Add Russell Moore to the list of evangelicals warning about how too many conservatives are warming up to antisemitism and Nazi nostalgia.
The Christianity Today columnist and former head of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission wrote a stout column Nov. 5 headlined, “The Church Better Start Taking Nazification Seriously.”
He picks up where other commentators have sounded alarms, with Tucker Carlson’s recent interview with Nick Fuentes, who used to be persona non grata among evangelicals but suddenly is welcome in polite company. And Moore goes straight after a conservative icon, Kevin Roberts, head of the Heritage Foundation.
Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts (left) and theh-Senator JD Vance converse while sitting in the audience before taking part in a panel discussion on regime change and the future of liberalism at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., May 17, 2023. (Francis Chung/POLITICO via AP Images)
“After Tucker Carlson platformed neo-Nazi apologist Nick Fuentes on his podcast, the Heritage Foundation’s president, Kevin Roberts, issued a statement defending Carlson. Roberts denounced what he termed a ‘venomous coalition’ of conservatives who called out the interview because they oppose any ‘no enemies to the right’ posture that includes Nazism. In the days since, some Heritage Foundation staffers have told reporters that the controversy revealed for them how many of the youngest staffers and interns actually agree with Fuentes. This comes only weeks after text messages from multiple Young Republicans groups were leaked, showing racist, antisemitic, and pro-Hitler messages.”
Moore is not alone in raising red flags over this strange new coalition or of the “No Enemies to the Right” philosophy. BNG analyst David Bumgardner recently wrote about reaction to this trend and called it a “battle for the soul of conservatism.”
Moore takes the argument a step further: “This matter is crucial for the future of the country, but the stakes are even higher for the church. It is well past time for the church of Jesus Christ to take this seriously.”
Nick Fuentes and Tucker Carlson (screecap)
Toward that end, he wonders aloud why so many evangelical pastors are not already taking it seriously.
“Already some constantly online young men who profess to be evangelicals are winking and nodding with HH references and ‘noticing things’ memes while commending the ideologies of Nazis such as Carl Schmitt. Some older leaders don’t take it seriously because they think the numbers of these young men are so few, and some because they think the numbers are so many.”
Even if the numbers of evangelical pastors sharing these views is few, that’s not the point, Moore writes. “These trends start out in small groups of people that are not large enough to be taken seriously by ‘successful’ leaders. These small communities then cultivate the fads until a couple people with bigger platforms adopt them. And then, seemingly suddenly, they are everywhere. Power evangelism, prayer walking, seeker-sensitive services, laughing revivals, New Calvinism — all of these (and again, some of these things are good, and some are not) happened that way.”
Neo Nazis, Alt-Right, and White Supremacists encircle and chant at counter protesters at the base of a statue of Thomas Jefferson after marching through the University of Virginia campus with torches in Charlottesville, Va., USA on Aug. 11, 2017. (Photo by Samuel Corum/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
On the flip side, Moore criticizes those who say nothing because they wrongly assume the number of supporters of Naziism are too great.
“The mentality which suggests that laughing at sexual abuse or using denigrating slurs for those with disabilities or wink-wink-nod-nod sending around Nazi memes is evidence of a ‘vibe shift’ is perhaps understandable for a pagan who believes the zeitgeist is lord. But for a Christian who has read any page of the Old or New Testament, that’s incomprehensible.”
Russell Moore
Moore likens Christian Nazi supporters to the false prophets Jesus warned about. And he draws multiple parallels between Christians in 1930s Germany and Christians in 2025 America.
“Conservatives alarmed at the steps toward the normalization of Fuentes and a Nazified young right … know this awful ideology will evacuate all the principles they wish to conserve of the meaning of words like ‘peace’ and ‘patriotism.’ But why do I say the stakes are even higher for the church? After all, the church does not have nuclear codes and cannot build death camps. It can only empower with its support — or its silence — those who do.”
Moore, who is a well-known evangelical Never-Trumper, says American Christians face a choice: “The Bible will not sit alongside Mein Kampf. The Cross will not yield to the swastika. We must ask right now: Jesus or Hitler? We cannot have both.”
Related articles:
No Enemies to the Right? Inside the GOP’s new civil war | Analysis by David Bumgardner
The unholy alliance that’s OK with bringing back slavery | Analysis by David Bumgardner
Women are the problem, Carlson and Fuentes declare | Analysis by Rick Pidcock
Here’s the toxic racism and misogyny you let loose with a vote for Trump | Opinion by Rick Pidcock
Tucker Carlson is a danger to American families | Opinion by Mark Wingfield
This is what happens when race is ‘nothing’ | Opinion by Rodney Kennedy