The Proverbial Road to Partisanship
Dr. Russell Moore, the current President of the Ethics and Religious Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, has been a figure of controversy among evangelicals since the run up to the U.S. Presidential election of 2016. This controversy was built entirely on his criticisms of Donald Trump as a Presidential candidate. I don’t suppose anyone reading this piece needs me to document that statement.
What you may not know, reader, is that Dr. Moore is a man I have learned a tremendous, tremendous amount from over the years — almost all of it for which I am very thankful to this day. While I never had him in class while he taught at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary I first became of aware of Dr. Moore and his work during his tenure there. I eagerly sought out his chapel and conference messages and read his content in various places as soon as I was able. If you were able, reader, to come to my office you would find copies of Dr. Moore’s books on my shelves and if you took one off to examine it you would find the kind of underlining and commenting that is the only way I know how to seriously engage with a text.
I have watched in recent years as the controversy around Dr. Moore snowballed, spiraled, and became increasingly toxic. To put all my cards on the table I often found myself disagreeing with Dr. Moore but my respect for Dr. Moore prevented me from ever joining in the pushback, lest I be numbered among those who appeared (in my eyes) to have given themselves to an irrational hatred of who he was and what he stood for. I believe in respecting one’s fathers and I believe that command is broader than our biological fathers. As I mentioned, I remain thankful for the considerable good Dr. Moore’s teaching has contributed to my own thought.
Yesterday Dr. Moore published a piece on his personal website titled The Roman Road from Insurrection that I believe makes clear Dr. Moore’s ability to lead Southern Baptists has come to an end.[1] And it has nothing to do, finally, with his conclusions about Donald Trump’s fitness for the Presidency.
Let me explain what led me here, working from the lesser problems to the greater.
In a State of Confusion
Once upon a time Rick Warren wrote a popular book whose opening sentence was, “It’s not about you.” Warren spent the remainder of the book contradicting his own opening statement. In similar fashion, early in Dr. Moore’s piece he writes, “I don’t at all want to be heard as saying, ‘I told you so.’” Like Warren, Dr. Moore’s piece refutes his assertion.
Throughout all these years, I held out the possibility that maybe I am crazy, that I am completely unable to see what others were seeing… But, again, I told my wife in 2017: I am almost all alone here. I am going to pray that my critics are right — and that I am just incapable of seeing what they see. “I’m voting for a platform, not a person; an administration, not an individual,” people would tell me. I could not do that — in good conscience — but my attitude was, and is, “Who am I to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls” (Rom. 14:4). We could disagree on all that, and still bear with one another — knowing that all would be sorted out in God’s timing.
What is entirely eye-brow raising is Dr. Moore’s recounting of this conversation with his wife. I have no doubts the conversation happened (more on the trouble that brings in just a moment) but the content of the conversation is the issue. Dr. Moore was “almost all alone?” At what point? His voice was in deep alignment with the national narrative on Donald Trump’s character and prospects as a Presidential candidate. The most prominent evangelicals, with very few exceptions, were in agreement with Dr. Moore. Many used the platforms provided by their respective institutions to lend heft to their criticisms.
Do I exaggerate? I do not believe I do. However, surely any rational reader cannot conclude that Dr. Moore was “almost alone” in his criticism of Donald Trump, not even in the smaller pool of the Southern Baptist Convention.
So I am left, again, with my eyebrows heading ever-further up my chubby face as I re-read Dr. Moore’s words here. I believe this represents an honest assessment of his perspective. As someone living outside of Dr. Moore’s perspective this reads something like a full-scale break with reality akin, to borrow from C.S. Lewis, to a man declaring himself a poached egg.
This specific point does a few things to me as a man who still respects Dr. Moore but who has also become a reluctant critic: first, I am tremendously saddened to read this point because it appears Dr. Moore really felt himself to be alone. I wish that had not been the case. Second, Dr. Moore apparently can no longer locate himself in the broader narrative culture — this latter problem being the more significant problem for his position as the head of the ERLC.
You see additional shades of this failure to locate, also, when Dr. Moore writes, “This is not about politics. This is about our country, about the rule of law, and about the sanctity of human life.” The first indicator of the problem that has fully bloomed in this piece was Dr. Moore’s previous work over the years to stretch the definition of “pro-life” beyond anything meaningful. When every issue is a pro-life issue, as in the efforts of Dr. Moore’s ERLC, the reality is that nothing is pro-life issue. Reliance on this empty trope reveals that Dr. Moore is now relying on this broken crutch for his deeply political point.
