Russell Moore has been one of the leading villains in Evangelicalism for over a decade. When Russell Moore had announced his departure from the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, he leaked a letter allegedly sent to the ERLC trustees to Religion News Service detailing the hostile environment he faced for caring for sex abuse survivors.
Part of the letter reads:
As you know, our last ERLC National Conference was built around the issues of sexual abuse. We said from the beginning that we wanted a place for honest dialogue around these issues, and we would not police anyone from speaking what he or she had experienced or thought. At least one speaker harshly criticized us for not doing enough, or not handling things the way he thought we should. I welcomed that criticism. I learned from it, and was glad that the speaker felt the freedom to do so. At that conference, though, Rachael Denhollender participated with me in a conversation where, again, I refused to censor or stop anything that she had to say. In that conversation, she spoke about her thoughts about the disparagement and poor treatment of a sexual abuse survivor by Executive Committee staff. The story Rachael told is accurate, and Maria and I know that because we were, even during that very meeting, ministering alongside others to that mistreated young woman.
Racahel Denhollander and Russell Moore peddled lies about the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee mistreating sex abuse survivors. The SBCEC was the main focus of the ensuing Guidepost Solutions investigation which this letter in part sparked. This investigation found nothing.
But the lies of Russell Moore and Rachael Denhollander permeated the SBC’s understanding of itself for years. Recently, the Department of Justice announced that it ended its probe into the Southern Baptist Convention. There was one arrest, Matt Queen, who went out of his way to talk to the Feds and lied. The SBC invited the Feds to investigate itself who also found nothing.
Russell Moore, Rachael Denhollander, and the liberals invested heavily in branding the Southern Baptist Convention as a hive of sex abuse, but the evidence after one real investigation and one fake investigation is that this whole narrative was a nothingburger from the start. These lies had consequences, but its doubtful lessons will be learned.
