Baptist News Global
Sections
  • News
  • Analysis
  • Opinion
  • Curated
  • Storytelling
    • Faith & Justice >
      • Charleston: Metanoia with Bill Stanfield
      • Charlotte: QC Family Tree with Greg and Helms Jarrell
      • Little Rock: Judge Wendell Griffen
      • North Carolina: Conetoe
    • Welcoming the Stranger >
      • Lost Boys of Sudan: St. John’s Baptist Charlotte
      • Awakening to Immigrant Justice: Myers Park Baptist Church
      • Hospitality on the corner: Gaston Christian Center
    • Signature Ministries >
      • Jake Hall: Gospel Gothic, Music and Radio
    • Singing Our Faith >
      • Hymns for a Lifetime: Ken Wilson and Knollwood Baptist Church
      • Norfolk Street Choir
    • Resilient Rural America >
      • Alabama: Perry County
      • Texas: Hidalgo County
      • Arkansas Delta
      • Southeast Kentucky
  • More
    • Contact
    • About
    • Donate
    • Associated Baptist Press Foundation
    • Planned Giving
    • Letters to the Editor
    • Advertising
    • Ministry Jobs and More
    • Transitions
    • Subscribe
    • Submissions and Permissions
Donate Subscribe
Search Search this site

Why Beth Moore’s departure from the SBC really matters

AnalysisMark Wingfield  |  March 10, 2021

In its own year of racial reckoning, the Southern Baptist Convention just awoke to a high-profile gender reckoning as well.

Beth Moore, the popular Bible study teacher and author who for years has maintained the line of being a “teacher” and not a “preacher,” told Religion News Service she is “no longer a Southern Baptist.”

Beth Moore

“I am still a Baptist, but I can no longer identify with Southern Baptists,” Moore told RNS. “I love so many Southern Baptist people, so many Southern Baptist churches, but I don’t identify with some of the things in our heritage that haven’t remained in the past.”

What put her over the line can be summed up in two words: Donald Trump.

While the SBC and its leaders have joined other white evangelicals in adulation of Trump and his politics, Moore has been a notable anti-Trumper. That decision reportedly cost her nearly $2 million in lost book sales and ticket sales to events.

Yet her decision to leave the SBC and to walk away from future publishing deals with the denomination’s publishing house, Lifeway, likely will have a greater financial effect on Lifeway than on Moore. For at least two decades, Moore has been Lifeway’s best-selling author; by some internal accounts, her books and related materials kept the Nashville-based publisher afloat.

Moore’s Bible studies and books may be more ubiquitous in SBC churches than Lifeway’s own bread-and-butter Sunday school curriculum. Her work has been so popular that one would be hard-pressed to find a Southern Baptist church in America that hadn’t used one of her Bible studies either in written or video form. What made her a best-seller beyond that, however, is her ability to reach outside the SBC to other Protestant churches of all kinds.

Diana Butler Bass

Christian author Diana Butler Bass summed up the seismic shock of Moore’s break with the SBC, which was announced two days after Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey: “Beth Moore leaving the Southern Baptist Convention is the religion news equivalent to Prince Harry leaving the royal firm. A big and unthinkable deal.”

Author Brian Zahnd tweeted: “If you can’t keep a theological conservative who is as gifted, loyal, and generous as @BethMooreLPM in your theologically conservative denomination, you’re probably doing something wrong.”

And SBC pastor Dwight McKissic, who has been leading the charge against the SBC for its racist past and refusal to deal with systemic racism, connected the dots in his own tweet: “When the likes of Beth Moore, Charlie Dates & Ralph West — 3 of the most gifted, godly & effective spokespersons for the Kingdom leave the SBC— & many others are standing at the door — it certainly indicates, to paraphrase an old Negro spiritual, ‘There is danger, in the water.’”

Dates and West are two prominent Black Baptist pastors who have left the SBC in protest of a statement by the six SBC presidents condemning Critical Race Theory.

Why she left

In her interview with RNS, which was given on Friday, March 5, but not reported until Tuesday, March 9, Moore recalled her shock in October 2016 when reading the transcripts of the “Access Hollywood” tapes, where Trump crassly boasted of his sexual exploits with women.

