Disclaimer: This is not a political article nor is it meant to make a political point. I do that from time to time, and seek to engage politics through a decidedly biblical worldview. That being said, politics can’t be completely avoided here, but this article is about the dishonesty of former Southern Baptist leader, Russell Moore.

A few days ago, Russell Moore joined Mike Cosper on the podcast at Christianity Today to praise Joe Biden for handling questions regarding his son, Hunter Biden’s drug and money laundering scandals. As you’re probably well aware by now, the evidence of the Biden family’s Burisma/Ukraine money laundering scandal has piled up to the point where it is undeniable and the extent of Hunter’s drug problem is well known. During the 2020 election cycle, Biden did everything he could to sweep both of these issues under the rug, especially the drug problem, as though it was a relic of a bygone era. But we now know that the drugs, the sex videos, and the money laundering scandals—the ones including Joe Biden himself, who completely lied about having any knowledge of the situation at all—were all interconnected. Still, Russell Moore, just a few days ago, praised him for it.

“The way that he [Joe Biden] responded to Hunter Biden during the 2020 election,” Moore said, “that people thought would hurt him in the debate, for instance, when Hunter Biden comes up and he says, look, he’s been an addict. He’s had some trouble with drugs like a lot of kids in this country and a lot of families in this country. And I’m not ashamed of him and I love him and he’s my son. That actually resonated with a lot of people because a lot of people have that situation. Almost all of us have that situation somewhere in our families. I do think that that’s genuine and authentic.“

The issue here isn’t that Joe Biden is a terrible person, unfit for public office of any sort, especially the presidency. Anyone with a modicum of sanity already knows this and you do not need to be convinced of that. The issue here, however, is that Russell Moore, one of the most well-known longest-running leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention’s public policy arm, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), is a blatantly dishonest man with an agenda to push.

Russell Moore, nor is Cosper or anyone else at Christianity Today uninformed on the truth of these scandals. He pulled the same thing with the vaccines, border security, women preachers and sex abuse, racism, and every other hot-button issue we faced over the last decade that he was in office. Russell Moore is also not stupid enough to believe that Joe Biden has been “genuine and authentic” in dealing with questions surrounding these scandals. But it demonstrates that Russell Moore has been willing to sacrifice, time and time again, inconvenient truth in favor of dismantling the former stronghold of conservatism within the Southern Baptist Convention—which he has accomplished very well.