A prominent leader from the Southern Baptist Convention has come out swinging against Donald Trump in a media tour that has included an op-ed in the New York Times and an appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation”.
Russell Moore, head of the denomination’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, said that those Christians who oppose Donald Trump “are on the right side of Jesus,” and that the presumptive GOP nominee is the manifestation of “reality television moral sewage.”
“Now we have a Republican Party that seems ready not only to surrender on the culture wars but to join the other side,” Moore said on CBS. “I mean what we have in the Donald Trump phenomenon, as well as in the Hillary Clinton phenomenon, is an embrace of the very kind of moral and cultural decadence that conservatives have been saying for a long time is the problem.”
In his NYT editorial, Moore slammed Trump for his divisive “nativism” and says that the Church must stand with the majority of Christians, who are non-white.
This has gospel implications not only for minorities and immigrants but for the so-called silent majority. A vast majority of Christians, on earth and in heaven, are not white and have never spoken English. A white American Christian who disregards nativist language is in for a shock. The man on the throne in heaven is a dark-skinned, Aramaic-speaking “foreigner” who is probably not all that impressed by chants of “Make America great again.”
In prototypical manner, Trump hit back at the SBC official on Twitter stating, “Russell Moore is truly a terrible representative of Evangelicals and all of the good they stand for. A nasty guy with no heart!”
The Southern Baptist Convention is Alabama’s largest Christian denomination. With over 3,300 congregations and close to 1,400,000 adherents, the SBC has an incredibly strong presence in the Yellowhammer State.
Evangelical leaders from Alabama criticizing Trump is nothing new. The Gatekeepers Association of Alabama, a new organization consisting of 20 clergy from around the state, released their biblical rankings of the 2016 presidential candidates in February. The members ranked Donald Trump in dead last, behind Democratic presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton.
RELATED: Alabama religious leaders grade Cruz highest, Trump lowest on biblical worldview rankings
Despite outspoken criticism from prominent Christian leaders, evangelicals, with the exception of those in Iowa, chose Trump over contenders like Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz who frequently cite their Christian backgrounds as a guidepost.
In a Bloomberg interview, Trump couldn’t or wouldn’t name his favorite verse of the Bible and has made gaffes including misnaming one of its books. During a speech at Liberty University – the nation’s premiere evangelical college – Trump called the book 2nd Corinthians “Two Corinthians”.
He also suggested that the IRS is auditing him because he is a “strong Christian.”
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Donald Trump is expected to be formally announced as the Republican Party’s nominee for President at the National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio this July.
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