The TheoBros just can’t stop hating on Russell Moore.
The current editor of Christianity Today and the former acolyte of Al Mohler, Moore has become a lightning rod for the far-right Calvinists who see him as someone who sold out to a “woke” agenda — even though he’s staunchly anti-abortion, anti-gay and a biblical inerrantist.
Moore’s greatest sin, in the eyes of the TheoBros, is speaking out against Donald Trump as morally bankrupt and dangerous to Christianity and democracy.
Never mind that Mohler, his former employer at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has his own record of flip-flopping on Trump. The difference is that Mohler abandoned his never-Trump convictions to endorse Trump for president twice.
Moore, on the other hand, has opposed Trump from the beginning, even when Moore was head of the Southern Baptist Convention Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. That — and his compassion for immigrants and victims of clergy sexual abuse — got him pushed out of that SBC leadership post and sent him fleeing the SBC entirely.
But Southern Baptist Calvinists aren’t through beating up on him, as was evidenced this week in a tweet by Tom Buck, an East Texas pastor who often leads the charge in expressing the views of the far-right in the SBC.
On Dec. 11, Buck reposted a tweet by Jamie Bambrick, editor of Clear Truth Media, a conservative website that says its mission is to spread “doctrinally sound and relevant” content.
Bambrick surfaced a 2006 video clip of Moore “slamming evangelicalism,” he said, “for compromise with the spirit of the age. How did this guy turn into the one we see today?”
In the video clip, a younger Moore warns of “the collapse of evangelicalism all around us” through cultural compromise.
“Christianity Today is written by Mainline Episcopalians,” he says. “Go to Wheaton College. Wheaton College faculty is a Mainline Episcopalian faculty. Look at Fuller Seminary. It is easier to find a creationist on the faculty at Berkeley than at Fuller Seminary. We have turned into the culture because we want to be like them.”
Now, it is Moore who has “turned into the culture,” Bambrick declares.
“Some say the Trump era broke him. I think the Trump era simply pulled off the mask!”
Buck agrees, posting: “The 2006-07 Russell Moore was as conservative and sound as any evangelical you could find. The present day Russell Moore is as liberal and unsound as any professing evangelical you’ll find. Some say the Trump era broke him. I think the Trump era simply pulled off the mask!”
The posts by both Bambrick and Buck elicited scores of comments from others who agree with their assessment, including some accusing Moore of exhibiting Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Back in January, Moore wrote a column for Christianity Today answering his critics that featured this zinger: “The gospel does not come with a gag order.”
Of his disdain for Trump and Trumpism, Moore wrote: “For those of us who actually care about conservatism, the equation of ‘conservatism’ with authoritarian demagoguery or sexual predation is actually the greatest possible victory for the Left. It leaves the country without principled conservatism and lets an entire generation equate conservatism with white nationalism, anti-constitutional illiberalism, or base misogyny. It makes progressivism, in many people’s minds, the only perceived alternative to insanity or cruelty.”
Some of the harshest criticism of Moore has come from JD Hall, the disgraced publisher of the far-far-right website Protestia. Earlier this year, he — or someone using his byline — published an article titled, “Dear American, Russell Moore Hates You.”
Hall, who earlier this year was accused of felony embezzlement and abusive behavior related to a drug addiction, accused Moore of being abusive to American evangelicalism. Isn’t that rich?
“He’s too liberal for the Trump-loving evangelical right, and he’s too conservative for the progressive side of evangelicalism.”
He ended his piece by saying: “Russell Moore hates you, America. It’s time to realize this, escape for your abusive relationship with the theological caste, and embrace a genuine religion that — at the end of the day — really does want what’s best for you. And that’s not Russell Moore’s religion, because he serves an altogether different master.”
Among Moore’s allegedly abusive behavior was not agreeing with the far-right reinterpretation of “religious liberty” to mean unqualified liberty for conservatives to demand adherence to their peculiar beliefs by everyone else.
And herein lies the quandary of Russell Moore and those like him: He’s too liberal for the Trump-loving evangelical right, and he’s too conservative for the progressive side of evangelicalism.
One of the comments on the Protestia article says of Moore, “I am convinced this man is a change agent who was planted inside the church to corrupt it.”
I agree with the first part of that statement. Yes, Moore was, and perhaps is, a change agent for the church. It’s just that a prophet is without honor in his own country, as Jesus warned. What he’s been about is redemption, not corruption.
I’ve observed Moore for three decades now, and one thing I will affirm is he does appear able to think and grow and change. And he’s not afraid to stand up to the bullies in his own tribe on principle.
That’s more than we can say for the frozen-in-time TheoBros.
Mark Wingfield serves as executive director and publisher of Baptist News Global. He is the author of Honestly: Telling the Truth About the Bible and Ourselves and Why Churches Need to Talk About Sexuality. His brand-new book is Troubling the Truth and Other Tales from the News.
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