HOW RUSSELL MOORE ASSISTED THE LGBTQ AGENDA

 

 

 

Rev. Thomas Littleton

16 March 2017

 

An Open Letter to Dr. Russell Moore,

President of the Ethics and Religious Liberties Commission of the SBC

 

I write this letter to you, Dr. Moore, at a time when your reputation within the SBC has taken a turn. Being aware that many voices are joining the public discourse, I wanted to hit pause in the critique and appeal to you directly and openly.  I am a minister in evangelism which places me on the front lines of culture and with the people you and others often refer to as postmoderns, nones, and millennials. These designations are persons in evangelism we have always referred to with deep affection as the lost.

The one constant in your tone and talking points has been that we have lost this generation and did so in part because we engaged the culture war. According to you, we have lost that as well.  In your efforts to repair the breech, restore the tarnished image of the SBC and obtain much needed credibility for the ERLC in the public square, you have lost something yourself.  Lest I weary you and go beyond my area of experience, calling, and expertise, let me focus on how you have engaged one of the most needy people groups in the current cultural theater, the LGBTQ.

Most Revealing

As an evangelist, I worked in NYC during a decade of rabid activism and an unchecked AIDS epidemic. I have also ministered for 39 years on campuses and in cities around the globe. I know this segment of society and many in it very well.

Your Wall Street Journal interview in October of 2013 drew my attention and raised my concern immediately. You clearly did not understand this community, its history or its tactics. Perhaps being new to DC you failed to recognize the template I observed in NYC being overlaid in every federal agency by the Obama administration. LGBTQ activists were appointed in large, unprecedented numbers as hundreds of millions of dollars poured in to activate their radical agenda in America against the three Institutions of military, marriage, and faith. It appeared you were being played.

Picture yourself, Dr. Moore, as the newly appointed general placed at the head of 16 million troops fearful for their children’s future (most parents will agree with this, if honest), and concerned for religious freedoms, after decades of dealing with the true face of the gay rights movement, and your first words were: “We lost.”

Then we were ordered to “be winsome” and make more friends with those whose goals are to redefine marriage, family, faith, sexuality and gender for our five-year-olds. Here I speak about Planned Parenthood’s presence behind the LGBTQ movement with over a billion dollars per year (half of that tax dollars, and much of it Christian tax dollars), to accomplish long awaited cultural victories. Above all, the “outdated” institution of the church “needed to be done away with or its opposition crushed” to allow the advancement of their group.

You see, Dr. Moore, it is most likely you have taken this movement at face value or as it misrepresents itself. Following the manifesto of the late eighties, After the Ball, the gay rights movement has portrayed itself as victims (an intentional mask) not aggressors, and the worst offenders in this victimization are Christians and the Church. This approach over three decades has worked to disguise the movement, its tactics and its goals, hiding its silent partners like Planned Parenthood.

Ask the leadership of Focus on the Family when this hate-filled agenda came to their doorstep under the banner of the Human Rights Campaign and their For the Bible Tells Me So documentary, which was financed by the Huffington fortune. I have to ask how much you really know about this movement or its history. Your apparent naiveté has allowed it to gain more ground during your tenure—even inside the church—than ever before.

My Personal ERLC Experience

After that October WSJ interview, I personally reached out to you as I was in the midst of a full-frontal assault from the LGBTQ activist community. My work with a Christian Arts and Historic Restoration legacy (something that would perfectly fit your view of engagement as an outreach to university students and the arts community) was being invaded. Our small but faithful group of volunteers needed allies to prevent an SBC minister’s legacy from becoming a platform for the LGBTQ funding of the NEA and private sector siblings, coupled with the National Park Service and Gill Foundation’s LGBTQ Heritage initiative for “Queering History.”

Again, as an evangelist, I was on the front line doing exactly what you say we should be doing—engaging. We looked for you, as an evangelical brother, who espoused the very kind of effort we were taking on, to help us. Our efforts to reach out for help were ignored as we watched a deceased fellow minister’s legacy be wrapped in an ongoing parade of gay artist works and the loss of ten years of ministry labor while suffering personal threats with no allies.

You had your talking points and were sticking to them, ignoring those whose real-life stories did not fit the narrative. We have met other ministers with the same experiences of abandonment by your ERLC as you pretend that the culture war is over.

Over the Top

Dr. Moore, for a time I gave you the benefit of the doubt in that you were new to DC and to the ERLC and were on a learning curve, albeit a costly one for your constituents in the SBC. I was still hopeful, and shared your desire to be more effective in our public engagement, but then you began your efforts toward public discourse in 2014. The ERLC appeared to be engaging the conversation not just about but with the LGBTQ on sexuality and marriage.