Imagine, for a lower-stakes comparison, someone working as a television critic publishing a piece bemoaning how alone he is in his enjoyment of The Mandalorian or how isolated he felt during the days that Breaking Bad was being produced when he told the listening world how great the show was. This is something like what Dr. Moore is saying about his criticism of Donald Trump. He believes the fashionable narrative — in society but also among evangelicals — was his and his in isolation. That kind of inability to see the forest he is planted in indicates a bigger problem.
Partisanship Masquerading as Prophetic Posture
Like a man lost in the wilderness turning north when he believes he’s heading south Dr. Moore’s disorientation leads him further off course. It appears that Dr. Moore, again attempting to articulate the popular cultural narrative to his audience, believes that swim with the cultural current is somehow counter-cultural, even prophetic.
And here is where Dr. Moore’s work gets lost. Or was jettisoned. Criticizing Donald Trump and his supporters is singular in popularity in not just American culture but the advanced modern West. And Dr. Moore, parroting the same for years, somehow concludes he’s swimming against the cultural current. The conclusion boggles the mind.
One of the chief indicators of the depth of Dr. Moore’s delusion is that he actually titled a section of his piece “Integrity Demands Consistency.” Dr. Moore spent the entire Spring and Summer of violent rioting in our country, the most notable of which can only be described as insurrection, largely silent, breaking his self-imposed exile only for an occasional book review or comment on a popular movie. Now he would lecture his readers about consistency when it comes to a right understanding of what happened at the Capitol? Those readers who live in reality cannot help but immediately see the hypocrisy.
I detest what happened in the invasion of the Capitol. I don’t know anyone — without exception — who feels otherwise, certainly no evangelical. I do not have an argument with Dr. Moore on his conclusion that what happened at the Capitol is loathsome. To own my own position, I do believe that his description of the events is ridiculous, a participation in (to continue the theme) a culturally-popular and politically motivated project of purposeful hysteria. My own position noted, Dr. Moore’s position is served by the reality that institutions, like Congress, and the symbols of our government matter. It is very significant then, in unique fashion, that the events at the Capitol took place at the Capitol. That point, however, never manages to break the surface of Dr. Moore’s piece.
Even the original impetus for the controversy around him, his criticism of Trump, is not the problem with Dr. Moore’s piece and broader work. It is possible that Christians can get lost in inappropriate allegiance to a political figure (just as we, albeit apparently not Dr. Moore, see that there is an equal and opposite danger that Christians will get lost in an inappropriate animosity toward a political figure). To weigh in with the warning, even if wrong, is ultimately a service to the body of Christ. However, Dr. Moore’s warning never reflected the objectivity of a higher allegiance to the Kingdom of Christ and we know this because he spent his efforts repeating the popular (and often ridiculously empty) talking points of culturally fashionable hatred for Trump and his supporters.
Dr. Moore has indicated his own conscience is sensitive to this very point by tweeting a preemptive strike against someone pointing out his inconsistency. What is obvious is, well, obvious and no amount of papering over via Twitter will end that. What is true for the obvious is also true for Dr. Moore’s conscience I’m certain.
As a result what we have in Dr. Moore’s assertion is not the courage to stand, to borrow the title of his recent book[2], but rather partisanship self-identifying as prophetic posture. The evidence here is that Dr. Moore has given himself over to a culturally fashionable political partiality that is the mirror-reflection of the very bias he believes he is decrying in those he would lecture. Partisanship is an actual sin, of course, and sin (Proverbs 20:10, James 2:9) cannot be covered over with hollow protests about whataboutism. Dr. Moore has clearly become a partisan and in that transformation lost the moral authority to speak for or to Southern Baptists.
The first work I ever read from Dr. Moore was his The Kingdom of Christ: The New Evangelical Perspective. At the time I thought the book was a needed call to objective evaluation of our political realities in light of the Kingdom of Christ. I now see that it was the first step down a road of partisan rebranding of the spirit of the age for an evangelical audience.
If you think I have been too critical of Dr. Moore’s action or that my expectations of him are too high can I ask that you give this analysis of the events at the Capitol from Joe Rigney, President-Elect of Bethlehem College and Seminary, a read?[3] Note the stark contrast cast between Rigney’s careful distinction and Moore’s broad brush. We need more of Rigney’s approach and less of Moore’s.
With too few exceptions this endeavor to make the fashionable narratives of our fallen world acceptable among Bible-believing evangelicals is the real legacy of Dr. Moore’s generation of leaders within the Southern Baptist Convention. Dr. Moore is not alone in his errors. Thankfully that generation’s influence, one way or another, is coming to an end. What remains to be seen is whether or not their work will bring the Convention itself (and perhaps Western evangelicalism) to an end as well. Nonetheless, as we await the full significance of this failure the pressing reality is that the President of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission is writing on behalf of the spirit of our age as a rank partisan.
