The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism

Chapter 4 introduces Russell Moore, a former evangelical who was “among the world’s best-known and best-connected Southern Baptists” (88). After Trump’s election, he pushed for exposing racial tensions within the Church, as well as investigating the concealment of sexual abuse. In response, far-right contingents within the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), America’s largest Protestant denomination, pushed him out of his lifelong religion through “psychological warfare.” Moore knew many other preachers with the same problem. He started an informal network to help pastors in crisis, flying to different states to offer advice and support. Moore reflects that the structure of evangelical churches leads to pastors feeling “paralyzed,” since their congregants will leave if they do not trust the pastor.

Moore, a Baptist since birth, quickly rose in the ranks of the SBC. In 1988, the SBC firmly allied itself with Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority, making political affiliation a fundamental element of their faith. Moore took over as president of the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission in 2012. He had witnessed the partisan posturing of his predecessor, who was ousted after defending George Zimmerman’s murder of Trayvon Martin that year, a crime that gained notoriety after Zimmerman—accused of having racist motives—was acquitted of second-degree murder.