And his contempt for Donald Trump, Trump voters and voting like an actual Christian makes him worse than ever.
Time Magazine penned what can only be described as a hagiography of Russell Moore. It presents him as the Good Evangelical—acceptable to secular elites because he resists Donald Trump and works for increased immigration. As conservatives ignore radical leftists like Dr. Moore, you should expect more of these profiles in leftist publications. He is deemed an acceptable voice by the secular elites and they demand you listen to him.
The first thing one notices about this hagiography is the Time Magazine image of Russell Moore. It captures the smugness of the Southern Baptist Convention’s lobbyist. Oh wait, that’s not smug enough. We should use Time Magazine’s title for Dr. Moore—God’s Lobbyist.
Back to that photograph.
There he is aloof. Moore is pictured sitting alone, up several floors high over the street with a view looking down on all the little people of the city and SBC. The arrogance is palpable in both the image and the text of the article.
According to Time, “The usually mild-mannered author’s stance has come at a cost. He says both he and his family have been the subject of threats and that people have tried to dig up information that would prove he is a liberal. (Heaven forfend!)”
Threats? That is news and something sad to see. It is the price of having any political stance in this age of mass communication. Dr. Moore is a political operative. He’s entitled to be that and to be that without threats.
Russell Moore the martyr
Some conservatives will be skeptical of Russell Moore’s claims of threats. He has a history of crying about mistreatment while doing his job.
For example, in 2000, Dr. Moore claimed the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF) attacked him while he was working as a reporter for Baptist Press covering the CBF Annual Meeting.
According to the Religion New Service, “(The unidentified former missionary) started screaming and yelling at me in the middle of the convention center,” said Moore. He said he isn’t aware of any witnesses to the incident. ‘He called me a (expletive deleted) liar and said I had no integrity.’ Moore said he asked the man to let him pass by and as he did, he said the man ’pushed me against a wall, berated me, jabbing me in the chest with his finger as he spoke. I asked him to discontinue the conversation again, but he continued to pursue me, yelling a curse.’”
And it doesn’t stop there. Moore was even attacked by CBF leadership!
Moore then claimed “Rev. David Currie, coordinator of Texas Baptists Committed and financial chairman of CBF, publicly rebuked him in a meeting, a charge Currie denies.”
Others sent by Baptist Press and related organizations to cover other CBF meetings said they never experienced such treatment.
So, what do we make of the Time Magazine claim now?
The second part of that sentence spoils the news in the first part. “People have tried to dig up information that would prove he is a liberal.”
Tried to? Who has to do any research when his own mouth claims he was a Democrat while working at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS)? And his own policy positions align him with Democrats over his fellow Southern Baptists? There is no digging necessary. It is established fact.
And it is an established fact with theological implications.
One cannot be a Democrat and be a Christian. That is if Christian is to actually mean anything.
Christians have a moral duty to vote against the party of Abortion. Didn’t vote against the party of Abortion—then you need to repent. You’ve self-excommunicated yourself by aiding the sin of murder. It really is that simple.
Russell Moore reveals he is building a Third Way for Evangelicals
Amidst the hagiography there was a bit of news. Russell Moore is heroically pulling those Southern Baptist yokels into, well, if not the future at least maybe the 20th century or something.
According to Time, “In many ways, Moore’s job is to pull his fellow Baptists into the future. In others, it is to try to prevent the culture from abandoning convictions that are several millennia old, some of which–like celibacy outside marriage–no longer seem to make sense to most people. ‘I think the problem with evangelical Christianity in America is not that we are too strange but that we are not strange enough,’ says Moore. ‘We should be countercultural in loving God and loving our neighbors in ways that ought not to make sense except for the grace of God.’”
Moore is attempting to make Christianity palatable to the masses of radical leftists. Pro tip: It won’t work.
It won’t work for several reasons.
First, the Leftist version of Christianity always fails. Any focus on a branding message of “loving our neighbors” becomes a push for social welfare programs and other liberal demands. You’ll never satisfy the Left. So, why try?
Second, conservative Christians (actual Bible believers) flee denominations that embrace this type of nonsense. It is what killed the mainline denominations. Leftist political agitation in a denomination always results in obscuring the Gospel. Why would we expect it to be different this time?
Why should we pay Russell Moore to pull Southern Baptists into the future? Maybe his job ought to be yanking on the culture and pulling it back to the old, biblical paths that charted Western Civilization’s course for the last 2,000 years!
That would be an ERLC worth supporting.
The current ERLC is not. It won’t be until Russell Moore is fired.
How do conservatives force Russell Moore out? By voting against Albert Mohler. Mohler enables Russell Moore and famously rebuked SBC conservatives upset at Dr. Moore’s liberal drift by saying, “I know Russell Moore’s heart.”
Want to keep Russell Moore in power? Vote for Al Mohler or the crazy Woke Ed Litton.
Want reform? Consider one of the two conservative candidates in the race: Mike Stone or Randy Adams.
Liberal churches always fail. They could be right that Jesus was pretty radical, but jettisoning the doctrines of substitution atonement and justification and replacing it with a salvation by extreme niceness (“love”) fails every time it’s tried. Being nice or inclusive is not the true gospel. It’s what Paul called “another gospel.” He added a curse on those who preach any other gospel but the true one, maybe like the Example Theory, Moral Influence Theory, etc (complete exclusion of substitution atonement as it requires the biblical concept of sin) preached in progressive churches. Atheists claim they don’t need some threatening old man in the sky to be nice to people. They’re right. No one does. As evidenced by the shrinking liberal churches.
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