I was asked, by a Christian brother in convention leadership, to meet with the activist who came to our city and state to organize communities and jump start the Human Rights Campaign’s state offices. It was an unofficial sit down so as not to validate the activist while trying to understand better their intentions and methods, for which they had $8.5 million in new funding to engage churches in three Southern states.

Because of our candid approach to the meeting, we were told very openly that the goal was to silence opposition to gay marriage and to end the “traditional rhetoric that homosexuality is a sin and that we would go to hell if we engage in it.” The various groups who were partnering with HRC were sending gay couples and transgender or “gender bending” teens into our churches to “test reaction.” There were new training manuals and tool kits being developed to persuade “Conflicted Christians” out of long held Biblical views. (I have copies of these, Dr. Moore, if you care to become more informed.) But the next revelation is the most shocking.

I also found out about the ongoing dialogue between you and your offices on the one side, and the HRC and other LGBTQ activists on the other. The upcoming ERLC 2014 conference on the issues had created an excited buzz among LGBTQ activists especially on their social media. One of your conference speakers who was a “same sex attracted” or “Gay Christian” tweeted out mid-conference that “the Southern Baptist and gay community break bread together in Nashville.”

Some of your staff boasted to the LGBTQ representatives who had been welcomed to the conference that “Dr. Moore is rebranding the whole organization of the ERLC.” I watched the broad spectrum gay organizations hosted by the ERLC use their social media with the ERLC logo as a back drop to broadcast to their followers the excited news of their individual critiques of your conference, thus validating themselves no matter how radical or small or new to the public arena such organizations were. It dawned on me that, whether intentionally or not, Dr. Moore, you were allowing our ERLC to be used for the same type of platform we had fought to prevent our late SBC minister’s legacy from becoming—a platform to promote the radical LGBTQ faith agenda.

This was one of the most heart-sinking feelings I have ever had as a Southern Baptist, and one that came on the heels of my own personal loss, being threatened, invaded and unable to gain even an honest hearing from you. You were allowing all of our voices to be drowned out by your new talking points and rebranding efforts.

LGBTQ Furthers Agenda by Using ERLC

I then went to a former ERLC board member and personal friend to ask what was really going on. Their response was “I don’t know what he is thinking and he has a home full of young boys himself.” This response pointed to the most direct question of all: “Are we really aware of what is at stake in the struggle of our culture?” It is not just for Christians and SBC churches but for anyone who cares what we are leaving for the next generation or allowing to happen, on our watch, under our parenting and leadership.

So I ask you, Dr. Moore, what about your children and mine who are right now, not ten years from now, the aim of, not the lost cultural narrative, but organizations like Planned Parenthood, the major stealth partner in the LGBTQ movement? You are welcoming and dragging the SBC into these disingenuous and scripted conversations.

Do you know why PP redefined the meaning of Q in the alphabet soup of the new sexual minority big tent approach? Q means Queer. Its inclusion promotes the more radical elements of the movement, as they “own” the slur. But Planned Parenthood has substituted Questioning for Q, teaching our children it is normal and healthy to question their sexual orientation and gender AT ANY AGE. From K5 (and even Pre-K3 and Pre-K4 in some places), the rabid and aggressive PP agenda is on the march to redefine sexual norms and gender to our children in every arena of life, from education to recreation to houses of worship and in every source from which they obtain information, including Christian media and curriculum.

Do you understand this, Dr. Moore? Do you know with whom you have been associating? Do you at least understand their intentions, their history and their target generation? Personal efforts to follow up and raise these concerns with the ERLC and with you in late 2014 were met with this dismissive response: “We have a lot on our plate right now; we don’t have time for that.”

You have made your narrative based on the changing culture and, whether aware of it or not, made us and the ERLC the slave of public opinion and these false narratives which oppose the message of the cross. The cross says we are all sinners and that God Himself has intervened. The Bible still and forever says homosexuality is sin, which you agree with, but your assumption that the church is to blame for the tension between culture and the SBC ignores the fundamental opposition that exists between the Gospel Truth and a lost world.

We cannot advance the Kingdom by offering our children on the altars of a new sexual revolution fueled by progressive politics and the corporate foundation funding which is backing the very people to whom you roll out the welcome mat and portray as victims of the church. You have become a Prophet of Shame to Christians who want to be salt and light and to stand boldly and often under threat. Your opposition to preventing a second Clinton regime (and the would-be result of a continuation of Obama policy) is a total mystery to most thinking believers.

The idea that the LGBTQ agenda is a civil rights movement is false, yet you seem to have bought in. The culture war is not the construct of the Christian Right whose eulogy you and others so eagerly proclaim. This war is between light and darkness. The Christian ethic represents the Gospel Light which in our nation has had a great deal of impact on the culture in the past through the Religious Liberty you are commissioned to represent.

