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Russell Moore, Baptist Leader Who Shunned Trump, Splits the Faithful
Head of denomination’s public-policy arm triggered a backlash by criticizing the candidate’s supporters; no access to White House
Russell Moore, head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s public-policy arm, called the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, in 2013. PHOTO: MELISSA GOLDEN FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
WASHINGTON—When President Donald Trump signed an executive order on religious liberty last month, he was surrounded in the White House Rose Garden by religious figures—Catholics, orthodox Jews, Sikhs and a host of evangelical Christians.
One prominent evangelical was conspicuously missing: Russell Moore, the public face and chief lobbyist of the Southern Baptist Convention, the country’s largest Protestant denomination.
Mr. Moore’s absence was a sign of the rift between him and the new administration, and hinted at a rupture within the Southern Baptist Convention itself that is challenging Mr. Moore’s leadership and potentially pushing the powerful, conservative institution off the political course he set.
As Southern Baptists head into their annual meeting on Tuesday, Mr. Moore, 45 years old, is at the center of a generational struggle over the denomination’s future. The outcome could determine whether Southern Baptists continue to be a leading conservative voice in cultural disputes over abortion and gay rights—and whether evangelical Christians remain a reliably Republican voting bloc.
For the past four years, as head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s public-policy arm, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, Mr. Moore has tried to lead evangelicals in a new direction.
He hosted a conference to bring together Baptists with gay-rights leaders. He said white evangelicals must do more to combat racial injustice. Most notably, he argued that evangelicals must avoid being in lockstep with one party, and he criticized the priorities of the “religious right”—including many Southern Baptists who backed Mr. Trump for president.
“2016 has destroyed evangelical credibility,” Mr. Moore wrote last October on Twitter . The post linked to an opinion piece he had written in the Washington Post, which called evangelical leaders’ enthusiastic support for Mr. Trump “a scandal and a disgrace.”
His approach won him support among a younger, more racially diverse generation of evangelicals who are more suspicious than their parents of political parties.
Donald Trump was surrounded by religious figures in the White House Rose Garden when he signed an executive order on religious liberty in May. PHOTO: MARK WILSON/GETTY IMAGES
It also led to a backlash from Southern Baptists who helped build the denomination into a political force within the Republican Party. Many of them saw Mr. Trump, despite his three marriages and ties to the casino industry, as the only realistic hope for the socially conservative agenda they have been pushing for decades.
Dozens of pastors have openly criticized Mr. Moore since the election. Some have withheld funding for the national denomination in protest. Dozens more churches have left the denomination altogether, some citing Mr. Moore’s and other denomination officials’ support for Muslims who want to build a mosque in Bernards Township, N.J.
Mr. Moore’s board of trustees—the only entity that can fire him—issued an unusual endorsement of him in March in an attempt to quell the unrest.
But Mr. Moore has no access to Mr. Trump, fueling questions about how effectively he can do his job. Some Southern Baptists are talking about eliminating the public-policy group he leads at the annual meeting.
“The election revealed some differences among us, in the broader evangelical community as well as the Southern Baptist Convention,” said Frank Page, president of the denomination’s executive committee. “They aren’t going to go away after the election.”
Instead of pushing Southern Baptists’ agenda with an administration friendly to evangelicals, Mr. Moore has spent the early months of the Trump era fighting to put down an insurgency.
Mr. Moore, through a spokesman, declined to comment for this article.
On Feb. 22, Mr. Moore dialed in to a conference call with some of the most influential Southern Baptists in the country, according to several people who were on the call.
Prestonwood Baptist Church, a Texas megachurch led by Jack Graham, a widely respected former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, had announced days earlier that it was withholding $1 million from the denomination, citing concerns about Mr. Moore’s organization.
Smaller congregations also were pulling funds, a rebuke that was depriving the national denomination of money for seminaries, missionary work and other needs.
