Speaking Out
Beth Moore founded Living Proof Ministries in 1994 to “teach women to know and love Jesus.” As a Southern Baptist until 2021, her work as an author and speaker endeared her to women around the globe. She was – and is – what was once widely considered to be an “evangelical” Christian. Not anymore. When she spoke out for equality of women and against sexual abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention, she was effectively ousted from that denomination. Now she is a member of the Anglican Church in North America.
She spoke out from 2016 on about the immorality and non-Christian behavior of Donald Trump, and that cemented her ouster. After the Iowa caucuses this past week, she posted on “X” that she is “sobered” by the staunch support for Donald Trump among Republicans. “I just don’t understand,” she wrote, why so many continue to vote for “a verbally abusive, artfully and purposely divisive bully who has all but left the Republican Party unrecognizable.”
“I do not intend to get obsessed,” she continued. “I do not intend to lose more relationships. I don’t intend to talk about this regularly. As the Scriptures say, I want to seek peace and pursue it. I want to be a person of kindness, love, and compassion.” But … it’s clear that she does not quite know how to do that.
Many of us are in a similar place. We refuse to be drawn into the hateful, abusive, violent “world” of Trump and the MAGA movement, filled with people who call themselves “evangelical” and “Christian,” yet who speak of this man with almost holy awe, calling him a “savior” sent from God. I don’t need to document that here. We’ve all read or heard far too many accounts of this.
Robert Reich has some good news for us. He is not Christian by faith, but Jewish. He was never a Republican. He has, though, been involved politically for decades and offers sensible analysis of what’s happening. After the New Hampshire primary, he wrote that although “the mainstream media is falling over itself in seeming awe of Trump’s ‘powerful’ campaign, the truth is just the opposite.”
Reich notes that in Iowa, Trump “won fewer than 3% of registered voters.” And in New Hampshire, he bested Nikki Haley by only 7% of those who voted. The voters were 93% white. And when they declared as independents, 58% of them voted for Haley, not Trump. About half of the voters in the nation are independents, and in numerous polls a clear majority refuse to vote for Trump this year.
My last post drew on an article by a British Christian speaking out against the global influence of Donald Trump and others like him. I mentioned Russell Moore (no relation to Beth Moore) who was also ousted from the SBC. I’m reading a book now by a Baptist ethicist and theologian, David Gushee (Defending Democracy from its Christian Enemies) who explores a global movement of what he calls “authoritarian reactionary Christianity,” publicly centered at the moment in the MAGA support for Trump. An evangelical Christian history professor, Kristin Kobes Du Mez, speaks out forcefully based on her research for her book, Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation.”
We are not alone. Learn all you can about what is happening and why and how to talk about it. Then join us as we speak out publicly to call for a compassionate, democratic nation and world.
