The Southern Baptist’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission’s President, Russell Moore, has been very outspoken about the need for the Church to address racism. In fact, the majority of the SBC’s leadership has followed him into this rabbit hole and made dealing with racism their personal mission, as well as one of the official missions of the SBC. Additionally, the SBC hosted a “Racial Reconciliation Sunday,” in which a sermon outline, by Philip Bethancourt of the ERLC was to be preached at local churches. Thankfully, most Gospel-centered churches, including mine, did not take this bait and run with it.
There appears to be an agenda within the ERLC, and Socialist Democrat, Russell Moore, who believes in such thing as “Christian white supremacy,” is leading the cause. I am not truly convinced that Moore knows what a Christian is, at least what a Biblical Christian is. Moore has been using the unfortunate cases involving Michael Brown and Eric Garner to promote his Racial Reconciliation Agenda. He has made it clear that what he wants to happen in America, must first take place in the Church. But his idea for racial reconciliation in the Church is very similar to Affirmative Action. In fact, it’s nearly identical. His suggestions for promoting racial reconciliation in the church is basically integrating a bunch of goats together at a dinner table, and working out their differences. He wants blacks and whites to set aside their differences and try to understand each other. He believes that blacks are unjustly targeted by white cops simply because of their skin color. He wants whites to “try to understand” why blacks feel victimized by cops and try to rationalize illegal behavior as a societal problem, rather than a personal responsibility problem. As I have mentioned before, this is antithetical to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and if you aren’t transformed by the Gospel, and you hold to any form of racism or self-exaltation, then you are not a Christian, and no matter how much integration you do with others, talk with others, or try to understand others, the social gospel is not going to change your heart. Moore’s bid is nothing more than an attempt to make a political change by introducing and normalizing social welfare among church-goers and seeking to bring them on board with Socialist Democratic ideas.
Russell Moore has long ties to the Democrat party, and in fact, he “still claims the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party as his home.” Moore has worked extensively with the Democrat party in the past, and has exalted the highly socialist U.S. Congressman Gene Taylor as “one of the greatest public servants I have ever known.” Moore’s only opposition to the Democratic party appears to be the fact that it is pro-choice, while Moore is, thankfully, pro-life. Now that Moore has infiltrated the largest Protestant denomination in the world, and worked his way to a relatively highly influential leadership position, he has been able to gather many followers and supporters within. Many of his supporters now include President of the SBC, Ronnie Floyd, President of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Danny Akin, his own Vice President, Philip Bethancourt, and many other influential leaders and pastors in the convention, including , Tony Evans, Thabiti Anyabwile, H.B. Charles, Dan Darling, Mike Cosper, Matthew Hall, and many more.
Tony Evans, a Democrat party sympathizer, tends to agree with Moore on his political motivations. Evans believes that Americans need to “grieve and repent over slavery.” Though he never really comes out right and says exactly what he means by repent, he seems to be insinuating that most Americans still believe that slavery wasn’t unjust. So what exactly does Evans want Americans to do to “repent” of slavery? America has put in to place a multitude of social welfare, wealth redistribution programs that benefit blacks. Does he want more restitution? Perhaps we will find out when he speaks at the 2015 summit.
Another speaker, Thabiti Anyabwile, says, “I stand with the protestors[sic] because they better demonstrate what genuine faith looks like.” What genuine faith is he referring to? The burning down of buildings of innocent store owners? The millions of dollars worth of collateral damage caused by the protesters? The assault and robbery by Michael Brown’s mother on some of the other protesters in Ferguson? Civil disobedience is not faith, it’s a Communist, Saul Alinsky-style of action to effect some type of political change, and apparently, Anyabwile sympathizes with them.
Mike Cosper, Pastor of Worship and Arts at Sojourn Community Church in Louisville, KY, and staunch promoter of “white privilege” preached to his congregation “that churches are segregated today because white Christians failed to welcome and acknowledge the full humanity of their black brothers and sisters long ago.” This is total nonsense. Again, if you have anyone claiming to be a Christian that doesn’t recognize the full humanity of any person made in the image of God, they are not a Christian. The deeper issue here is not convincing them of someone else’s humanity or working through differences, it’s that this person is a sinner who needs to repent and believe the Gospel. “White privilege” is nothing more than another socialist/communist concept that portrays blacks as being victims of white supremacy, and helpless without government social welfare programs. In reality, these programs only enslave their victims even more by making them dependent on government programs that ultimately cannot treat the root cause of the problem—sin.
So now that Russell Moore has stacked his speaking schedule at the ERLC 2015 summit with like-minded Socialists and sympathizers, he now has a large influential pedestal to trumpet his socialist agenda within the Church. Having the President of the SBC, Ronnie Floyd, on board with him only stands to reinforce him. Ronnie Floyd regularly tells pastors what they should preach from the pulpit, generally to advance some point or idea of his, and stands on the notion that God told him to do so. Sadly, many pastors go along with him.
Moore is well known for compromising the Gospel of Jesus Christ to promote an ecumenical social and political gospel. He has joined hands with the unbelieving Catholic Church on a number of occasions to promote a social gospel of marriage (though he’s now calling for judges to uphold gay marriage, or resign), as well as a social gospel of pro-life. While these are good things to promote, Moore is not doing this in a biblical manner—by being salt and light in darkness, calling unbelievers to repentance. He is advancing a social-political agenda among conservative church-goers, regardless of their beliefs, and treating them all like brothers and sisters in Christ, whether or not they really are, and using the visible church as a pedestal to effect political change. I believe this issue is really going to heat up in March at the 2015 ERLC Leadership Summit.