“This wasn’t just immorality,” she told RNS. “This smacked of sexual assault.”

Yet the same Southern Baptists who had been outraged by former President Bill Clinton’s conduct in the 1990s gave Trump a pass — not only a pass but a ringing endorsement. “The disorientation of this was staggering,” she told RNS. “Just staggering.”

“Make no mistake about Moore’s own theology: She is not a ‘liberal’ by any definition of the word.”

Make no mistake about Moore’s own theology: She is not a “liberal” by any definition of the word. Her Bible studies, books and videos hew a traditional Southern Baptist line in orthodoxy, and she describes herself as “pro-life from conception to grave.” She also has repeatedly dodged the thorny question of whether she is a “preacher” or just a “teacher,” deflecting the debate over women’s role in the church by saying she is not called to be a pastor.

Throughout the Trump administration, Moore maintained a critique of the president’s own immoral behavior and the less-than-biblical policies of his administration. That critique reached its peak on Dec. 13, 2020, in the midst of Trump’s baseless claims that the 2020 election had been stolen from him. Moore tweeted: “I do not believe these are days for mincing words. I’m 63 1/2 years old & I have never seen anything in these United States of America I found more astonishingly seductive & dangerous to the saints of God than Trumpism. This Christian nationalism is not of God. Move back from it.”

Illustrative of the pushback she had been getting from the most conservative wing of the SBC, Tennessee pastor Greg Locke (an ardent Trump supporter and not a Southern Baptist), replied to Moore via Twitter: “Ma’am, you’ve honest to God lost your mind. This trashy rhetoric is why America is in the place that she is. You say “move away.” I rebuke you in the name of Christ. You are NO friend to babies, Israel, religious Liberty or the nuclear family. SIT DOWN.”

Locke’s “sit down” language echoed the harsh rebuke of Moore given in fall 2019 by influential pastor and author John MacArthur: “Go home.”

While both Locke and MacArthur are not Southern Baptists, they and others like them wield enormous influence in SBC circles today.

In June 2019, SBC seminary president and influencer Al Mohler took on Moore via Twitter after she announced she would be speaking at a church from the pulpit on the Sunday morning of Mother’s Day: “We have reached a critical moment in the Southern Baptist Convention when there are now open calls to retreat from our biblical convictions on complementarianism and embrace the very error that the SBC repudiated over 30 years ago. Honestly, I never thought I would see this day.”

Complementarianism is a belief that God created men and women for different purposes and that they “complement” each other by staying true to these God-given gender roles. While Mohler claimed this had always been the view within the SBC, Moore had challenged whether that was true, speaking from her own lifetime experience as a Southern Baptist.

She rose to prominence as a gifted Bible teacher at First Baptist Church of Houston.

She rose to prominence as a gifted Bible teacher at First Baptist Church of Houston, where she was an aerobics instructor who also gave a brief Bible lesson with each class. That morphed into a massively popular weekly Bible study that she taught at First Baptist for 29 years.

First Baptist Houston is a megachurch firmly ensconced in the conservative evangelical culture of the SBC. Her longtime pastor there in the 1980s and ’90s was John Bisagno, one of the leaders of the so-called “conservative resurgence” that ran off moderates and liberals from the SBC.

Jeff Straub

Jeff Straub, professor of historical theology and missions at Central Seminary in Plymouth, Minn., explained the background in a Feb. 28 article posted on the seminary’s website.

Describing a current call for a second “conservative resurgence” within the SBC, he called attention to the Conservative Baptist Network and Founders Ministries — two far-right groups within the right-wing world of the SBC. One of the flashpoints for these two groups, he wrote, is Beth Moore.

When Moore preached the Mother’s Day sermon at her son-in-law’s church last year, “this unleashed an internet firestorm with opponents and supporters speaking out on whether women should ever be preaching in SBC churches,” Straub explained. “Compounding the problem, Moore, herself a victim of childhood sexual abuse, charged the convention with overemphasizing complementarianism, thus contributing to the MeToo Movement hitting the SBC.”

Narrowing the tent of the SBC

Facing increasing pressure from the Conservative Baptist Network and Founders Ministries, among others, SBC leaders in the last two years have sought to reassure the right-most flank within the denomination.

