What Russell Moore Knew

So-called liberals are taking Moore to task for being late to a fight he's been on the frontlines of the entire time.

There’s this truism in business trends that if you’re too early, you’re crazy, but if you’re too late, you’re out-of-touch. Entrepreneur types love to attribute Steve Jobs’ success to knowing how to launch new products right in that not-too-early but not-too-late sweet spot.

But Russell Moore provides an interesting counter-example to this axiom. He’s been early, on time and late to taking the Southern Baptist Convention to task for its snake ball of issues (white nationalism, sexual abuse, Trump stuff), and has been branded equal parts crazy and out-of-touch the entire time. Prophets have no honor in their own country, but Moore’s short on honor pretty much everywhere.

He’s in NPR this week plugging his new book Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call For Evangelical America, and one particular excerpt from his interview has gone kinda viral.

It was the result of having multiple pastors tell me, essentially, the same story about quoting the Sermon on the Mount, parenthetically, in their preaching — "turn the other cheek" — [and] to have someone come up after to say, "Where did you get those liberal talking points?" And what was alarming to me is that in most of these scenarios, when the pastor would say, "I'm literally quoting Jesus Christ," the response would not be, "I apologize." The response would be, "Yes, but that doesn't work anymore. That's weak." And when we get to the point where the teachings of Jesus himself are seen as subversive to us, then we're in a crisis.

Well, this story has everything, including but not limited to an opportunity for liberals to play one of those “Jesus would have been a Democrat, actually!” cards they love so much.

Obviously, more conservative Southern Baptists don’t like Russell Moore for this kind of talk. They chased him out of their denomination with torches and pitchforks years ago. But the really interesting thing to me here is how many liberals and progressives I’ve seen share this quote with eye-roll-y “told ya so” snark. Oh, when we warn evangelicals to stay away from Trump, we’re communists. But when Russell Moore says it, it’s on NPR. That sort of talk, along with the usual: Don’t say we didn’t warn ya, MAGA Chud! Sucks to suck!

I’m not particularly interested in linking to any of these posts because I am a man of peace but, suffice to say, it’s included a few people who should really know better. Moore has been banging this drum since Trump was just a twinkle in the SBC’s eye, and he’s been predicting this exact scenario since long before many “exvangelicals” and so-on got on their high horses about it.