I am heartbroken over this. We actually need a voice that would call evangelicals and Southern Baptists to evaluate their political priorities in light of the Kingdom of Christ that stands over all other governments. I believe at one time Russell Moore was the man for that job. We need a mechanism by which the largest protestant denomination can encourage, appeal to, and admonish our political representatives. I once thought Russell Moore did an excellent job meeting that need. However that day, like the season of summer, has gone.
Integrity Really Does Demand Consistency
What I take to be the biggest attempted punch in Dr. Moore’s piece is this line: “If you can defend this [insurrection at the Capitol], you can defend anything. If you can wave this away with ‘well, what about…’ or by changing the subject to a private platform removing an account inciting violence as ‘Orwellian,’ then where, at long last, is your limit?”
As is often the case in God’s Kingdom those who lay traps are caught in their own snares. Dr. Moore’s own words bring the indictment to his own door. If you can stay silent while Minneapolis and Portland and Seattle and Kenosha burn you can say silent for anything. If you speak only when your enemies fail and not when your allies do you should stay silent for anything else.
The reality is 2020 and beyond holds a real need for bold evangelical leadership that isn’t given to the spirit of the age (expressed through whichever political party is in favor or out in America). The Biden administration’s promised Equality Act is sure to bring difficulty to Christians, quickly, in a way few believers in our country have ever faced. Evangelicals and Southern Baptists would be well served by a leader who would look that looming enemy in the eye with conviction and courage. What we have, however, is a man scolding believers as if everyone of them who didn’t take his line was ready to sell Christianity out, doing so without any acknowledgment that for many (possibly most) church-going evangelicals the votes they cast for Trump were cast in favor of erecting whatever bulwark could be had against the assault on human life and dignity represented by the “Progressive” agenda. Dr. Moore is well known as a country music fan and I suspect both he and I are fans of the music of Merle Haggard. Haggard released a song in 2003 that addresses the kind of future looming over American evangelicals. It is called “Lonesome Day.” Here’s a section:
We laugh at all the crazy things them guitar players said
They talked about the workin’ man and the troubled life he led
When everything is perfect and no rebel’s in the way
It’s gonna be a lonesome day
They’ll be singin’ up in heaven while we’re livin’ here in hell
Givin’ up our liberty and buyin’ what they sell
Who’s gonna sing the Song of Freedom if freedom goes away?
It’s gonna be a lonesome day
When the big boys with the microphones are stuffed and packed away
And they’re afraid to say the things they normally often say
When the symbol of our freedom life, the eagle flies away
It’s gonna be a lonesome day
Were evangelicals, many of them Southern Baptists, wrong to look to Donald Trump to thwart the threat they saw coming? Perhaps — and someone who didn’t despise them might even be able to gain a hearing with that kind of caution. Probably best not to speculate. As Aslan told Lucy, nobody is ever told what would have happened if things went differently.
Justice Really Does Demand Accountability
I don’t believe that Russell Moore is a theological liberal. I don’t believe that he is a George Soros plant. He is, however, now clearly a partisan (unintentionally, I still hope) in service to the fashionable political narratives of our day and, as a result, unfit to represent Southern Baptists in the public arena. This is lamentable and I do, in fact, lament this reality. But it is reality nonetheless. The time for change has come, whatever time we have left as a Convention (and I hope in God’s providence there will be many profitable days ahead) it is time for new leadership.[4]
Am I correct? Read these words Dr. Moore wrote about Donald Trump. Ask yourself if they do not describe Southern Baptist responses to his tenure as ERLC President.
Look around us, five years into this experiment. Every family I know is divided over this personality. Every church I know is too. Friendships are broken, for almost everyone I know. And, most importantly, every survey shows that the church is hemorrhaging the next generation because they believe that evangelicalism is a means to an end to this political movement.
Dr. Moore’s prescribed solution to this, what he perceives to be the fruit of Trump’s Presidency, is that Trump resign and allow the country to heal. Taking his own advice in light of the fruit of his tenure at the ERLC is, I regret to say, the best course he could take.
One final note: You should read this. As best I can tell it was published before Dr. Moore’s piece.
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[1] I realize that many who read this will have reached this point long before me and say, in response, “Took you long enough.” That’s fine, I can hear that. However, I’ve tried to make clear why I held out so long which I hope you will also be able to hear.
[2] That Dr. Moore would release a book under this title after spending one entire half of 2020 in dereliction of duty is perhaps the clearest indicator of how self-deluded and out of step with reality he has become.
[3] I want to be clear I am not pitting Rigney against Moore. I suspect the two men would be unwilling to be pitted against one another, even if I had the desire and power. I am calling for an evaluation of the contrast between their two approaches to the same event.
[4] I must confess here that I do not know how to insulate any new leaders from the the hyper-polarization of our age that has consumed Dr. Moore’s leadership.