Beth Moore speaking with Russell Moore at a 2018 ERLC conference. (Photo: ERLC)

When Russell Moore, head of the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, joined Beth Moore (they’re not related) in criticizing Trump’s personal behavior and some of his policies — such as his harsh actions on immigration — he also became the object of intense criticism from within his own denomination.

The SBC Executive Committee last month received a report from a special study committee that claimed Russell Moore’s criticisms of Trump were costing the SBC money because angry churches have reduced their giving.

With the battle between Trumpers and never-Trumpers firmly underway, the six seminary presidents on Nov 30 added fuel to the fire with their statement on Critical Race Theory — which appeared to align with Trump’s own ban on talking about Critical Race Theory and systemic racism in federal workplaces.

All this is expected to boil over at the SBC’s annual meeting in Nashville this summer. Having already alienated the anti-Trump segment of the SBC and the majority of Black pastors in the SBC, the denomination now faces further alienation of women who put more stock in Beth Moore than in their denomination.

During a workshop session with Beth Moore at the SBC annual meeting in summer 2019, Russell Moore said this: “An SBC that doesn’t have a place for Beth Moore, doesn’t have a place for a lot of us.”

Whether those words were prophetic or hollow soon will be seen.

 

Related articles:

Houston pastor quits Southwestern and SBC over seminary presidents’ statement on race

Another prominent Black Baptist pastor publicly quits the SBC

‘The wheel’s still in spin’: Beth Moore reignites a stalled debate | Opinion by Alan Bean

Debate over women in Southern Baptist pulpits flares on social media

Mohler says women should not occupy the Lord’s Day pulpit

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • More
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Skype (Opens in new window)
Tags:Complementarianism#metooBeth MooreSBC Executive CommitteeTrumpismwomen's role in churchPrince HarryJeff Straubsexual harassentAl MohlerSexual AssaultSouthern Baptist ConventionDonald TrumpSBCCentral Baptist Theological SeminaryLifeWay
More by
Mark Wingfield
  • Get BNG headlines in your inbox

  • Featured

    • What did Pope Francis say, and what did he mean, in AP interview on homosexuality?

      Analysis

    • Biden administration urged to remove Cuba from list of state sponsors of terrorism

      News

    • Jesus and Buddha are talking with me about loving and blessing my enemies

      Opinion

    • Zimbabwean pastors flee ministry to join more lucrative care work in the UK

      News


    Curated

    • GOP Rep. Who Spoke At Pro-Hitler Event Goes After Ilhan Omar Because Of ‘Anti-Semitism’

      GOP Rep. Who Spoke At Pro-Hitler Event Goes After Ilhan Omar Because Of ‘Anti-Semitism’

    • Psychedelic churches in US pushing boundaries of religion

      Psychedelic churches in US pushing boundaries of religion

    • Prominent Jewish leaders add to drumbeat of criticism of Israel’s new government

      Prominent Jewish leaders add to drumbeat of criticism of Israel’s new government

    • At Tyre Nichols’ funeral, VP Harris and Sharpton among those praying and promising reform

      At Tyre Nichols’ funeral, VP Harris and Sharpton among those praying and promising reform

    Read Next:

    Nonreligious young adults say they are more open to religion than older adults, but campus ministers say that’s still a delicate opportunity

    AnalysisMallory Challis

    More Articles

    • All
    • News
    • Opinion
    • Curated
    • Title 42, congregations and the sojourner

      OpinionSean Powell

    • SBC Executive Committee member once again criticized for sexually crude social media posts

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • The truth about police brutality

      OpinionJames Ellis III

    • In Ukraine: ‘We cannot just preach like we did before the war’

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • TikTok trends and three questions you and your church should ask this year about rest

      AnalysisLaura Ellis

    • Two churches ‘under inquiry’ by SBC Credentials Committee for platforming Johnny Hunt

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • Biblical orthodoxy 2023: Sign or get ‘churched’

      OpinionBill Leonard, Senior Columnist

    • Zimbabwean pastors flee ministry to join more lucrative care work in the UK

      NewsRay Mwareya

    • Jesus and Buddha are talking with me about loving and blessing my enemies

      OpinionH. Stephen Shoemaker

    • Biden administration urged to remove Cuba from list of state sponsors of terrorism

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Why most everything you think you know about global migration is probably wrong

      AnalysisMark Wingfield

    • What did Pope Francis say, and what did he mean, in AP interview on homosexuality?

