Russell D. Moore | |
---|---|
![]() | |
8th President of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission | |
In office June 1, 2013 –June 1, 2021 | |
Vice President | Phillip Bethancourt |
Preceded by | Richard Land |
Succeeded by | Brent Leatherwood |
Personal details | |
Born | Biloxi,Mississippi,U.S. | October 9,1971
Spouse | Maria Hanna Moore |
Children | Benjamin,Timothy,Samuel,Jonah,and Taylor Moore |
Residence(s) | Brentwood,Tennessee,U.S. |
Education | Ph.D.,Southern Baptist Theological Seminary;M.Div.,New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary;B.S.,University of Southern Mississippi |
Occupation | Editor-in-Chief of Christianity Today |
Website | www.russellmoore.com |
Russell D. Moore (born 9 October 1971) is an American theologian,ethicist,and preacher. In June 2021,he became the director of the Public Theology Project at Christianity Today ,and on August 4,2022,was announced as the magazine's incoming Editor-in-Chief. [1]
Moore previously served as president of the Ethics &Religious Liberty Commission,the public-policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC),and at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary,as dean of the School of Theology,senior vice president for academic administration,and as professor of theology and ethics. [2]
Moore was born and raised in the coastal town of Biloxi,Mississippi,the eldest son of Gary and Renee Moore. His grandfather was a Baptist preacher,and his grandmother was Roman Catholic. [3] He earned a B.S. in political science and history from the University of Southern Mississippi,an M.Div. in biblical studies from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary,and a Ph.D. in systematic theology from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. [3]
Moore served as associate pastor of Bay Vista Baptist Church in Biloxi,where he was ordained to gospel ministry. [4]
In 2001,Moore was appointed to the faculty of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. [5] As Professor of Christian Theology and Ethics,Moore was responsible for teaching across a spectrum of topics including systematic theology,Christian ethics,church life,pastoral ministry,and cultural engagement. In addition to his role on the faculty,he also served as Executive Director of the Carl F. H. Henry Institute for Evangelical Engagement from 2001 to 2009. In 2004,Moore was named Dean of the School of Theology and Senior Vice President for Academic Administration. [6] In this role,in addition to his regular teaching and lecturing,Moore served as the chief academic officer of the seminary,responsible for all curriculum and the administration of the seminary. Beyond these roles,Moore served as Executive Editor of The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology ,and has served as Senior Editor for Touchstone Magazine and as Chairman of the Board for the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood.
In 2008,he became pastor at Highview Baptist Church in Louisville,Kentucky until 2012. [7] More broadly,Moore has served extensively within the Southern Baptist Convention,as chairman and four-time member of the Resolutions committee,as a member of the Ethics and Public Affairs Committee of the Kentucky Baptist Convention,and as a regular correspondent and columnist for Baptist Press.
On June 1,2013,Moore became President of the Ethics &Religious Liberty Commission,the Southern Baptist Convention's official entity assigned to address social,moral,and ethical concerns. [3] In this role,Moore led the organization,which maintains offices in both Nashville and Washington,D.C. in their advocacy efforts—addressing especially the issues of religious liberty,human dignity,family stability,and civil society.
Moore believes marriage is a union between a man and a woman. He accepted an invitation from Pope Francis to attend a Colloquium on Marriage at the Vatican,where he spoke on 18 November 2014. [8]
In 2014,Moore commented on gay conversion therapy,saying,"The utopian idea [that] 'if you come to Christ and if you go through our program,you're going to be immediately set free from attraction or anything you're struggling with,' I don't think that's a Christian idea. Faithfulness to Christ means obedience to Christ. It does not necessarily mean that someone's attractions are going to change." [9] He added,"The Bible doesn't promise us freedom from temptation. The Bible promises us the power of the spirit to walk through temptation." [9] Moore also said at that time that the Southern Baptists' Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission was working with parents of those who are gay and lesbian,adding,"The response is not shunning,putting them out on the street. The answer is loving your child." [9]
Moore's vocal criticism of then-candidate Donald Trump during the 2016 election season drew a backlash from fellow Southern Baptists,triggering a crisis in which more than 100 churches threatened to withdraw donations to the denomination's Cooperative Program in protest of Moore's stances and leading to calls for his resignation. [10] After Moore issued statements of apology in December 2016 and March 2017 for "using words…that were at times overly broad or unnecessarily harsh," Southern Baptist leaders affirmed their support for his leadership and he remained in his post. [11]
Moore resigned from the Ethics &Religious Liberty Commission at the end of his term as president. He left the Southern Baptist Convention as well soon afterward;on June 1,2021;Immanuel Nashville,an nondenominational church,thus unaffiliated with the SBC,announced Moore had joined its staff as a pastor in residence. [12]
Following his departure from the Ethics &Religious Liberty Commission,Moore was hired as a public theologian for the magazine Christianity Today . [13] In 2022,he was named Christianity Today's Editor in Chief following the resignation of previous editor Mark Galli. [14] [15]
