"In Moore's Evangelical America, it's always election day, and never Easter."
The Southern Baptist Convention has retained many of the social habits and customs of the Confederate States of America, unwittingly, perhaps, but partly because those customs and habits could be hidden inside, and protected by the walls of the church. Though its operational polity, as a voluntary collection of independent, autonomous, Baptist churches, most of which are located in the eleven states of the old Confederacy plus border states of Kentucky, Missouri and Oklahoma, is democratic, the elected leadership and the paid executive staff of the executive committee's Nashville headquarters, along with its entities that include six seminaries and two mission boards, is the product of a network of nepotism, influence peddling, favor-granting, back slapping, glad-handing good ole boy relationships. The high dollar jobs in the entities and at the executive committee are filled based on who the candidates know, not on how qualified or how well they can do the job.
Russell Moore was riding high in this system. He had, in the vernacular of the aspiring, wannabe leaders among the pastors and denominational employees, "hitched his wagon" to the right good-ole-boys, namely Dr. Al Mohler, the President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, where Moore had studied and served as a provost, and wound up as the Executive Director of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. The ERLC had undergone a metamorphosis from its former days as the "Christian Life Commission," when Richard Land, a high level insider among SBC conservatives in the early days of their takeover of the convention, became its President. It went from being committed to supporting and lobbying for the protection of the first amendment's "wall of separation" between church and state, to lobbying in favor of initiatives that slowly erode and tear down the wall, blurring the lines and increasing the influence and power of conservative Christianity in government.
Land led the agency from 1988 to 2013, treating it as a personal fiefdom. But Land got into trouble and earned a reprimand from trustees over his comments on the Trayvon Martin case, and retired shortly after realizing they weren't going to back down. Moore became his successor, and had, among the commission's trustees, a majority of personal allies, friends and supporters from Southern Seminary and who had connections to his mentor, Al Mohler.
Although still conservative, Moore's approach was broader than Land's had been when it came to advocacy and support for issues in which the SBC felt it had something to say. Some of what the ERLC did under Moore would be criticized as being too "woke" by far right conservatives in the denomination, like its support for the North Korean Human Rights act, and the Sudan Peace Act. I have no idea why conservatives in the SBC are against peace, given that Jesus mentions it in his initial list of identifying characteristics of a Christian. Where they get their opposition to human rights is anyone's guess.
But Moore committed two unforgiveable sins which led to his decision to step down, as attacks from conservatives threatened to break the ERLC apart. One was his outspoken opposition to Donald Trump's candidacy for President in 2016, and his continued opposition to Trumpism, criticizing Trump's immorality and worldly image, saying that choosing a national leader whose lifestyle is contrary to Christian morality and values disqualified him for Christian support. The other was his leading the ERLC to support victims of the massive clergy sexual abuse scandal in the SBC, following the publication of a years-long investigation in The Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express News. Under Moore's leadership, the ERLC took the lead in support for victims, rather than the pastors who victimized them or the SBC executive committee, which resisted, and has continued to resist, involvement in any meaningful resolution.
Moore was still supported by ERLC trustees, but the attacks on him were relentless, and there were powerful members of the executive committee bypassing the constitution and bylaws of the denomination to attempt to intimidate or force the trustees to fire him. After exposing their shenanigans in a letter to the ERLC trustees, which was leaked to outside sources, he resigned, becoming the director of the Public Theology Project at Christianity Today, and currently, its editor-in-chief. Though still an ordained Baptist minister, he is a member of non-denominational Immanuel Church in Nashville, a congregation which, ironically, leases the former worship space of a Southern Baptist church.
Focus on Where This Becomes as "Bad as it Gets" and Why This Matters
There is probably not any other person whose experience characterizes just how far right wing religious conservatives have gone off the rails, and have departed from Biblical Christian faith and practice, and from the gospel of Jesus Christ than the manner in which they have treated Russell Moore. Moore is no closet liberal. His credentials as a Southern Baptist conservative are as impeccable as they come. He was a protege of Dr. Al Mohler, the long-time President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, who is one of the original leaders in the "conservative resurgence" that gained control of the SBC in 1979.
He is a doctrinal and theological conservative, a believer in the inerrancy and infallibility of the Bible, and in a literal interpretation of it. His views on women in the ministry, abortion rights and LGBTQ rights line up with the most conservative leaders in the denomination. He was a professor of Christian Theology and Ethics at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Dean of the School of Theology, and Senior Vice President for Academic Administration, second in command. He was the executive editor of The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology. He served as pastor of Highview Baptist Church in Louisville, one of Kentucky's largest and most conservative SBC congregations. He was a correspondent for Baptist Press.
