Russell Moore Can't Praise Dobbs Because Pro-Trump Christians Won
Part 1 of 2
Many Christian figureheads of the Never Trump variety have either gone mute or twisted themselves in ideological knots since the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade after nearly half a century, but none of the silence is as deafening as that coming from Russell Moore, the former provost and dean of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
It’s odd that one of the most prominent names in evangelicalism and the country’s largest Protestant circles hasn’t said a peep about the most consequential legal decision of our time, especially since Christianity was such a large part of the movement causing the reversal of Roe and will no doubt play an outsized role in its aftermath.
A little online searching shows one “bonus episode” from “The Russell Moore Show” on Christianity Today (where Moore holds the title of public theologian) that came out the day of the Dobbs ruling, advertising “A Conversation with Stephen Prothero on Culture Wars Now That ‘Roe’ Is Gone.”
But the episode didn’t occur after Roe was “gone”; it was a pre-tape from after the Dobbs draft opinion leak speculating about what might come next, meaning Moore has offered no post-Roe analysis. And his guest, a religion professor at Boston University, has spent the days since the Roe reversal telling Christians to “f-ck off” on Twitter and retweeting political graphics depicting conservative Supreme Court justices as Tiananmen Square tanks about to mow down a pregnant woman. Christianity Today didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment about why the pre-taped podcast was dishonestly framed as post-Dobbs commentary.
I don’t think every person everywhere is responsible for commenting on cultural, political, and spiritual events. In fact, that performative impulse is one of the reasons once-apolitical cultural havens such as professional sports have been so ruined by virtue-signaling and complicated sociopolitical realities have been dumbed down to a pointless black square on Instagram. But given thatMoore is the chairman of public theology at Christianity Today, why has he not said anything publicly about this issue of deep theological importance?
It’s not as though Moore hasn’t made his opinions on abortion and Roe clear in the past. He’s many times written about the barbaric practice, even editing a book about “The Gospel & Abortion,” and has often alluded to Roe’s egregiousness on Twitter. So why refuse to comment on the most consequential pro-life victory in nearly 50 years?
Christianity Today and an assistant of Moore didn’t respond to multiple inquiries about why Moore hasn’t said anything.
Perhaps Moore has been silent on Roe he’s been too busy making a showy exit from the Southern Baptist Churchafter a lengthy report about sexual abuse among some of its leaders. It was ultimately faithful Southern Baptists who uncovered the evil. Moore, upstanding as he was, remained a leader within the denomination for years while this abuse was occurring.
But Moore has never been too busy to make public comments on matters of far lesser importance than abortion. He had time to publicly celebrate former National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins for his “wisdom, expertise, and most of all … Christian humility and grace,” despite Collins’ disregard for human life in the form of grotesque humanized mice experiments using aborted babies, his support for shutting down church during Covid, and his character attacks on those who resisted Covid vaccinations that they were “killing people.” Continued…
https://thefederalist.com/2022/06/29/russell-moore-wont-celebrate-dobbs-because-hed-have-to-admit-pro-trump-christians-are-good-at-loving-their-neighbors/