If you’ve been keeping up with the political landscape of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) in recent years, you’re likely aware of the narrative about a “sex abuse cover-up” that has been advanced by left-wing activists within the denomination. Russell Moore, who was once a highly influential leader within the SBC and a noted far-left political and theological activist, led the denomination’s public policy branch, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC). In 2021, Moore left his position to join the staff of Billy Graham’s apostate publication, Christianity Today. His departure was marked by significant controversy, burning down everything and leaving behind a trail of discord and division.

Moore was undeniably the most controversial figure in the Southern Baptist Convention. In fact, it could be said he was the most controversial figure in all of mainstream Evangelicalism. Moore’s leftist activism landed him in hot water on multiple occasions with conservatives including once drawing the ire of then-presidential candidate, Donald Trump, in 2015. After relentless months of anti-Trump tweets and labeling Trump an “arrogant huckster” who is unfit for office, Trump finally responded to him by calling him a “nasty guy” with “no heart” who doesn’t represent Evangelicals.

Much speculation has occurred in the wake of his departure as to his reasoning, and for a while, our best guess was that Moore wanted to beat his critics to the mark by departing before he was voted out at the upcoming annual meeting in June of 2021.

Moore had been under investigation by the Executive Committee. The ERLC has been touted by Southern Baptists as the most draining resource in the denomination, which caused many churches to stop giving to the Cooperative Program. Moore’s proclivity to use his platform to launch a leftist political agenda agitated countless Southern Baptists and church leaders. Prior to his departure, a movement against his progressive drift had increased and pressure to remove Moore from office had grown significantly.

One would think Moore’s decision to leave would be rooted in his desire to move on and continue his damage somewhere more fitting to him. But Nah, that’s not why he left. According to a leaked letter to the Board of Trustees of the ERLC, Moore left because he didn’t want to provide cover for his critics who he accused of being “racial bigots” and “child molesters.”

In that letter, Moore bashed the SBC and accused his critics of wanting to fire him because of his work in the denomination against sexual abuse. “The lazy journalistic assessment would be that this is about the President of the United States,” Moore writes. “This has nothing to do with that.”

He then goes on to let the board know what it is really about, writing that the “presenting issue here is that, first and foremost, of sexual abuse.” He continued, “This Executive Committee, through their bylaws workgroup, “exonerated” churches, in a spur-of-the-moment meeting, from serious charges of sexual abuse cover-up.”

After bashing several churches and leaders for several paragraphs, he then summarizes his reason for leaving as not wanting to provide cover for these people.

Moore’s accusations against the Southern Baptist Convention prompted the formation of a committee of Southern Baptists to hire a third-party firm, Guidepost Solutions—a firm whose ideology is firmly rooted in feminism and queer theory—to perform an investigation into alleged abuse cover-ups. The witch-hunt turned up very little, nothing that wasn’t already known about. Yet, the Guidepost report prompted another investigation in 2022 by the Biden Department of Justice (DOJ)—a DOJ that is already hostile against Christians, especially Southern Baptists—to inquire of any criminal activity surrounding the accusations of cover-ups by Moore and his acolytes.

This week, the U.S. Department of Justice concluded its investigation into the Southern Baptist Convention’s (SBC) Executive Committee, related to their handling of an abuse crisis, without bringing any charges. This decision, revealed in February 2024, ends a probe that began in August 2022 following a third-party report criticizing the SBC’s response to abuse allegations. The closure of the investigation suggests that despite the allegations made by Russell Moore, Rachael Denhollander, and countless other left-wing feminist activists on their SBC witch-hunt, there actually is no wrongdoing by the denomination.

The investigation’s closure has sparked mixed reactions, with Rachael Denhollander, one of the SBC’s task force leaders, insisting that reports of the investigation being closed are wrong.

The disappointed rantings of these child-like feminists is like watching the Titanic sink right before you. It’s unclear if these people, like Russell Moore, Rachael Denhollander, and Bruce Frank, another of the task force’s leaders, had actually convinced themselves that there was a systemic conspiracy to cover up sex abuse in the SBC, or if they’re just feminists who hate men, especially conservative men, and want to turn the influential denomination into another egalitarian denomination as a last-ditch effort to dismantle the patriarchy.

At any rate, what these activists have cost Southern Baptists in the way of missions finances and other funding is incalculable, but the accusations were dead on arrival. And at The DISNTR, we’ve always stood by that narrative, and today we’ve been vindicated.