My Favorite Books of 2025

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 [email protected]  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 [email protected]  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 [email protected] — 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 ⁠[email protected]⁠  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 [email protected]  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 ⁠[email protected]⁠  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 [email protected]  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 [email protected] 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 [email protected] 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