Background Information:
Full Name: Russell D. Moore
Born: October 9, 1971, in Biloxi, Mississippi
Undergraduate: University of Southern Mississippi
President of the University of Southern Mississippi Democrats
Aide to Democrat Congressman Gene Taylor
Former Associate Pastor: Bay Vista Baptist Church in Biloxi
Former Pastor, Highview Baptist Church, 2008-2012
Master of Divinity: New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary
Ph.D.: Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
Professor of Christian Theology and Ethics: SBTS, appointed 2001
Executive Director: Carl F. H. Henry Institute for Evangelical Engagement, 2001-2009
Dean of the School of Theology (SBTS), 2004
Executive Editor, The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology
Senior Editor, Touchstone Magazine
Chairman, Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood
President, Ethic & Religious Liberty Commission (SBC), June 1, 2013 – June 1, 2021
Council Member of The Gospel Coalition
Editor in Chief of Christianity Today 2022 – Present
Overview:
Russell Moore is best known for his role as a major player in the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest evangelical Christian denomination in the United States, and especially for his role as the President of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, from which he recently resigned in June of 2021. His political sympathies have been Democratic since he was very young, as he was hired by Gene Taylor, first as an intern, then as a leader of Taylor’s internship program, and then as a communications manager for Taylor’s 1992 re-election campaign. At the time, Russell Moore was 19 years old. During his tenure as the President of the ERLC, Moore has acted as one of the prime movers for soft-peddled (and occasionally blatant) social justice ideology and Leftism in the SBC by using the ERLC as a means to promote “social change” rather than genuine Biblical ethics. His participation in the Evangelical Immigration Table put him in direct connection with George Soros’s National Immigration Forum. He has supported the building of Mosques in the name of “soul liberty,” and has soft-peddled Critical Race Theory talking points.
George Soros Connection:
Russell Moore and the ERLC are connected to George Soros via his being one of the heads of the Evangelical Immigration Table (EIT) and a prominent participant in the National Immigration Forum (NIF). George Soros is a secular, Jewish, billionaire neo-Marxist who helped to finance the campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. While supporters of Russell Moore initially denied any and all ties to Soros, Moore was listed as a speaker for the 2020 convention of the NIF on their website, which removes all reasonable doubt that there is a Soros connection, given that it is known that the NIF is financed by Soros. Stream writer John Zmirak wrote this about Soros: “Joining “faith” fronts, Soros also funds thousands of … collaborators and projects that suggest his goal is to demoralize America (and Europe)… In the ironic rhetoric of compassion, Soros and friends also fund mass immigration followed by voting “rights” and redistricting schemes, while financing the campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. (Soros is a major donor to the Democratic Party and co-chairman of Ready for Hillary PAC.)” In 2020, Enemies Within The Church obtained meeting notes from an Open Society US Programs Board Meeting (from George Soros’s own Open Society Foundation), which state that “In part, our active role reflects our observation that the refugee advocacy community while long-standing and sophisticated in the inner workings of refugee policy, does not have a strong advocacy capacity or deep grassroots ties. In the course of our work, we were able to generate engagement by a group of mayors through Emma Lazarus II Fund grantee Cities United for Immigration Action… and some conservative voices such as evangelical Christians and Southern Baptists through grantee NIF. In the face of this pressure, the Obama administration announced Sept. 20 that by 2017, it would raise to 100,000 the total number of refugees the US takes worldwide each year.”
Pro-Illegal Immigration Stance:
Russell Moore’s stance on mass/illegal immigration is positive. He is not a proponent of border security, by any account. On the contrary, he views immigration, legal or illegal, as a “pro-life” issue, which demonstrates his willingness to distort definitions to suit his Leftist political purposes. This fits right in line with the ERLC’s involvement in the Evangelical Immigration Table and Moore’s personal involvement with the National Immigration Forum. As a matter of fact, in a letter from the EIT–which was signed by Russell Moore– there was a direct request to use “alternatives to detention for [illegal] individuals who do not pose a threat to public safety.” In that same letter, they proposed placing illegal migrants in the care of churches and family members without penalty to “shelter in place.” This letter was written in 2020, at precisely the time when Americans were under lockdown for the supposed COVID-19 “pandemic.” While Americans were told to stay at home, Russell Moore proposed that illegal migrants be given free reign within the country without fear of being detained or deported. In other words, Moore has promoted the accommodation of foreigners who have deliberately and knowingly broken United States law.
Russell Moore’s Critical Race Theory:
Moore has asserted that America is “infected with a kind of racism and a kind of racial animosity that is more subtle than it would have been at other points in American history, which means it can be even more dangerous,” comparing the current state of affairs to “cancer” which is “undetectable.” This betrays Moore’s true sympathies towards CRT, which teaches that “racism” is pervasive throughout every institution in the United States, although it is not overt or visible in the vast majority of circumstances. This is an assertion for which there is zero evidence.
More than that, Moore conflates CRT’s anti-racism (which isn’t really anti-racism; rather, it’s anti-Western civilization and anti-white) with the Gospel. “The Gospel is the good news that God takes heaven and earth and reconciles heaven to earth,” he said after commenting on Galatians 3:28 during a message on “racial reconciliation” at Ed Litton’s Redemption Church in Mobile, Alabama. He has criticized the idea of talking about the Gospel apart from talking about race, claiming that “this [race] is not simply some social issue, this is not simply some political issue. This is an issue that speaks right to us in the very core of our hearts… are you going to be someone who idolizes your identity, which means idolizes and worships yourself, to the exclusion of other people? Because if you are, what you are saying to God is ‘I will follow Jesus as long as I don’t have to repent of this area of my life.’”
In other words, Russell Moore believes that CRT is a part of the Gospel. This lays the groundwork for other figures in evangelical Christianity to create connection points between the ethic of CRT– constant repentance and lament for “white privilege,” “white fragility,” and even “whiteness” itself.
Russell Moore’s Friendship to Islam and Promotion of Mosque-Building:
Under the leadership of Russell Moore, the ERLC promoted the building of mosques in New Jersey and elsewhere on the grounds of “soul liberty for everyone” through the signing of an amicus brief. In other words, one of the most prominent leaders of one of the most prominent institutions of one of the most prominent Christian denominations capitulated to Islam, one of the fastest-growing, violent, explicitly anti-Christian religions in the world.