Russell Moore, the most prominent protege of Albert Mohler, wants to rename the chapel at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, “Mohler Chapel.”
Moore is a communitarian, leftist and social justice advocate in the vein of Sojourner’s Jim Wallis, with whom he serves on George Soros’ Evangelical Immigration Table. Moore has done more to push a radical globalist agenda through the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission than probably any Southern Baptist in history, including those who served the SBC prior to the Conservative Resurgence. During Moore’s tenure, he has pushed the ERLC to advocate for a Mosque to be built in New Jersey, engaged in extreme animal rights activism, and repeatedly defended the ERLC research fellow and feminist, Karen Swallow Prior. Moveover, Moore has spearheaded the “woke” Social Justice movement in the Southern Baptist Convention, embracing Critical Race Theory, Cultural Marxism, and venerating serial adulterer, sex trafficker and heretic, Martin Luther King at his MLK50 event. When looking at the meta-view of Russell Moore’s hard-left trajectory, it becomes clear that Albert Mohler came to power by ousting people nearly identical to Moore. This makes it all the more ironic that Moore, the most leftist-progressive Southern Baptist leader in history, wants to rename the chapel after one who was once known for his conservatism.
As Baptist News Global reported:
A Southern Baptist Convention agency head and former colleague suggests renaming the chapel at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary after its current president, Albert Mohler.
“Southern Seminary has a list of presidents who are renowned – James P. Boyce, E.Y. Mullins, John Broadus, Duke McCall,” Russell Moore, head of the SBC Ethics and Religious Commission, said in a recent podcast reflecting on Mohler’s 25th anniversary as ninth president of the seminary founded in 1859.
Alumni Memorial Chapel was dedicated in 1950 as a replica of the historic First Baptist Church Atlanta. The chapel’s pulpit has been filled by many influential Christian leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and Billy Graham. (Photo/SBTS archives)
“I actually think that Al Mohler is her greatest president, because he wasn’t just another academic CEO,” said Moore, who has related to Mohler over the years as his student, research assistant, faculty member, dean, provost and now as fellow entity head. “He really was — even as we have an alma mater, a mother — we had in him an alma pater, we had a father.”
“That’s one of the reasons why if I were on the trustee board there at Southern, I would really want to name that chapel after him,” Moore commented. “It’s called Alumni Chapel right now, but so many of the defining-the-vision moments that have happened over the past 25 years all happened there.”
The Evangelical Intelligentsia are a little more than a group of men grab-handing and back-slapping one another. Baptist moderates must stand amazed that Albert Mohler is quickly becoming the type of leader he once removed from the institution, and many of his acolytes are even worse.
Even more ironically, when Russell Moore and Albert Mohler were demanding that the Confederate Flag be removed from civil war memorials and state symbols several years ago, Pulpit & Pen suggested that they start expunging the SBC from past racism by renaming Southern Baptist Seminary institutions and buildings named after slave-holders and Confederate chaplains (like Boyce College and Manly dorm). After all, if state governments should be forced to remove all Confederate history, certainly those running religious institutions could do the same, especially as they wave and signal their own virtue. A day later after pointing this out, Mohler responded by saying that he would not change the names of buildings or institutions.
But perhaps to name something in his own honor, he might rename something after all…
For those of us in the proletariat, down here in the cheap seats, we view the celebrity worship and backslapping to be beyond obnoxious. Mohler has already ruined Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, turning it into a hotbed of Social Justice activism that the progressives back in the 80s could have only dreamed of. So then, maybe it is fitting to name the chapel after him.
It might help to clarify who they worship.
