A top evangelical is warning that Christianity is “in crisis” as worshippers are now viewing the teachings of Jesus as “liberal talking points.”
Russell Moore, a former top official with the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), who is now the editor-in-chief of Christianity Today told NPR’s All Things Considered that churches have become “tribalized and factionalized” as a result of the current state of politics in the country.
“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?” Moore said.
“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,” he continued. “When we get to the point where the teachings of Jesus himself are seen as subversive to us, then we’re in a crisis.”
Moore went on to say that he did not think the problem could be fixed by “fighting a war for the soul of evangelicalism” instead, he urged Christians who are concerned about the direction the church is heading to fight “small and local” battles like “simply refusing to go with the stream of the church culture at the time.”
Moore stepped down as the president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the policy arm of the SBC in 2021 due to his frequent criticisms of Donald Trump which put him at odds with other prominent evangelical leaders and the sex abuse scandal among SBC clergy at the time, according to Newsweek.
In 2016, then-candidate Trump called Moore a “terrible representative of Evangelicals and all of the good they stand for,” and a “nasty guy with no heart!”
