The Scandal Rocking the Evangelical World
The sudden departure of Russell Moore (?) is forcing an overdue conversation about the crises of American Christendom. *
*Pedovore cult shills
“This is an earthquake,” a prominent Christian writer told me. The publication of an extraordinary February 24, 2020, letter by Russell Moore, one of the most influential and respected evangelicals in America (and a friend), has shaken the Christian world.
When the letter was written, Moore was the president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the United States. The letter, sent to the ERLC’s board of trustees, offers a devastating indictment of the denomination’s executive committee.
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Moore’s letter was leaked to Religion News Service (RNS) a few weeks after he resigned from the ERLC. And on June 1, Immanuel Nashville, a church not affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, announced that Moore would become its pastor in residence. Which means that one of the most important figures in the SBC has completely broken with the denomination he has been a part of for virtually his entire life.
Moore’s 4,000-word letter explains why.
His departure was not primarily prompted, as many people had assumed, by his role as an outspoken critic of Donald Trump, although that had clearly upset powerful members within the politically and theologically conservative denomination. Instead, the letter suggests, the breach was caused by the stands he had taken against sexual abuse within the SBC and on racial reconciliation, which had infuriated the executive committee. The chair of the executive committee at the time, Mike Stone, is now running for SBC president. According to RNS, “Supporters have touted Moore’s resignation as proof of Stone’s effectiveness as a leader.” (Stone released a statement in response to Moore’s letter, alleging that it contained “numerous misrepresentations,” and calling it an attempt to influence the coming denominational election.)
“The presenting issue here is that, first and foremost, of sexual abuse,” Moore wrote. “This Executive Committee, through their bylaws workgroup, ‘exonerated’ churches, in a spur-of-the-moment meeting, from serious charges of sexual abuse cover-up.”
At the ERLC’s National Conference in 2019, Moore interviewed Rachael Denhollander, a former gymnast who was the first woman to publicly accuse Larry Nassar, the USA Gymnastics doctor, of sexual assault. (Nassar was the perpetrator in the largest sexual-abuse scandal in sports history and will serve the rest of his life in prison.) In the interview, Denhollander criticized the executive committee for how it had handled the case of Jennifer Lyell, who had accused a Southern Baptist seminary professor of abuse.
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“The story Rachael told is accurate,” Moore wrote, “and [my wife] and I know that because we were, even during that very meeting, ministering alongside others to that mistreated young woman.”
…
…The letter’s next passage was written in bold italics:
I am trying to say this as clearly as I can to you, brothers and sisters: These are the tactics that have been used to create a culture where countless children have been torn to shreds, where women have been raped and then “broken down.”
But confronting sexual abuse wasn’t the only issue dividing Moore from the SBC executive committee. “The other absolutely draining and unrelenting issue has been that of racial reconciliation,” Moore wrote. “My family and I have faced constant threats from white nationalists and white supremacists, including within our convention. Some of them have been involved in neo-Confederate activities going back for years. Some are involved with groups funded by white nationalist nativist organizations. Some of them have just expressed raw racist sentiment, behind closed doors.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/06/russell-moore-sbc/619122/