Russell Moore once stood as the public face of the Southern Baptist Convention and the vast majority of the denomination stood behind him in support of his public musings on political and social issues. And while most trusted him, few listened to the obscure voices in the wilderness who were willing to speak out against what we saw as a liberal ideological invasion into the Church.
Russell Moore—who has unabashedly called on conservatives to stop fighting the “culture wars” because that’s not what Christians are supposed to do, apparently—still in many ways represents the progressive wing of the Southern Baptist Convention. Moore’s ideological assault on conservatism didn’t end when he departed the denomination last year, he simply moved his offensive to a different arena.
Today, Moore wages his war against Biblical conservatism from the late Billy Graham’s publication, Christianity Today.
In the wake of the recent Supreme Court opinion leak on the upcoming Roe v. Wade decision, Moore ruminates about how this leak now undermines the credibility of the courts. In an article at Christianity Today titled The Roe Leak Spotlights America’s Crisis of Credibility, Moore writes:
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The temptation right now would be to separate the opinion from these other questions of institutional stability. After all, they appear to be two different questions. One can support or oppose the outcome of the decision and have the exact opposite view of the chaos surrounding its release.
And yet, the questions really aren’t all that separate. While we do not know who leaked the opinion early—or why he or she did so—we do know that behind the leak was a loss of trust.
While it’s certainly respectable to agree with Moore that the leak could undermine the trust of the public institution, it’s what he says following this that should be contemptible to all Christians. Moore manages to use this leak—a leak that was interestingly similar to a scandal he himself was caught up in during the 2021 Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting involving information that he “leaked” to the press about a conservative presidential candidate—to undermine the biblical teaching on sin and blame abortion on churches and religious institutions.
“Moreover,” Moore writes, “the reason we have abortion at all is because of the loss of the sort of social trust that would enable communities and governments and religious bodies to care for women in crisis and for children, born or unborn.”
Moore, a self-described communitarian who is driven by social justice causes, fails to see the actual reason behind abortion. It has nothing to do with “trust” in the community or religious organizations. Not only from a socio-political perspective but also from a biblical perspective, it is not the responsibility of communities, churches, and society to bribe would-be murderers into not murdering their children in exchange for social services and welfare. Yet, that seems to be the consensus among the progressive Evangelical elitists.
Owen Strachan, provost at Grace Bible Theological Seminary responded to Moore’s allegations, stating “The reason we have abortion at all is because men love the darkness, and worship the creature rather than the Creator.” He continued, “This is sometimes called SIN.
But this is matter of course for Moore. Whether it be Moore’s breaking bread with the gay community, his softening tone on homosexuality, referring to Jesus as an “illegal alien,” promotion and teaching of inherent “white guilt” by sole virtue of skin color, yoking with Democrats and socialist groups, serving as an editor for a Catholic magazine, coddling the transgender community, partnering with animal rights groups and referring to animal rights as a “gospel issue,” fighting for the right to build an Islamic mosque, accepting donations from billionaire leftists like George Soros to advance open-borders and amnesty, publishing articles claiming that the Bible affirms gender fluidity, or making the absolutely asinine claim that Western culture is demonic, one thing is for certain, Russell Moore has most definitely been fighting the culture wars—he’s just been fighting it from the other side.