Who has bewitched you that you have not obeyed your calling? I love you and pray for you as many who share these concerns do. But I ask again what is going on with you? Why do you think we need schooling to correct our values or define our place in the public square? I point out that most of us live more in that realm than you do in light of your recent experience as a Seminary professor or in the offices at the ERLC.

You were not hired to improve the SBC’s poor image or to engage some public posture to rebrand us. Herein lies a possible insight into the core problem. Is the church’s mission and the SBC’s future success to be measured by how we poll in public perception or by the living epistles of those changed by the Gospel we preach?

Is the Great Commission nothing more than building Christian Community and delivering Social Justice to a collective victimized neighborhood so they might like us more one day and join our churches? Or is it the overall impact on cultural and national life resulting from the bold proclaiming of the Word of Truth, resulting in the individual salvation and transformation many of us in the church have both seen and experienced firsthand?

I say the latter.

Dr. Moore, the WSJ article of 2013 reminded me of the ten spies who came back with an evil report and discouraged the hearts of God’s people. Are you leading us into an Evangelical Wilderness? To watch you welcome to ERLC conferences the very people hired to target our churches and our children and to hear them boast that you are breaking bread together makes me wonder if you understand the communion of the saints at all. Do not imagine that you will remove the reproach of the Cross from Southern Baptist life without becoming the enemy of it.

SBC MegaChurch Says LGBT Community is the Chief Cornerstone

“God help the SBC. This is the kinder, gentler, more politically correct SBC church that Russell Moore is building.”

 

Russell Moore and the Politics of Shame

11 September, 2017

Some glaring fault lines have appeared in the conversation about Russell Moore, many of which were exposed by the recent essay in The Federalist written by one of Moore’s fans, Nathan Leamer of the R Street Institute. Since being crowned head of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) in 2013, Dr. Moore has been no stranger to controversy, much of which he brings upon himself. His tendency has been to pervert the classic Christian world view and mix it with language which panders to the left while he openly admonished evangelicals to disengage the culture war as we entered the most hostile attacks in the national history.

This may actually be a careful strategy that resembles the “tactics “of Moore’s most popular target and the source of his current troubles, President elect Donald Trump. Trump skillfully uses controversy to grab headlines and kept himself and his campaign on the front page. Trump is a thick skinned veteran of the New York gossip columns. Trump, therefore, plays the media as one adept with his NYC and DC survival skills. Moore may miss the goal and lack the skills to pull this off.

Dr. Moore began his reign by providing us a taste of both his winsomeness and new tone for the ERLC and evangelicals’ cultural engagement. But today for Moore, the thought of a Trump presidency seems to have caused the evaporation of his winsome veneer exposing a “Prophet of Shame.”  After Trump’s unexpected win, Moore’s pandering to the political Left seems to have gone into hyperdrive.  Moore wants Christians who have supported Trump to hide their faces. Yet Trump’s clarity is appealing while Moore’s shame and double speak is divisive. Christian radio host Janet Mefferd pointed out that Trump inherited many evangelicals later in the campaign, and he was not their first choice. But Moore seems determined to let the facts escape him. Others in the SBC and conservative Evangelical circles echo the same “Blame Game” toward evangelicals who supported Trump’s campaign. Ed Stetzer implies that electing Trump has created a climate of racism for which white evangelicals must explain themselves to Christians of Color ”So, what is really going on?  What are the fault lines Moore and others are missing?

Here Are a Few:

Moore is attempting to rebrand the ERLC and the evangelical tone. He is speaking mostly to next generation of believers whom the Southern Baptist Convention fears losing – people like Nathan Leamer. Moore critics are not, as Leamer suggests “a small but vocal minority. They are the people who pay Moore’s salary and fund his organization.  

Former Senator Mike Huckabee points out that Baptist are “paying Moore to insult them.”  Moore is failing because he is trying to pour new wine into old wine skins (Mark 2:22 ). Both the young and old may be alienated in the end. Dr. Moore, why not start a new organization (wine skin) with the purpose of rebranding the conversation rather than confusing the present one and furthering the age divide?

Moore is the crown prince of evangelical contradiction.  He welcomes confusing partners like LGBTQ activists who want to redefine marriage while he ignores, shuns, and shames seasoned conservatives who understand that the LGBTQ debate is merely a tool that uses the LGBT community so that progressives can redefine sexual norms and even personhood. After more than three years in Washington, D.C. does Dr. Moore understand this yet? Progressives USE minorities. They do not help them.

Russell Moore misidentifies his victims.  When Moore insults the “Christian Right,” he is actually speaking of the Conservative Christian who craves clarity and conviction on Faith Values. He attacks these voters as if they were the machinery behind the conservative political movement. When Christian voters allow this misidentification and assault, they are thus stigmatized by the press, progressives, and the new brand of social justice Christian voter. The fact is most conservatives’ theology tends to be more compatible with social policy than is the brand of Moore and his followers. Doesn’t Russell Moore need to get his labels right before applying them?

