“An SBC that doesn’t have a place for Beth Moore doesn’t have a place for a lot of us” Russell Moore. 2019
The gruesome twosome Russell and Beth Moore (no relation, unless it’s to their father the devil) have announced that they are hosting a panel and Q &A to celebrate the relaunch of his podcast “Signposts with Russell Moore.”
The inaugural episode will feature a live conversation between the former ERLC president Russell Moore and former complementarian Beth Moore and “the two will talk about what they’ve learned in their own stories and how Christians can navigate these crazy times in the church and the world without yielding to cynicism or despair.”
Sounds scintillating.
Along with the announcement of the upcoming show, Moore released an article in Christianity Today where he discusses the Ravi Zacharias/ Lori Anne Thompson/ RZIM situation and why they couldn’t see what was in front of them. (This is ironic given that it was Christianity Today that enabled Ravi for years, and only broke the story a month after we did) Moore laments that despite being one of the most powerful and public figures in the Southern Baptist Convention, in reality, he was in an abusive environment and couldn’t see any way out, being subjected to the secret blows of his critics while telling other denominational leaders ‘I fell down the stairs” and “I walked into a door. Clumsy me.”
A spouse who is cheated on sometimes concludes that he or she wasn’t attractive enough, or is in some other way to blame for what happened. This often happens in church situations, where people sometimes find it difficult to see—sometimes until years later—that what they assumed was just “the messiness of dealing with people” turns out to have been a toxic and harmful environment. That’s especially true when institutions—even churches—sometimes further the abuse of victims (or those who seek to help them) by gaslighting them, as though their reaction to the abuse—not the abuse itself—is the problem.
…When I was in a toxic and spiritually abusive environment, I found myself coming out of years of second-guessing and finding ways to blame myself for what I was experiencing. It happened while reading a children’s book to my son. I read the final statement at the end of Mo Willems’s Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs: “If you find yourself in the wrong story, leave.” I put away the book and realized, “I’m in the wrong story.”
Let’s get something straight. Moore wasn’t the abusee, but the abuser. You can read more of that here and here and here and here.
Moore’s shenanigans had the effect of painting the faces of Southern Baptists black and blue with his progressive policies, all the while claiming to be the one wronged. Rather than being the victim, he was the victimizer protesting his innocence even as the skin was hanging off his knuckles and the bloodstains were freshly dripping down on the carpet.
After Moore’s ‘leaked’ bombshell letter went public, it functioned as a conveniently timed kick in the gonads of the Southern Baptist Convention President hopeful Pastor Mike Stone, accusing him of turning a blind eye to sex abuse during his time as Executive Committee chair. This was done with the goal of enabling final boss Albert Mohler to wrest the denomination away from conservatives and into his progressive possession. Yet Stone saw through this, and pointed it out with piercing clarity the problem with Moore telling the world he knew about the abuse happening, but unable to do anything about it:
Think about it for just a moment; here’s a man who’s the highest positioned ethicist in the Southern Baptist Convention – at least he was until just a few days ago. And if you take his letter at face value, then he has known about cover-up, intimidation, bullying, stonewalling, barriers, pressure, all of these sorts of things against victims of sex abuse.
He’s known about lies and backroom deals and corruption and he’s known about it not for days or weeks or months. He’s literally known about it supposedly for years while he has not breathed a word, meanwhile publishing a book called The Courage to Stan
Moore and Moore are going to get together and talk about why they both left the SBC, about how abusive, toxic, and racists it has become, oblivious to their role in its very creation and the way they molested and abused the scriptures for their own gain and the destruction and diminishing of a denomination.
Here comes the fist.
Try not to flinch.