Several pastors on the conference call, including Mr. Graham, were part of an evangelical advisory board Mr. Trump had assembled during his campaign.
When the call began, Mr. Graham thanked Mr. Moore for joining them. Mr. Graham said he didn’t want to get anyone fired, but there were certain things he didn’t have to pay for, according to the people who were on the call. His church, he said, felt strongly about it.
Pastors asked Mr. Moore whom he was talking about when he criticized the motivations of evangelicals who supported Mr. Trump. Did he mean them?
Some pastors said in interviews that they weren’t sure Mr. Moore realized how out of step he was with most of the denomination. More than 80% of white evangelicals voted for Mr. Trump, according to exit polls.
Ted Traylor, pastor of Olive Baptist Church in Pensacola, Fla., said many members of his church had been asking him, ‘Pastor, are we paying this guy?” After the call, he said, Mr. Moore began to understand “a little deeper” how his comments about Trump supporters had affected many Southern Baptists.
The last time the Southern Baptist Convention was so divided was during the 1980s, when theological conservatives reclaimed control over the denomination. Nearly 2,000 churches left to form their own denomination, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, which now ordains women.
Mr. Moore’s predecessor, Richard Land, played a leading role in that denominational battle. As head of the public-policy arm, Mr. Land had turned the Southern Baptist Convention into a conservative political juggernaut. He helped push the Republican Party to the right on issues such as abortion and became a regular in the George W. Bush White House.
Since then, evangelicals have consistently delivered votes for Republicans.
Last year, Mr. Land said a vote for Mr. Trump was the only realistic option for Christians, calling Hillary Clinton “the most pro-abortion presidential candidate ever nominated by a major party.”
Mr. Moore also is a vocal critic of abortion and opposes gay marriage, but he said he couldn’t endorse either major party candidate.
Ruth Malhotra, a 33-year-old Southern Baptist of Indian descent who lives in Atlanta, said her generation was looking to Mr. Moore and taking a more expansive view of being “pro-life”—not just opposition to abortion but also work on behalf of refugees and the poor.
“It used to be people would say, ‘Oh, but abortion. We have to vote pro-life. That’s why we have to vote Republican,’” said Ms. Malhotra, who voted for independent candidate Evan McMullin. “Our generation is becoming more diverse. We’re starting to say no, it’s not an automatic check-the-box for any Republican.”
Like almost all major U.S. denominations, the Southern Baptist Convention is shrinking. After decades of growth, membership has declined for 10 consecutive years, falling from 16.3 million in 2006 to 15.2 million in 2016, according to the denomination.
Eighty-five percent of Southern Baptists are white, according to a 2015 Pew Research Center study, although the denomination is growing more diverse. Half of new churches are predominantly nonwhite, according to denomination officials, and in 2012 the convention elected its first black president, Fred Luter, who served a two-year term.
William Dwight McKissic Sr. , pastor of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas, said the backlash against Mr. Moore had “huge implications” for black Southern Baptists such as himself, who are far less likely than white evangelicals to support Republicans.
“The fact that he was targeted was very chilling,” Mr. McKissic said. “It sends the signal that anybody who speaks a word that is not in line with traditional Southern Baptist, Republican thought will face opposition, to the extent that their jobs will be threatened.”
Some critics of Mr. Moore said their frustration is more about his leadership style than his politics. In a denomination that likes to settle disputes quietly, some were rankled that he criticized Trump supporters on national television and didn’t speak to them directly.
President Barack Obama met with religious leaders, including Russell Moore, center, at the White House in 2014. Mr. Moore has no access to the Trump White House. PHOTO: CAROLYN KASTER/ASSOCIATED PRESS
“I’d have gone to a Jack Graham” before publicly criticizing Trump supporters like him, said Jay Strack, president of Student Leadership University and member of Mr. Trump’s evangelical advisory board, who called himself “a big fan” of Mr. Moore.
