

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Why walk with God when answers don’t come quickly—and sometimes don’t come at all?

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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

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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.

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What does American football reveal about who we are and who we’re becoming?

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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?

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— 

“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

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Believers often use Romans 13 to wave away state violence, but that’s the opposite of what Paul intended.

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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.

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What do myth, wilderness, and ancient story have to teach a culture drowning in information but starving for meaning?

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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:

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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.

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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

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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)

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