As Donald Trump broke new ground for a U.S. President sticking up for persecuted believers across the world, the Southern Baptist Convention’s spokesman on religious liberty has only promoted himself over the last 48 hours.
Russell Moore has one primary job. As the president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), Moore’s job is to promote Biblical ethics and religious liberty in government policy. As Donald Trump became the first American president to defend international religious liberty at the United Nations, the former Democratic staffer, Moore, has not said, tweeted, or written a single word of support for the president or his defense of persecuted Christians.
Instead of even mentioning this historic occasion in which a U.S. President defended persecuted Christians at the United Nations in a momentous summit, Moore was busy putting self-endorsements, book promotions, and Social Justice posts on his media platforms. No a peep was given about President Trump, who has done more to bring the plight of persecuted Christians to light in a single day than Russell Moore has done in his entire tenure at the ERLC.
The ERLC website featured a post by Critical Race Theorist, Mika Edmonson, about how to create a diversity-centered church. The ERLC twitter feed was littered with promotion for conferences and books by Russell Moore and Russell Moore’s friends. Russell Moore’s own twitter page linked to a Wall Street Journal from Moore about the plight of believers in China, but he could not bring himself to write a single word of commendation to the U.S. president facing derision for focusing on religious freedom rather than climate change.
Russell Moore’s personal website – which is paid for by Cooperative Program funds and the domain owned by the ERLC – featured an article about country music and an interview with Thomas Kidd, an ERLC “research fellow” who has been aggressively telling evangelicals not to vote for Donald Trump in 2020.
In 2016, then-candidate Trump referred to Russell Moore as a “nasty guy with no heart.”
Ironically, time has proven Trump correct. Moore has let his antipathy for Trump and his own Democratic political leanings lead him to sulk, cross-armed in the corner while the American president boldly stands up for persecuted Christians.
Trump is doing a better job at sticking up for Christians than Russell Moore who, heretofore, has only stuck up for Mosques and promoted his own books and conferences.
