By Allan Wall
03/27/2017
I’m an evangelical Christian, a church deacon and a Bible class teacher (currently imparting a Wednesday night class on the New Testament book of Acts). I don’t believe that my National Question activism is incompatible with my Christianity. Quite the opposite, in fact.
But one Baptist who notoriously disagrees is Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC). Moore, whom I have called a “Soros Evangelical,” is currently facing a rebellion from among the ranks of the Southern Baptists. He is not without defenders. Unfortunately, those defenders seem to share Moore’s antiwhite beliefs, which in my opinion amount to blasphemy. And there’s also clear evidence of financial conflict of interest.
In a recent article on the controversy, The Washington Post reported ERLC chairman Ken Barbic (right) is still solidly backing Moore. Barbic declared the ERLC Board and himself “wholeheartedly support his [Moore’s] leadership” and that “Russell Moore is a Gospel-centered, faithful, and prophetic voice for Southern Baptists” [Could Southern Baptist Russell Moore lose his job? Churches threaten to pull funds over months of Trump controversy, by Sarah Pulliam Bailey, March 13, 2017].
But in the secular world, Barbic is…a lobbyist for agribusiness!
It turns out that the chairman of the ERLC, Ken Barbic, is in fact an open-borders, cheap-labor lobbyist for the ag-industry. Furthermore, it seems that Ken Barbic was central in selecting Russell Moore to replace Richard Land as the head of the ERLC. Let that sink in for a moment. The ERLC, which is supposed to be devoted to pursuing religious liberty, is chaired by an open-borders, cheap labor lobbyist, who chose, for its president, another open-borders fanatic. What does this have to do with religious liberty? Do most Southern Baptists even know about this corruption?According to Barbic’s page for the “Western Growers Association,” his official title is “Senior Director of Federal Government Affairs” and he “advocates on a number of issues including: immigration reform….”Perhaps the ERLC should change its mission statement to: “For the express purpose of driving down American wages, draining social services, and making the USA a Third World wasteland though mass Third World immigration.” This seems to be the real agenda of the ERLC.
[Russell Moore and the ERLC Exposed, by Alfred Clark, Occam’sRazor, MagJanuary 4, 2017]
So it seems the ERLC is motivated more by cheap labor than Christian duty.
You can email Chairman Barbic here and ask for his interpretation of Matthew 6:24.
Furthermore, Russell Moore himself is part of the Evangelical Immigration Table, a pro-Amnesty evangelical elitist organization which has links to George Soros’s Open Society Foundation.
Aside from Soros and agribusinesses, Moore’s other big supporter seems to be the Main Stream Media. The New York Times occasionally gives Moore a platform to express his contempt for fellow Christians whom he doesn’t regard as supportive enough of state-enforced multiculturalism, mass immigration and white displacement. Thus in a scorching New York Times op-ed during the campaign, Moore judgmentally declared: “To back Mr. Trump, these voters [evangelicals and other social conservatives]
must repudiate everything they believe” [Have Evangelicals Who Support Trump Lost Their Values?, September 17, 2015]. Gloating over the decreasing proportion of the U.S. white population, Russell Moore went even further into what I would consider blasphemous territory in another New York Times op-ed entitled “A White Church No More.” [May 6, 2016]
After the Trump Triumph, Moore lamely attempted to backtrack:
… [T]here were also pastors and friends who told me when they read my comments they thought I was criticizing anyone who voted for Donald Trump. I told them then, and I would tell anyone now: if that’s what you heard me say, that was not at all my intention, and I apologize. There’s a massive difference between someone who enthusiastically excused immorality and someone who felt conflicted, weighed the options based on biblical convictions, and voted their [sic] conscience. In a heated campaign season focused on sound bites, this distinction can get lost in the headlines, so it bears repeating.Yet how does this fit with Moore’s prior claim that Trump-supporting Christians (like me) are “repudiat[ing] everything they believe?”[Election Year Thoughts at Christmastime, RussellMoore.com, December 19, 2016]
Moore also called for praying for President Trump — but considering the Apostle Paul instructed believers to pray for Emperor Nero, that’s the least he could do.
The damage had already been done. The result is the current controversy.
And as an evangelical, I can tell you both supporters and critics of Moore are furiously debating his leadership even as you read this.
The Southern Baptist Convention is the country’s biggest Protestant denomination and the world’s largest Baptist denomination. But its belief in “local church autonomy” and its decentralized nature means Moore’s attempt to push an anti-Trump message from the top down failed.
It also means the current rebellion against Moore is a true grassroots movement. As the Washington Post’s Pulliam Bailey reported in the story cited above: “More than 100 of the denomination’s 46,000 churches have threatened to cut off financial support for the SBC’s umbrella fund.” Christianity Today explains:
The churches represent less than 1 percent of the 46,000 congregations that make up America’s largest Protestant denomination. But they also represent the most complaints on any issue “in recent memory,” according to the SBC’s Executive Committee, which is investigating the problem in search of “redemptive solutions.”Weber’s Christianity Today article further reports that past SBC president Jack Graham of Prestonwood Baptist Church is among the dissenters. He said he would withhold up to $1 million from the umbrella fund. However, Prestonwood argues the decision to withhold funds “is not and never has been about Trump,” saying instead it “is a leadership question” about “humility and accountability.”[Russell Moore Still Has a Job, Though 100 Churches Have Threatened to Pull SBC Funds, By Jeremy Weber, March 13, 2017]
Frank Page, president of the executive committee, met with Moore for two hours on March 13 and the two released a joint statement saying, “We fully support one another and look forward to working together on behalf of Southern Baptists in the years to come” [Page & Moore: 'We fully support one another',by David Roach, Baptist Press, March 13, 2017].
But this doesn’t mean much: in the decentralized Southern Baptist system, Page can’t fire Moore anyway.
The ERLC trustee board are the ones who could actually dismiss Moore. That board has 35 trustees on it, so a majority would be 18.
If you’re a member of the Southern Baptist Convention, discuss this issue with your church leadership. And if you attend another church, you may need to discuss it with your leadership as well.
American Christians who support the Historic American Nation need to speak out, and call their church leaders to account.
Many contemporary church leaders need education on the National Question. They’ve been bamboozled by a thin veneer of pious-sounding propaganda which promotes globalism under the guise of Christianity.
American Christians shouldn’t stand for it. It’s not our Christian duty to destroy our nation.
As for Russell Moore himself, you can contact him here, Email him directly, or Tweet him. Be polite but firm.
American citizen Allan Wall (email him) moved back to the U.S.A. in 2008after many years residing in Mexico. Allan’s wife is Mexican, and their two sons are bilingual. In 2005, Allan served a tour of duty in Iraq with the Texas Army National Guard. His VDARE.COM articles are archived here; his Mexidata.info articles are archived here; his News With Views columns are archived here; and his website is here.
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