The Many Faces of Russell Moore

A Story of Baptist Betrayal and Terminal Trump Derangement Syndrome

Before I began seminary around 2005, I remember thinking Russell Moore was a big deal. During a campus visit to The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, the tour guide walked us around the academic buildings, courtyard, and classrooms. As our group of about 15 prospective students rounded a corner, Dr. Moore appeared out of nowhere, somewhat startled by the unexpected crowd, and blurted out, “Well, hello there!”

At that moment, he was friendly, affable, and warm. Looking back, it’s easy to see how so many were charmed by his charisma.

I actually attended the same church he attended at the time in Louisville, KY: 9th and O Baptist Church (that’s a weird name for a church, which is a story for another day). Dr. Moore was the most popular Sunday school teacher in church. Some went to that church just to be in his class.

I was eager to enroll in his Systematic Theology I course at Southern Seminary. A theological novice at the time, I hung on every word, laughed at every joke, and took copious, hand-written notes. I didn’t want to miss a single insight. Moments like these leave a lasting impression on students like me, for whom a new world of scripture and theology was being opened. I’ll never forget it.

I remember being brought to tears as Dr. Moore told the story of adopting his sons from a Russian orphanage; how he walked in expecting to hear the sounds of dozens of crying children but being shocked at the silence. Those halls lined with cribs were filled with children who stopped crying, having given up hope of being taken in by a family. That haunting story inspired me to reflect on the wonder of God’s gracious adoption of every believer in Christ.

In 2006, Dr. Moore published a paper for ETS called “After Patriarchy, What? Why Egalitarians Are Winning the Gender Debate.” At the time, I was working through issues of biblical sexuality, listening to shock jock “man up” sermons by Mark Driscoll, and soaking in the Young, Restless, and Reformed ecosystem of the Acts 29 church planting network. 

I cannot overstate how formative these experiences were. In my case, they proved prophetic.

In his essay defending patriarchy, Moore said, “A more patriarchal complementarianism will resonate among a generation seeking stability in a family-fractured Western culture in ways that soft-bellied big-tent complementarianism never can. And it also will address the needs of hurting women and children far better, because it is rooted in the primary biblical means for protecting women and children: calling men to responsibility.”

This prophetic word helped capture my heart with a compelling vision of biblical masculinity that is good for both men and women. Thus, his clear and courageous voice solidified my own trajectory toward biblical patriarchy. 

I wasn’t the only one. Other men like me I met in seminary, who were similarly called to plant and pastor churches, needed clear-headed guidance from the scholars and theologians we could trust. We were told Dr. Moore is one of those men. His patriarchy essay was singularly responsible for my then undying trust in and loyalty to Dr. Moore for at least the next decade. I continued to follow him, despite the growing number of critics who were beginning to raise concerns about his theological and political trajectory. The fact that others were critical of Dr. Moore made me suspicious of his skeptics. 

But over time, the critics became too numerous and too vocal to ignore. Their concerns highlighted a clear drift away from the courageous positions that garnered such respect from those who looked up to him. The disquiet about Dr. Moore slowly grew into cognitive dissonance.

For example, in 2016, when presidential candidate Donald Trump tweeted, “Russell Moore is truly a terrible representative of Evangelicals and all of the good they stand for. A nasty guy with no heart!” That was a bizarre moment. Why was a presidential candidate tweeting at one of my former seminary professors? Again, I gave Moore the benefit of the doubt. After all, “mean tweets” are a thing with Trump.

Still, that tweet was just another log on the “Dr. Moore has gone off the rails” fire that had been burning for a while.

“Is there a problem with Dr. Moore?,” I wondered. “Are his critics being unfairly critical of him? Or do they see something I’ve been blind to?”

Trust is slowly gained but quickly lost. No one likes being duped. To err is human, as they say. But once you abuse someone’s trust and make them a fool in the process, watch out. Betrayal creates enemies.

Signs of Betrayal

Once Dr. Moore left Southern Seminary for his gig at the ERLC, I thought Southern Baptists would now have a strong evangelist for conservative values in Washington. Turns out, it was the other way around.

Instead, the Swamp got a strong evangelist for progressive values in the SBC.

Moore’s prominence in the SBC and his proximity to Washington news outlets provided a unique opportunity to position himself as a prophetic whistleblower, blasting evangelicals on the editorial page of the Washington Post with headlines like “Why This Election Makes Me Hate the Word ‘Evangelical.’”

Evidently, evangelicals were embarrassing obstacles to his career ambitions.

Moore’s biting criticism of evangelicals who supported Donald Trump sounded more like an editorial copy written by Joy Reid than a prominent evangelical leader. For example, Moore said, “The way that some evangelicals have embraced Donald Trump has done incalculable damage to evangelical witness and credibility.” That quote is from a 2021 piece in Time Magazine entitled, “Russell Moore Has a Message for Christians Who Still Worship Donald Trump.”

