The stunning Southern Baptist controversy over Donald Trump and Russell Moore, explained

A sequence of events that would have been unfathomable only a few years ago

President Trump and Russell Moore
(Image credit: Illustrated | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images, AP Photo/Mark Humphrey, Shacil/iStock)

Russell Moore is a public theologian and, since 2013, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), the public policy organ of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). His theology is consistently conservative. The top article on his personal website, as of this writing, advocates legal protection for abortion survivors — Moore himself is the father of adopted sons — and it was originally published at National Review, long the flagship magazine of conservative politics. A former pastor and professor at multiple Baptist universities, Moore's most recent book is about shaping family life around the gospel. His office is decorated with bobbleheads of Thomas Jefferson and Billy Graham. He is a teetotaler.

How could this man be the target of what many see as an attempted purge by his fellow Southern Baptists?

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.