As churches began pulling funding, Mr. Moore went quiet. He made few television appearances and hardly said a negative word about Mr. Trump.
He also visited Mr. Graham in Texas and met privately with others.
In March, the board of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission released a statement of support for Mr. Moore, who himself issued an apology.
“As I look back over the last year, I am grieved by the tensions in our denomination,” Mr. Moore wrote. “I…apologize for failing to distinguish” between people who voted for Mr. Trump despite reservations and “those who put politics over the gospel.”
In response, Mr. Graham wrote on Twitter, “This is a gracious and unifying statement from @drmoore.” Prestonwood Baptist announced in April it would resume giving to the national denomination.
“We’re in a truce,” Mr. Strack said of the situation, adding that Mr. Moore had taken important steps to mend fences. “I think he can build trust back, but now you have this debate internally.”
After years of feeling shut out during the Obama administration, evangelicals are now enjoying far greater access at the White House. Mr. Moore, however, has been shut out, according to evangelicals who work in Washington. A White House spokeswoman said Mr. Moore didn’t appear to have visited since Mr. Trump took office.
While other evangelical leaders were in the White House Rose Garden last month, he was at a conference about orphans in Nashville, according to his Twitter feed.
On March 3, about a month after Neil Gorsuch was nominated to the Supreme Court, two dozen religious leaders gathered at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building to strategize how to help his Senate confirmation process. Mr. Graham was there, as was Tony Perkins, a Southern Baptist pastor and president of the Family Research Council, a conservative advocacy group. Mr. Moore was not.
At one point this spring, Mr. Moore’s staff had to search for a way to get in touch with the White House.
“Dr. Moore’s office reached out to ask if I could give them a good email address for the White House,” said Johnnie Moore (no relation to Russell Moore), a 34-year-old Southern Baptist member of Mr. Trump’s evangelical advisory board and founder of the Kairos Co., a public-relations firm that represents many religious figures.
“It was a strange question from a multimillion-dollar public-policy organization. They apparently still couldn’t find the front door, despite that door being in plain sight,” said Johnnie Moore, who sent Mr. Moore an email address for the White House. “The polite thing to do was to help.”
Erick Erickson, a conservative radio host and blogger who opposed Mr. Trump during the campaign, said there are plenty of people on Capitol Hill, and even White House staff, who pay attention to Mr. Moore.
“I know for certain, when the president signed the religious liberty executive order, people in the White House were mindful of what guys like Russell Moore would think,” Mr. Erickson said.
Still, some pastors are now going around Mr. Moore to lobby in Washington, building their own relationships with the White House or working with other conservative groups.
“I think this Russell Moore controversy was really a catalyst to begin asking a bigger question, which is whether the ERLC is even relevant anymore,” said Robert Jeffress, pastor at First Baptist Dallas and another member of Mr. Trump’s evangelical advisory board. “No one person represents the views of Southern Baptists.”
Mr. Land’s influence stemmed partly from his ability to speak on behalf of the vast majority of the denomination. During the Bush administration, he has said, the White House would call him to find out how Southern Baptists felt about a given policy.
Rod Martin, who will help run operations at the annual meeting, recently wrote an article advocating the elimination of Mr. Moore’s public-policy commission, which has an annual budget of nearly $4 million.
Mr. Traylor of Olive Baptist Church said such a motion “wouldn’t get to first base” at the annual meeting.
Yet bitterness remains even after Mr. Moore’s apology, and several churches are still withholding funding.
“A lot of younger people think he’s the greatest thing since sliced bread,” Craig Mitchell, a professor at Criswell College and former ERLC research fellow, said of Mr. Moore. “Some of the older people who didn’t like him before still don’t like him now.”
“What that leads me to believe is that anything can happen at this convention,” he said. “I hope there’s not going to be any ugliness.”
—Louise Radnofsky contributed to this article.
Write to Ian Lovett at Ian.Lovett@wsj.com