      AnalysisMallory Challis

    • Transitions for the week of 2-3-23

      NewsBarbara Francis

    • Letter to the Editor: Kudos all around for Baptist News Global

      OpinionLetters to the Editor

    • Letter to the Editor: Jesus expects us to follow him; Trump expects us to follow him

      OpinionLetters to the Editor

    • Humor and hope mark the dark journey taken by a creative and brave photojournalist

      OpinionKathy Manis Findley

    • ‘Can you imagine looting the religious artifacts that help strengthen the Christian faith from the Vatican?’

      NewsAnthony Akaeze

    • One year of sobriety

      OpinionGlen Schmucker

    • Panelists discuss how the Hamline University controversy could have been handled better in a diverse culture

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Men’s ministry needs more than, eggs, bacon and football

      OpinionMaina Mwaura

    • Nonreligious young adults say they are more open to religion than older adults, but campus ministers say that’s still a delicate opportunity

      AnalysisMallory Challis

    • Pope Francis arrives in Africa on a two-nation tour seeking peace amid decades of conflict

      NewsAnthony Akaeze

    • The church must show the world a more excellent way of nonviolence

      OpinionRodney Kennedy

    • Museum of the Bible to host Wednesday morning event to pray for God’s judgment on America, and breakfast is not included

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • National Prayer Breakfast gets new sponsorship but still looks like government-sponsored religion, BJC leaders say

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • SBC Executive Committee member once again criticized for sexually crude social media posts

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • In Ukraine: ‘We cannot just preach like we did before the war’

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Two churches ‘under inquiry’ by SBC Credentials Committee for platforming Johnny Hunt

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • Zimbabwean pastors flee ministry to join more lucrative care work in the UK

      NewsRay Mwareya

    • Biden administration urged to remove Cuba from list of state sponsors of terrorism

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Transitions for the week of 2-3-23

      NewsBarbara Francis

    • ‘Can you imagine looting the religious artifacts that help strengthen the Christian faith from the Vatican?’

      NewsAnthony Akaeze

    • Panelists discuss how the Hamline University controversy could have been handled better in a diverse culture

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Pope Francis arrives in Africa on a two-nation tour seeking peace amid decades of conflict

      NewsAnthony Akaeze

    • Museum of the Bible to host Wednesday morning event to pray for God’s judgment on America, and breakfast is not included

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • National Prayer Breakfast gets new sponsorship but still looks like government-sponsored religion, BJC leaders say

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Ministry jobs and more

      NewsBarbara Francis

    • Zimbabwe Theological Seminary names new principal

      NewsBNG staff

    • What happens when church and state merge? Look to Nazi Germany for answers

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Southwestern Seminary student arrested for alleged ‘felony sexual assault’

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • Trial date set for Patterson and Southwestern versus Jane Roe

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • Faith groups must fight online hate, Interfaith Alliance urges

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Colorado cake maker back in court, this time for refusing service to a transgender woman

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • For every critic of Jesus and John Wayne there are many more positive responses Du Mez says

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Bob Banks, longtime SBC missions leader, dies at 91

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • Members of Florida church required to sign ‘biblical sexuality’ statement or be removed from membership

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • Eight months later, there’s renewed interest in Adam Hamilton’s video on why he’ll remain a United Methodist

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • 165 religious leaders plead with White House to abandon immigrant travel ban

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Ministry jobs and more

      NewsBarbara Francis

    • Knowing a church’s history on slavery can be a nudge toward redemption, historians say

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Title 42, congregations and the sojourner

      OpinionSean Powell

    • The truth about police brutality

      OpinionJames Ellis III

    • Biblical orthodoxy 2023: Sign or get ‘churched’

      OpinionBill Leonard, Senior Columnist

    • Jesus and Buddha are talking with me about loving and blessing my enemies

      OpinionH. Stephen Shoemaker

    • Letter to the Editor: Kudos all around for Baptist News Global

      OpinionLetters to the Editor

    • Letter to the Editor: Jesus expects us to follow him; Trump expects us to follow him

