Prominent evangelical author and teacher Beth Moore said she is no longer a Southern Baptist, a division that comes after her criticism of church sexism and the condemnation of “Trumpism”.
“I am still a Baptist, but I can no longer identify with Southern Baptists,” Moore, founder of Living Proof Ministries, told Religion News Service in an interview published on Tuesday.
“I love so many Southern Baptist people, so many Southern Baptist churches, but I don’t identify with some of the things in our heritage that have not remained in the past,” she said.
Living Proof Ministries, which Moore founded in 1994, guides women who seek to model their lives on evangelical principles.
Moore, who lives in Houston, has spoken out against sexism and misogyny inside and outside the church. She has revealed that she is among the many women who have been abused and sexually harassed, and that she said “we are tired of it”.
In 2016, after Donald Trump’s recording “Access Hollywood” was made public, Moore asked people to “wake up”.
In December, she tweeted: “I have never seen anything in these United States of America that I found more surprisingly seductive and dangerous to the saints of God than Trumpism. This Christian nationalism is not of God. Stay away from him.”
In a 2018 blog post entitled “A Letter to My Brothers”, Moore described her experience as a female leader in the conservative evangelical world and having to learn to show “constant and pronounced deference”, being disrespected and rejected and dealing with attitudes among leading Christian leaders “who smelled of misogyny, objectification and surprising contempt for women”.
Moore, 63, faced reaction to his comments. She told Religion News Service that she didn’t feel welcome at the 2019 Southern Baptist Convention, where she spoke on a panel about abuse, and that things have gotten worse since then.
Moore also told the channel that he ended his publishing contract with Lifeway, although he will still distribute his books.
Representatives for the Nashville, Tennessee-based organization did not immediately respond to an e-mail requesting comments on Tuesday night.
Southern Baptists are the largest Protestant denomination in the United States. The convention listed the total number of members at 14.5 million in its most recent annual report.
