Tag Archives: russell moore

Evangelical Leaders: Defend Religious Freedom for All

At the American Enterprise Institute’s Evangelical Leadership Summit in Washington, DC, a panel of evangelical leaders advocated for Christians to defend the religious liberty of all, because religious freedom benefits everyone. Panel member Russell Moore of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission said

the burden to fight for religious liberties is not just about Judeo-Christian beliefs, but that Evangelicals are called to fight for freedoms for all religious motivations. He also stated that evangelicals should bring back the use of the term “separation of church and state,” but Read more

Religious Liberty the New Civil Rights Issue

A religious liberty panel sponsored by the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission agreed that

religious liberty will be the civil rights issue of the next decade

The panel members included Phillip Bethancourt, Samuel Rodriguez, Rick Warren, David Platt and Russell Moore. Rick Warren spoke for many when he advocated for a “free market” of religious belief, not the restriction or imposition of any:  Read more

Moore, Mohler on Prayer and the Constitution

Dr. Al Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Dr. Russell Moore, president of the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, both recently wrote fascinating pieces on the recent Supreme Court decision permitting “sectarian” prayer before legislative bodies. While he makes many good points, Mohler astutely highlights, and Moore focused entirely upon, one point that affects even the US military: calls from some that public prayers — for example, those in front of a military formation — must be “generic.”

The second very important argument made by Justice Kennedy is even more perceptive and, in the long run, more important. He asserted that the government has no competence under the Constitution to evaluate prayers in terms of content. Specifically, he said that the Establishment Clause actually would prevent the government from determining the content of any prayer — especially in terms of some supposed standard of nonsectarianism.

Put bluntly, government has no right to declare that the only God welcome in public is a “generic God.” That is a profoundly important constitutional argument…

The US government can no more create Read more

Hobby Lobby, the American Culture, and Religious Freedom

Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, writing at his Moore to the Point, referencing today’s arguments at the US Supreme Court regarding health care mandates and religious freedom, which he calls “the most important religious liberty case in a generation“:

This case isn’t about politics or culture wars. This case will set the tone for the next hundred years of church/state jurisprudence in this country. This case will tell us whether we’ve bartered away a birthright paid for with our forebears’ blood…

Our government has treated free exercise of religion as though it were a tattered house standing in the way of a government construction of a railroad; there to be bought off or plowed out of the way, in the name of progress.

The government wants us to sing from their hymn book, “Onward, Sexual Revolutionaries,” but we can’t do that. We love and respect our leaders, but when they set themselves up as overlords Read more

Christian Hypocrisy on Non-Traditional Marriage?

Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, recently provided a thought-provoking response to accusations that Christians are “hypocrites” because Christians have not gone after other “unbiblical” marriage as they have “same-sex marriage.”

As an example of an unbiblical wedding, [Kirsten Powers and Jonathan Merritt] cited a ceremony between a Christian and a non-Christian or involving a divorced person who does not have a biblical basis for divorce.

Moore’s response is fairly simple: While the Christian worldview may not support those people getting married, once they are married, they are in a valid, biblically-recognized marriage.

“[W]hile a biblical view of marriage would see that such people (fornicators, believers to unbelievers, unlawfully divorced, etc.) should not get married, and that the church has no authority to marry them, we also would affirm that such people, when married, actually are married,” Moore said. “A pastor who joins a believer to an unbeliever bears an awful responsibility for doing something wrong, but the end result is an actual marriage.

“The same-sex marriage differs not in terms of morality, but in terms of reality. It is not that homosexuality is some sort of wholly different or unforgivable sexual sin. It’s that Read more

Moore: Preach Gospel, Promote Freedom, but Warns Chaplains

President of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission Russell Moore recently spoke to the New Orleans Seminary and said Christians should advocate for the Gospel — and religious freedom:

The apostle Paul provides a model for how pastors and other Christians are to maintain “the centrality of the Gospel and the defense of religious liberty at the same time,” Moore told the seminarians.

Preaching from Acts 26:24-32, Moore said Paul both defended his religious freedom and proclaimed the Gospel…

“Paul here understands that freedom itself is not enough,” Moore said. The freedom Paul sought — and Christians today should seek — “is a freedom to do something … the pushing and the pressing and the pleading of the Gospel,” he said.

While some have advocated for Christians to abandon the political realm — an attitude of which Moore was even accused — Moore clearly says Christians have a duty to advocate for religious liberty.

Moore also had words of warning for military chaplains:  Read more

Chaplain: Must I Pray in Jesus Name?

Dr. Russell Moore, Dean of the School of Theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has an interesting and lengthy response to a chaplain’s letter asking if its ok not to pray in Jesus Name — one of the points of controversy for chaplains in the US military:

Praying in Jesus’ name isn’t simply a cultural addendum at the end of a request…We pray in Jesus’ name because Jesus commanded us to do so (Jn. 14:13)…

Moore notes that men of faith are expected to pray in accordance with their faith.  No one expects a Muslim to pray like an Episcopalian, just Read more

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