Moore has spoken out against the display of the Confederate flag;in 2015,two days after the Charleston church shooting (in which nine black churchgoers were murdered in a hate crime),Moore wrote:"The cross and the Confederate flag cannot co-exist without one setting the other on fire. White Christians,let's listen to our African-American brothers and sisters. Let's care not just about our own history,but also about our shared history with them." [16] Moore also condemned the 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville,Virginia. [17]
In 2015,during the Syrian refugee crisis,Moore wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post calling upon evangelical Christians to support refugee resettlement. Moore criticized those who "demagogue the issue" and wrote:"evangelical Christians cannot be the people who turn our back on our mission field. We should be the ones calling the rest of the world to remember the image of God and inalienable human dignity,of persecuted people whether Christian,Jewish,Muslim or Yazidi,especially those fleeing from genocidal Islamic terrorists." [18] [19] Moore wrote that security and compassion are compatible. [19]
Moore writes from the perspective of a Baptist who affirms the inerrancy of scripture [20] and a complementarian position on gender roles, [21] believes in a literal hell, [22] and is a Calvinist. [23]
He works in the area of Christian eschatology,highlighting the kingdom of God as the center of theology and ethics. [24] Moore believes in an "inaugurated eschatology" in which the Kingdom of God is "already" and "not yet." [25] Consistent with this position,he sees Jesus Christ as the full inheritor of God's promises to Israel,and that the church receives the benefits of this as it is "in" Christ. [26] Moore emphasizes the kingdom as a spiritual warfare uprooting the demonic powers,an emphasis that shows up not only in his works on the kingdom and on temptation but also in his writings on,for example,orphan care. [27]
Moore has written about issues of ethics and religious liberty. In his early work,he argued for the early Baptist commitment to religious liberty represented by such figures as Isaac Backus,John Leland,and Jeremiah Moore,over against those who would articulate a more secularist understanding of the separation of church and state. [28]
In ethics,Moore stands within the Christian Democracy stream of communitarianism,calling for a Christian demonstration of ethical transformation within the church as the initial manifestation of the kingdom. [29] Heavily influenced by the Dutch Neo-Calvinist theologian Abraham Kuyper and the early American Neo-Evangelical theologian Carl F. H. Henry,Moore articulates a conservative evangelical call for justice for the vulnerable,including care for widows,orphans,the unborn,the disabled,the elderly,and the undocumented. [30]
He has called on evangelicals,especially Southern Baptists,to embrace racial reconciliation as a witness. [31]
In the early 1990s,prior to entering the ministry,Moore was an aide to U.S. Representative Gene Taylor of Mississippi,a Democrat who later switched political parties and joined the Republican Party in 2014. [16]
In 2016,Moore became a leading critic of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump. Moore asserted that in the event of a presidential election contest between Trump and Hillary Clinton,Christians should vote for "a conservative independent or third-party candidate." [32] Moore stated that he could not support the former because he "stirs up racial animosity" and could not support the latter for her support of abortion. [32] Writing in National Review in January 2016,Moore wrote that a Trump presidency would endanger the goals of the Manhattan Declaration;criticized Trump's involvement in the casino industry and past support for abortion rights;and argued that "Trump's vitriolic —and often racist and sexist —language about immigrants,women,the disabled,and others ought to concern anyone who believes that all persons,not just the 'winners' of the moment,are created in God's image." [33]
On May 27,1994,Moore married Maria Hanna Moore. Having adopted their first two sons from a Russian orphanage,Moore has written and spoken extensively on the topic of adoption from a Christian perspective,including his book Adopted for Life:The Priority of Adoption for Christian Families and Churches. They also have three biological sons.
In 2015,his book,Onward:Engaging the Culture Without Losing the Gospel,received the "Beautiful Orthodoxy Book of the Year" award from Christianity Today . [34]
In 2016,he was named alumnus of the year by the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. [35]
Evangelicalism, also called evangelical Christianity or evangelical Protestantism, is a worldwide interdenominational movement within Protestant Christianity that emphasizes the centrality of sharing the "good news" of Christianity, being "born again" in which an individual experiences personal conversion, as authoritatively guided by the Bible, God's revelation to humanity. The word evangelic comes from the Greek word for 'good news'.
The Christian left is a range of Christian political and social movements that largely embrace social justice principles and uphold a social doctrine or social gospel based on their interpretation of the teachings of Christianity. Given the inherent diversity in international political thought, the term Christian left can have different meanings and applications in different countries. While there is much overlap, the Christian left is distinct from liberal Christianity, meaning not all Christian leftists are liberal Christians and vice versa.
Michael Scott Horton is an American theologican who is the J. Gresham Machen Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics at Westminster Seminary California. He is a scholar and theologian, having written and edited more than forty books and contributed to various encyclopedias, including the Oxford Handbook of Reformed Theology and Brill’s Encyclopedia of Christianity.
