(Video above: Cliff Sims interviews Dr. Russell Moore on Yellowhammer Radio)
During an interview on Friday’s edition of Yellowhammer Radio with Cliff Sims, Dr. Russell Moore, one of the most influential Christian leaders in the country, said he believes Donald Trump’s wooing of evangelicals is a “scam.”
Dr. Moore is the president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, which is the largest protestant denomination in the United States.
“It’s a scam,” Moore said of Trump’s overtures to evangelicals. “You have somebody who has left two wives for other women; somebody who brags about all of the, as he puts it, ‘top women in the world’ that he gets to sleep with; somebody who speaks of women in ugly and degrading ways; that fits into that kind of Hugh Hefner sort of understand of women’s worth being in their sexual attractiveness and availability to men; somebody who has said, for instance, when we had evangelical missionaries with Ebola, that they shouldn’t be treated because they ought to pay for going overseas in the first place… And then somebody who has made a significant amount of his living in a gambling industry that destroys families, destroys communities, destroys lives, and at the end of all of this says, ‘I don’t have anything to ask forgiveness for.’ That’s a significant character issue.”
Sims asked Dr. Moore why he has chosen to be so outspoken against Trump, when he has historically not been much of a “bomb-thrower.”
“(Y)ou have public opinion polling saying evangelicals are falling for this,” Moore replied passionately. “As I talk to evangelical leaders and pastors across the country, I’m not finding anyone among that group who is supporting Donald Trump, but the opinion polling tells us that a lot of people are. What that means is that we have a serious problem within evangelicalism in terms of those who would say ‘character matters,’ rightly, when it applies to, say, Bill Clinton, but aren’t willing to say ‘character matters’ when it comes to someone like Donald Trump. I think that’s a problem within evangelicalism.”
In contrast to his criticisms of Mr. Trump, Dr. Moore did mention several other Republican candidates who he believes have been
“In terms of religious liberty, both Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio have talked quite a bit about it and care a lot about it,” he said. “And Ted Cruz, of course, has been working for religious liberty protections in the U.S. Senate for a long time. In terms of persona and personal character, one of the reasons I think Ben Carson is doing so well is because of his humility, what the Bible describes as meekness, which I think is resonating with a lot of people.”
Dr. Moore was on the program promoting his new book, Onward: Engaging the Culture without Losing the Gospel, which is currently available in stores and online.
Cliff Sims’ full interview with Dr. Moore can be heard in the video above.
