Russell Moore

Russell Moore (b. 1971, Biloxi, Mississippi) was in many ways the heir apparent of the Southern Baptist conservative establishment. He had studied under Al Mohler at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, served as dean of its School of Theology, and in 2013 was appointed president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) — the SBC's public policy arm, responsible for articulating evangelical positions on political and moral questions in Washington. He was conservative, credentialed, trusted, and embedded in every layer of the institutional pipeline he would later name. The ERLC under Moore's predecessor Richard Land had closely tracked Republican positions on abortion, LGBTQ rights, and judicial appointments. Moore brought a different political sensibility: engaged but not partisan-captured. He criticized Trump openly during the 2016 campaign, calling him 'an awful candidate.' He maintained that the ERLC's purpose was theological witness, not political loyalty. Moore's break with the SBC mainstream was gradual and then total. He faulted 'the old-guard religious right political establishment' for backing Trump despite his 'serious moral problems,' arguing that the movement's political alignment was damaging its witness. The response from SBC megachurch pastors who were Trump supporters was immediate and hostile. Pressure mounted on ERLC donors and on Moore personally. Behind the scenes, Moore was also engaged in a parallel battle over sexual abuse. He had been pushing the SBC Executive Committee to respond seriously to documented cases of clergy sexual abuse — a fight the Executive Committee resisted by claiming the SBC's congregationalist polity made institutional accountability impossible. In 2021, Moore resigned from the ERLC. Before leaving, he wrote letters to the SBC Executive Committee documenting the pressure he had faced, the abuse mismanagement he had witnessed, and what he described as a pattern of intimidation of abuse survivors. Those letters were leaked to the Religion News Service in May 2021. Their contents — detailing how SBC leaders had silenced abuse survivors and retaliated against those who raised concerns — became a catalyst for the denomination commissioning an independent investigation by Guidepost Solutions. The Guidepost report, released in May 2022, documented more than 700 cases of sexual abuse, a secret database the Executive Committee had maintained of accused ministers, and systematic efforts to protect the institution from accountability. Moore joined Christianity Today as editor-in-chief in 2022. His 2023 book 'Losing Our Religion' argued that the evangelical movement had undergone a spiritual crisis, exchanging the gospel for political power — the same argument Beth Moore, David French, and a small cohort of evangelical dissenters had been making from the margins for years.

Themes this entry appears in

• Opposition / Resistance
• Christian Nationalism
• Anti-Democratic
• Political Strategy
• Politics & the Pulpit

Connections from Russell Moore

• responded to → SBC Sexual Abuse Coverup (2021) — Russell Moore's internal fight against the SBC Executive Committee's handling of sexual abuse predated his public break with the SBC by years. He had been pushing the Executive Committee to respond seriously to documented clergy abuse cases, arguing that the SBC's congregationalist polity did not make institutional accountability impossible — it just made it inconvenient. The Executive Committee resisted. When Moore's letters were leaked to the Religion News Service in May 2021, they documented not just the abuse mismanagement but the intimidation of survivors and the retaliation against those who raised concerns — including Moore himself. The letters were a direct catalyst for the Guidepost Solutions investigation commissioned that year. The 2022 Guidepost report corroborated key parts of Moore's account of Executive Committee resistance to abuse reforms. (Former Executive Committee chair Mike Stone sued Moore for defamation over the letters and withdrew the suit in December 2021.)

Connections to Russell Moore

• Albert Mohler opposed (2017) — Albert Mohler had been a mentor and patron to Russell Moore — Moore had studied under Mohler at Southern Seminary and been elevated through SBC structures Mohler largely controlled. When Moore began publicly criticizing evangelical Trump support in 2016, the two diverged; Mohler, who had declined to back Trump in 2016, said in 2020 that he would vote for him. Moore's leaked letters, which described pressure from a minority tied to the SBC Executive Committee, did not name Mohler. The mentor-to-opponent trajectory tracked the broader movement: those who had built the conservative SBC and those who refused to follow it into partisan alignment became, finally, adversaries.
• Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (SBC) influenced (2013) — Russell Moore served as president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission from 2013 to 2021 — the SBC's public policy arm, responsible for translating evangelical moral convictions into political engagement. The ERLC gave Moore his national platform and institutional authority. It also placed him at the intersection of evangelical theology and Republican politics at exactly the moment that intersection became most contested. When Moore used the ERLC's platform to criticize Trump evangelical support, the SBC megachurch pastors who were Trump's most enthusiastic backers moved to defund and discredit the ERLC. The institution that had amplified Moore's voice became the leverage point for forcing him out.
• SBC Conservative Resurgence influenced (2021) — Russell Moore's advocacy for sexual abuse accountability and his criticism of the SBC Executive Committee's handling of abuse survivors — combined with his Trump-era criticism of evangelical political loyalties — led to his forced resignation from the ERLC in 2021. Moore's published letters documented that SBC Executive Committee members had threatened him, attempted to block his reforms, and pressured him over his positions on race and sexual abuse, which Moore said mattered more than his criticism of Trump. The Guidepost Solutions report (2022) corroborated key parts of Moore's account of Executive Committee resistance to abuse reforms.
• SBC Conservative Resurgence influenced (2013) — Russell Moore was a product of the SBC conservative resurgence: trained at Southern Seminary under Mohler, credentialed through resurgence-aligned institutions, appointed to lead the ERLC by the denominational machinery the resurgence had built. He held the resurgence's theological commitments — complementarianism, biblical inerrancy, conservative social positions — and was expected to translate them into political engagement. What the resurgence had not anticipated was that one of its own would apply its stated moral convictions to the behavior of a Republican president and find them incompatible. Moore's break with the SBC establishment was not a departure from the resurgence's theology — it was an application of it. The movement found this intolerable.

Sources

• Anti-Trump evangelical faces backlash — NPR (via WGBH) (2016)
• Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America — Russell Moore (2023)
• Guidepost Solutions Independent Investigation Report — Guidepost Solutions (2022), pp. Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee
• Russell Moore's Letters to the SBC Executive Committee (via Religion News Service) — Religion News Service (2021)