Carl Ferdinand Howard Henry was an American evangelical Christian theologian who provided intellectual and institutional leadership to the neo-evangelical movement in the mid-to-late 20th century. He was ordained in 1942 after graduating from Northern Baptist Theological Seminary and went on to teach and lecture at various schools and publish and edit many works surrounding the neo-evangelical movement. His early book, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism (1947), was influential in calling evangelicals to differentiate themselves from separatist fundamentalism and claim a role in influencing the wider American culture. He was involved in the creation of numerous major evangelical organizations that contributed to his influence in Neo-evangelicalism and lasting legacy, including the National Association of Evangelicals, Fuller Theological Seminary, Evangelical Theological Society, Christianity Today magazine, and the Institute for Advanced Christian Studies. The Carl F. H. Henry Institute for Evangelical Engagement at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and the Carl F. H. Henry Center for Theological Understanding at Trinity International University seek to carry on his legacy. His ideas about Neo-evangelism are still debated to this day and his legacy continues to inspire change in American social and political culture.
The Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary is a Baptist theological institute in Fort Worth, Texas. It is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. It was established in 1908 and in 2005 was one of the largest seminaries in the world. It is accredited by the Association of Theological Schools in the United States and Canada, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, and the National Association of Schools of Music to award diplomas and bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees.
John Howard Yoder was an American Mennonite theologian and ethicist best known for his defense of Christian pacifism. His most influential book was The Politics of Jesus, which was first published in 1972. Yoder was a Mennonite and wrote from an Anabaptist perspective. He spent the latter part of his career teaching at the University of Notre Dame.
Richard Albert Mohler Jr. is an American evangelical theologian, the ninth president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, and host of the podcast The Briefing, where he gives a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.
Glen Harold Stassen was an American ethicist and Baptist theologian. He was known for his work on theological ethics, political philosophy, and social justice and for developing the Just Peacemaking Theory regarding the comparative ethics of war and peace. Glen Stassen helped define the social justice wing of the Christian evangelical movement in America. Stassen died in Pasadena, California at the age of 78. He was the son of former Minnesota governor Harold Stassen. His work pushed the advancement of nuclear disarmament in America. The last project he was committed to before his death was the destruction of chemical weapons, according to his blog.
The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) is the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, the second-largest Christian denomination in the United States. Brent Leatherwood has served as the ERLC president since September 13, 2022. The commission is headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee, with additional offices in Washington, D.C., and Cyprus.
The Christian Post is an American non-denominational, conservative, evangelical Christian online newspaper. Based in Washington, D.C., it was founded in March 2004.
The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS) is a Baptist theological institute in Louisville, Kentucky. It is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. The seminary was founded in 1859 in Greenville, South Carolina, where it was at first housed on the campus of Furman University. The seminary has been an innovator in theological education, establishing one of the first Ph.D. programs in religion in the year 1892. After being closed during the Civil War, it moved in 1877 to a newly built campus in downtown Louisville and moved to its current location in 1926 in the Crescent Hill neighborhood. In 1953, Southern became one of the few seminaries to offer a full, accredited degree course in church music. For more than fifty years Southern has been one of the world's largest theological seminaries, with an FTE enrollment of over 3,300 students in 2015.
David P. Gushee is a Christian ethicist, Baptist pastor, author, professor, and public intellectual. Growing up, Gushee attended and completed his college years at College of William and Mary in 1984. After college, he received his Ph.D. in Christian ethics from Union Theological Seminary in 1993. Among the titles listed, Gushee has shown hard work and dedication in different parts of his job and was awarded for his achievements. Gushee is most known for his activism in climate change, Torture, LGBT inclusion, and Post-evangelicalism.
Highview Baptist Church is a Baptist multi-site megachurch based in Louisville, Kentucky. It is affiliated with the Kentucky Baptist Convention and Southern Baptist Convention. Aaron Harvie is currently the church's senior pastor.
Gabriel Joseph Fackre (1926–2018) was an American theologian and Abbot Professor of Christian Theology Emeritus at Andover Newton Theological School in Newton, Massachusetts. He was on the school's faculty for 25 years before retiring in 1996. Previous to that he was Professor of Theology and Culture at Lancaster Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, teaching there from 1961 through 1970. Fackre has also served as visiting professor or held lectureships at 40 universities, colleges, and seminaries. His papers are housed in Special Collections at Princeton Theological Seminary Libraries, Princeton, New Jersey.
Roger D. Duke is an author, theologian, educator, itinerant preacher, and was a professor at several institutions of higher learning including Union University, Baptist College of Health Sciences, Liberty University, Memphis Theological Seminary, and Columbia Evangelical Seminary. Professor Duke also serves as a Consulting Editor for B & H Academic's Studies in Baptist Life and Thought series. He retired in 2016 to focus on a speaking and writing career by forming the Duke Consulting Group.
Michael A. G. Haykin is the Professor of Church History and Biblical Spirituality and Director of The Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
Ergun Michael Caner is a Swedish-American academic, author, and Baptist minister, who became well known for his book, co-authored with his brother, on Islam and his claims that he was a devout Muslim trained as a terrorist. He emigrated to the United States at age four and claimed to have converted to Protestantism in the early 1980s.
Adam W. Greenway is an American pastor, theologian and religious leader. He served as the 9th president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (SWBTS) in Fort Worth, Texas from 2019 to 2022. He was the youngest president in the history of the seminary, being installed at 41 years old. Simultaneous with his role as president, he served as a Professor of Evangelism and Apologetics. A report release by the school in June 2023 concluded that Greenway misspent seminary funds during his tenure.