      OpinionLetters to the Editor

    • Humor and hope mark the dark journey taken by a creative and brave photojournalist

      OpinionKathy Manis Findley

    • One year of sobriety

      OpinionGlen Schmucker

    • Men’s ministry needs more than, eggs, bacon and football

      OpinionMaina Mwaura

    • The church must show the world a more excellent way of nonviolence

      OpinionRodney Kennedy

    • Church historian Richard Hughes reflects on a lifetime of ‘Troublesome Questions’

      OpinionTed Parks

    • What churches could learn from the Pub Choir phenomenon

      OpinionMike Frost

    • Living into lament: A white response to the killing of Tyre Nichols by police

      OpinionRobert P. Jones

    • Of church cemeteries, pulpit committees, crafts and sweet potato casserole

      OpinionChris Ayers

    • Of Margie, mountains and ‘El Shaddai’

      OpinionBert Montgomery

    • What I learned from meeting Martin Luther King in Louisville and Josie in Hopkinsville

      OpinionBill Thurman

    • On the baptism of our firstborn

      OpinionEmily Hull McGee

    • Has virtual worship actually harmed Christianity?

      OpinionSara Robb-Scott

    • ‘What can we forgive?’: An interview with Matthew Ichihashi Potts on Forgiveness

      OpinionGreg Garrett, Senior Columnist

    • My father’s faith

      OpinionBrett Younger

    • The apology that never came at Bubba-Doo’s

      OpinionCharles Qualls

    • Trump and his allegedly disloyal white evangelical supporters

      OpinionRobert P. Jones

    • Doom-scrolling, sourdough starter and three kinds of kin

      OpinionJustin Cox

    • Putin needs to be taken down

      OpinionMark Wingfield

    • How my eyes were opened to America’s broken immigration system

      OpinionChristian Vaughn

    • GOP Rep. Who Spoke At Pro-Hitler Event Goes After Ilhan Omar Because Of ‘Anti-Semitism’

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Psychedelic churches in US pushing boundaries of religion

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Prominent Jewish leaders add to drumbeat of criticism of Israel’s new government

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • At Tyre Nichols’ funeral, VP Harris and Sharpton among those praying and promising reform

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Marvin Olasky Still Wants to Make Journalism Biblically Objective

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Progressive National Baptists to deploy $1 million grant to boost ‘compelling preaching’

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Church of England sheds light on ‘shameful’ slave trade ties

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Chinese Christians remain in Thailand fearing deportation

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Black police officers aren’t colorblind – they’re infected by the same anti-Black bias as American society and police in general

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Ohio is investigating a Nazi homeschooling network that teaches children to love Hitler

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Omar says some Republicans don’t want a Muslim in Congress: ‘These people are OK with Islamophobia’

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Tyre Nichols police beating video prompts faith leaders to react with grief, goals

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • How Egyptian police hunt LGBT people on dating apps

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • N. Carolina church says it lost nearly $800K in email scam

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • On A Mission To Fill Empty Pulpits: A Couple Addressing The Preacher Shortage

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Second gentleman Emhoff visits Auschwitz, part of a push against antisemitism

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • A Buddhist disaster relief organization offers key support after Monterey Park shooting

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • It shouldn’t seem so surprising when the pope says being gay ‘isn’t a crime’ – a Catholic theologian explains

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • USCCB official: The church must admit its role in destroying Native American culture

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • House bill would limit government authority over religious events

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • ‘He Gets Us’ organizers hope to spend $1 billion to promote Jesus. Will anyone care?

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • The Rise of Spirit Warriors on the Christian Right

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Twitter reinstated white nationalist Nick Fuentes. He lasted 24 hours.

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • In Rare Rebuke, Elaine Chao Calls Out Trump’s Anti-Asian Attacks

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • How Southern California helped birth white Christian nationalism

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    Conversations that Matter.

    © 2023 Baptist News Global. All rights reserved.

    Want to share a story? We hope you will! Read our republishing, terms of use and privacy policies here.

    • Facebook
    • Twitter
    • Instagram
    • LinkedIn
    • RSS