Curious. Earlier this year, Ray Ortlund, Dr. Moore’s current pastor, infamously tweeted, “Never Trump. This time Harris. Always Jesus.” David French commented shortly thereafter, “This is the way.”

If my Big Eva math is adding up, it appears that supporting Trump is idolatry but supporting Harris is the way of Jesus.

His policy priorities for the ERLC seemed ripped straight out of the DEI playbook, accusing Christians of racism and sexism. Regarding racism, he said, “My Southern Baptist ancestors were on the wrong side of that issue. Which was not just on the wrong side of a social and political issue, it was on the wrong side of Jesus Christ himself.” This was said in his first year on the job. During the MLK 50 event, Moore said, “Time and time again, in the white American Bible Belt, the people of God had to choose between Jesus Christ and Jim Crow, because you cannot serve both. And tragically, many often chose to serve Jim Crow and to rename him Jesus Christ.”

Then he accused modern Christians of doing the same thing: “Martin Luther King is relatively non-controversial in American life because Martin Luther King has not been speaking for 50 years. It’s easy to say, ‘If I had been here, I would have listened to Dr. King,’ even though I do not listen to what is happening around me in my own community, in my own neighborhood, in my own church.”

Regarding sexual abuse, in a “private” 2020 letter (that read as though written to be leaked to the public), Moore accused certain SBC leaders of employing “psychological warfare” and “vicious guerilla tactics” against him due to his stance on sexual abuse and racial reconciliation. He stated that he had been “attacked with the most vicious guerilla tactics” and was told to remain silent on these issues.

Moore’s advocacy for sexual abuse victims seemed to conveniently align with his political purposes of undermining conservative SBC leaders that had drawn his ire. In other words, he used those victims to torpedo his opponents. 

This debacle eventually led to his resignation from the ERLC, and departure from the SBC entirely, for greener pastures of Christianity Today, where he can document his leftward drift and cement his progressive legacy unmolested in the pages of a disgraced magazine. 

What more can I say? For time will fail me to tell of his attacks on Christian Nationalism, his underhanded support for Critical Race Theory, his push for leftist immigration policies, and his complete repudiation of his earlier stance on biblical sexuality. In 2006, Moore was critical of Beth Moore, calling her teaching a “gateway drug to radical feminism.” He must have taken the drug. In 2023, he said, “When it comes to teaching [a new generation of Christian men and women] how to stand together, and how to equip one another to teach and lead, I trust Beth Moore much more than 2004 Russell Moore to show them the way.”

Finally, a couple of weeks ago, an old Russell Moore clip recording was making the rounds on X that brought his theological drift into sharp relief. In that clip from 2006, Moore said, “Pick up Christianity Today. Christianity Today is written by mainline Episcopalians. Go to Wheaton College. Wheaton College faculty is a mainline Episcopalian faculty. Look at Fuller Seminary. It is easier to find a creationist on the faculty at Berkeley than at Fuller Seminary. We have turned into the culture because we want to be like them.” 

And now, Russell Moore has joined their ranks. The irony is thick. The betrayal is tragic. The trajectory is bleak. He is now at Christianity Today himself. What does that make him if not a “mainline Episcopalian?”

Tom Buck insightfully captures Russell Moore’s twenty-years-long progressive drift in one tweet:

The ironies abound. Dr. Moore should take a look in the mirror. He’s now Christianity Today’s editor-in-chief. He’s turned into the very same compromisers whose praise he sought.

Maybe for his next move, there will be an opening in the religion department at Berkeley.

Conclusion

Errors often indicate trajectories. Our culture has been moving in a socially progressive direction for a long time. Progressivism is a theological conveyor belt that will pull faithful people to the left unless they are actively working to resist it.

Moore didn’t resist.

Like a schizophrenic madman, he’s now on the record writing a screed against his former self of two decades ago.

Whatever his inner demons are that brought him to this point, no one can say. But the effect his public betrayal of trust has had is beyond calculation. For those who trusted him, and even defended him for far too long, the betrayal is personal.

We trusted him. We followed him. We promoted him.

We even paid him to represent our interests in the serpent’s den of Washington DC. And from that lofty perch, he joined the vipers and attacked his defenders.

I’ve forgiven him, but I’ll never trust him again. And you shouldn’t either.

Russell Moore and his acolytes are everything that’s wrong with the SBC. He might be gone, but his spirit still haunts the ERLC under the leadership of Brent Leatherwood, and many of our most “hip” pastors around the SBC are no doubt Moore fanboys in private.

Yes, Moore has betrayed me. Betrayed us. Betrayed the SBC. Betrayed himself. Betrayed Christian doctrine. But he is gone.

Our task now is to drive out every last echo of his corrupting spirit and by doing so begin to undo the damage he wrought on our denomination.

Then, perhaps, we can finally say, “No Moore.”