Woe for Woke Southern Baptists

MOORE WOE TO THE WOKE

Things continue to unravel at the Southern Baptist Convention (Hold your applause until the end, please). 

What with Russell Moore’s resignation from his post as president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) in May, to Moore’s “leaked” letter right before the big convention in June, to that convention’s narrow presidential election where liberal Ed Litton beat out Mike Stone, to July allegations that Litton plagiarized sermons from outgoing president J.D. Greear, to the news in October of Stone suing Moore for defamation…

Whoa, Nelly! With all this internal turmoil, it’s enough to make one wonder how in the world there will be any time left to devote to the usual and revolting pandering to the social justice warriors we have come to expect from the largest Protestant denomination in the country. Thou might as well attempt to kick against the pricks than to try to fight your brethren and apologize to the world all at the same time.

Due to limited space, let us concentrate on just Moore for now.

Moore spent eight years at the helm of the ERLC (the “moral and public policy agency” of the SBC) before his resignation this spring. While there, Moore demonstrated his humble Christian servanthood by amassing a small fortune (his net worth is in the neighborhood of $1.5 million, according to Forbes and Business Insider). 

It was in the immediate aftermath of his resignation that his “leaked” letter surfaced. It was written more than a year earlier, in February 2020, by Moore to the trustees of the ERLC. 

The letter (or, coming in at over four thousand words, manuscript) is a longwinded, hyperbolic attempted attestation of self-defense, self-righteousness, and self-pity. Moore portrays himself as the victim of an attempt to quiet him (obviously a monumental failure) by keeping him in “psychological terror” orchestrated by the SBC leadership, which he characterizes as “the rule of a toxic and abusive gerontocracy.”

Moore alleges “guerrilla attacks” by these goons caused him to spend “years in grief, feeling like an exile and an orphan.” He wrote that he had spent his then-seven years as boss of the ERLC “talking countless numbers from leaving because of all the buffoonery and bigotry and backwardness” from those who objected to his leftist endeavors, accusing him of “not playing enough to the Bubbas and the rednecks” who “pay the bills."

One of the divisive issues Moore had with other members in 2020 was his very outspoken opposition to the re-election and Christian support of President Trump. However, in the letter, Moore claims, “This has nothing to do with that.” He tells us (excuse me — he told the executive committee, since this was “leaked” by “someone”) that the real issue at hand had to do with his attempt to shine the light on “sexual abuse” within the SBC and “at the same time the other absolutely draining and unrelenting issue has been that of racial reconciliation.”

There is one paragraph in the letter so stark it is worth quoting in its entirety: “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.’”

A question begs to be asked here. Moore is accusing the leadership under whom he worked and financially thrived for seven years to be complicit in covering up sexual abuse. He writes that was the number-one issue of divisiveness between himself and the leadership. However, Moore never came public about this hugely serious issue the entire time he was profiting from the organization. Furthermore, he continued in his position for over a year, resigning only when he had secured another financially lucrative full-time position as “public theologian” for the equally-liberal Christianity Today magazine. In six months on the new job, I am not aware of any attempt by Moore to use his new position to shine further light on sexual abuse within the SBC — the issue he claims rankled so many feathers while he was a part of it. 

Surely it is not cynical for the rest of us to be asking why Moore kept the issues of children being “torn to shreds” and the rape of women confined within the organization he served in and personally benefited under for eight years. Either the allegations were frivolous, and he used them in his “leaked” letter in an attempt to gain sympathy, or he was (and still is) not coming forward with serious allegations. Reading his letter, one is under the impression that Moore wants us to consider him some kind of heroic martyr, rather than the opportunistic, self-serving weasel this truly makes him. 

As far as his vast desire of “racial reconciliation,” Moore has justifiably come under fire from Christian conservatives for his virtue-signaling to the “woke” brigades hard at work at accelerating the ruination of this country. He has advocated for Critical Race Theory. There is no Christian command of self-hatred, but Moore and his fellow species at the SBC have mastered it like no other religious group on the planet. 

In the same letter, Moore claims to have been attacked “with the most vicious guerrilla tactics” because of his race hustling. He wrote that an SBC leader “ripped me to shreds” when he pushed for a black SBC president in 2011. He has pushed for open borders while at the same time resembling a CNN reporter by lamenting the D.C. “insurrection.”

In the aftermath of the rampant violence and destruction caused by “peaceful protests” that have left cities in flames across America, Moore was there to push the false narrative that white police officers routinely gun down innocent black youths. He invokes the same language of our modern-day Marxists, claiming in the letter that, “My family and I have faced constant threats from white nationalists and white supremacists, including within our own convention. Some of them have been involved in neo-Confederate activities for years. Some are involved with groups funded by white nationalist nativist organizations.”

However laughable it may be to consider the extent that the Southern Baptist Convention is inundated with “white nationalists,” one cannot help but wonder again how Moore justified to himself and his woke-brigade progressivist allies remaining a part of it for so long and only leaving when a better offer came along (assuming the more cultivated folks at Christianity Today aren’t marching around with white sheets and swastikas like the “gerontocracy” at the SBC).

In the letter, Moore moans about the number of “former” Southern Baptists he meets while completely missing the fact that it is people like him that account for a sizable portion of them.