But he made enemies in the SBC because he let his Christian convictions and beliefs guide his political choices, and correctly, openly and vocally opposed Trump's candidacy on Christian principles. Who he had been up to that point counted for exactly nothing among the conservatives in the SBC who went on the attack against him. Nor did anyone figure out, from his well-stated, Biblically-centered arguments against supporting Trump's candidacy, that a solid, conservative, Southern Baptist insider was making a sound Biblical argument against Christian support for Donald Trump. He separated his personal opposition to Trump from his position at the ERLC, but that didn't matter to his critics.
Then, when the messengers gathered for the annual meeting of the denomination and finally started acknowledging the need to do something about the sexual abuse problem that had been exposed by the Texas newspapers, he led the ERLC to be the first to take action. They sponsored training for church leaders to help them counsel and comfort victims of abuse, most of whom had been abandoned and neglected by the churches in which they were abused. He had several abuse victims as part of the conference, several of whom had been advocating for the denomination to take action for decades, and that didn't sit well with conservatives. They were willing to use this as another way to attack Moore, and attempt to force him out of his position.
Other Issues Which Angered Conservative Critics of the ERLC
Under Land's leadership, the ERLC was not much of an advocate of anything. Land was content to use his position as a means of hobnobbing with important Republicans and making sure they were able to use the influence of the nation's largest Protestant denomination to their advantage. Moore took its mission and purpose seriously, and interpreted its advocacy based on Christian faith principles and values. The ERLC became much more active in the areas of religious liberty, human dignity and rights, family stability and civil society.
Under Moore's leadership, the ERLC began working with parents of gays and lesbians, saying that the Christian response for parents was not shunning them and putting them on the street. "The answer is loving your child," he said. And that did not sit well with his conservative opponents. He was opposed to displays of the Confederate flag, saying that "The cross and the Confederate flag cannot co-exist without one setting fire to the other," following the mass shooting in Charleston. He condemned the 2017 Charlottesville white supremacy rally. The ERLC encouraged Christian families to sponsor, house, and help refugees coming to the United States from Syria. Moore also criticized Trump and Senator Ted Cruz, saying that Trump's proposal to shut down mosques in the United States was a violation of religious liberty and Cruz's proposal that a religious test for refugees would violate the first amendment and condemn innocent women and children to death simply because they held different religious beliefs other than Christianity.
The ERLC was, in their opinion, "too woke." In other words, Moore had led the ERLC to be far more Christian than Southern Baptists' conservative network of leaders was willing to tolerate.
An Illustration of What we are Dealing With Now
The influence of right wing politics, which have become pretty extreme by any definition of the term, is leading many Christians into apostasy. There's a combination of reasons at work here, one of them being a lack of trust in the power of God to resolve issues that conservative Evangelicals see as symptoms of worldliness, sin and evil. Rather, it's a lack of trust that God will do things that they want to see done, mainly punishing those that they consider enemies.
I have a hard time believing that someone like Ted Cruz is as oblivious to the provisions of religious liberty and freedom of conscience found in the first amendment as some of his proposals, used to pander to the ignorant, seem to indicate. Cruz knows exactly what is in the first amendment, and it does not suit those whose Christian nationalist beliefs compel them to make everyone who isn't their kind of Christian a subservient, second class citizen. The conservative Evangelicals who have picked up the Christian nationalist narrative are leading their churches into apostasy, a departure from doctrine and theology found in the gospel of Jesus, and indeed, a complete departure from everything Jesus believed, taught, and by which he lived his life.
Moore resigned from the presidency of the ERLC at the end of his term, leaving behind a letter for trustees, which was leaked to the religious media, that called out the manner in which he had been attacked and vilified by his enemies. I'm sure they were hoping to isolate him, not only from Southern Baptists, but from the Evangelical community at large. But he landed on his feet, and the fact that his record speaks for itself is encouraging. He did leave the Southern Baptist Convention behind, but he is probably in a position to be more influential among Evangelicals than he was at the ERLC. He is the editor in chief of Christianity Today. And he is a member of a large, influential, independent, Evangelical church in Nashville which, ironically, uses the abandoned worship space of a former Southern Baptist congregation.
I'm not here to sell books, however, Moore's newest offering, Losing Our Religion, which is due for release August 1, contains much of his perspective on the capture of American Evangelicals by right wing Republican politics, which is leading it down the path toward apostasy. Ordering any title from Bookshop.org supports independent, locally owned bookstores.
The Signal Press continues its commitment to exposing the undermining and misuse of Christian faith for political purposes.
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