Moore is attempting to build the ERLCs new foundation on the shifting sands of culture.  It is not possible to maintain real integrity to our espoused theological conservatism and yet be socially pandering if not outright grasping every progressive object floating on the surface of the current cultural floodtide. Moore, if not confused himself does allow his language to confuse others. Moore embraces immigration policies, for example, that favor the left's ideology as if he does not know of George Soros' existence or has never heard of open borders. In short, Moore quickly adopts talking points loaded with activist policy and expects his base to follow while he espouses faithfulness to Biblical values wrapped in this new terminology. Is this fair to expect thinking people to follow along?

Moore has not at all “been balanced in speaking truth to power while achieving real political victories,” as Leamer claims. Leamer fails to enumerate even one of those “victories.” Also, as he reminds us, the ERLC’s job is, in part, “to promote Religious Liberty”. By this standard alone, both Moore’s vision and the organization he inherited, are failures. There has been far greater endangerment – and loss — of religious freedom on Moore’s watch than at any other time in American history.  As to “Trump holding a Bond Reunion without him,” Russell Moore is no James Bond. He is not a man accustomed to life in the field but rather in the theological halls of learning. He also lacks a license to kill the conservative Christian base, though he does seem to be attempting to read its eulogy. Dr. Moore, what is your job in 10 words or less? Please stick to it.

In short, Moore is accountable to the base who funds him. He is accountable to the denomination under whose banner he sails and to the individual Christians and ministers who reach out to him with concern. Trump’s evangelical support was in large part, a vote against Hillary Clinton’s progressive “March to the Sea” to divide and conquer Christian values in the public square.  Moore seems to fail to get this. He continues using the wrong talking points, the wrong language, the wrong allies, and is on the wrong side of the mountains of culture. If the trumpet gives an uncertain sound, who will prepare himself to battle? (“One” Corinthians 14:8 )

 

RUSSELL MOORE'S ERLC OF THE SBC:

      AN NGO OF THE UNITED NATIONS

Thomas Littleton’s “Open Letter to Russell Moore,” President of the Ethics and Religious Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, caused quite a stir in the SBC.  Now why would that happen?

The Ethics and Religious Liberties Commission (ERLC) of the Southern Baptist Convention is “the moral and public policy agency of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.” The ERLC is also an NGO in Special Consultative Status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) .

The International Planned Parenthood Federation and its partner, the LGBTQ, are also NGOs in Special Consultative Status of the UNECOSOC.  The IPPF and LGBTQ organizations are the largest funders and exporters of the LGBTQ agenda globally.

In their Special Consultative capacity, the ERLC, IPPF and LGBTQ orgs are required to be in conformity with the aims, purposes and work of the United Nations.  This requirement is clearly stated on the UN/NGO Database:

Principles to Be Applied in the Establishment of Consultative Relations

‘The following principles shall be applied in establishing consultative relations with non-governmental organizations: The organization shall be concerned with matters falling within the competence of the Economic and Social Council and its subsidiary bodies.

2. The aims and purposes of the organization shall be in conformity with the spirit, purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations.

3. The organization shall undertake to support the work of the United Nations and to promote knowledge of its principles and activities, in accordance with its own aims and purposes and the nature and scope of its competence and activities.”

25. Organizations to be accorded special consultative status because of their interest in the field of human rights should pursue the goals of promotion and protection of human rights in accordance with the spirit of the Charter of the United Nations...

So, behind the scenes Russell Moore and the SBC’s Ethic and Religious Liberty Commission are in bed with the LGBTQ, International Planned Parenthood and the United Nations. How many Southern Baptists are aware of this?

The aims and purposes of the United Nations regarding sexuality education of children – with which the ERLC is in agreement – have been established by the UN Organization for Education, Science and Culture (UNESCO).

UNESCO Guidance on Sexuality Education assumes a mandate to overcome opposition by cultural and religious groups to sex education by “education and health sector decision-makers and professionals.” Opposition will be overcome through “consensus building” among religious, government, education LGBT and various secular organizations. 

International Technical Guidance on Sexuality Education

“Sexuality education attracts both opposition and support. Should opposition occur, it is by no means insurmountable. Ministries of education play a critical role in building consensus on the need for sexuality education through consultation and advocacy with key stakeholders, including, for example:

• Young people represented by their diversity and organizations that work with them;
• Parents and parent-teacher associations;
• Policy-makers and politicians;
• Government ministries, including health and others concerned with the needs of young people;
• Educational professionals and institutions including teachers, head teachers and training institutions;
• Religious leaders and faith-based organizations;
• Teachers’ trade unions;
• Training institutions for health professions;
• Researchers;
• Community and traditional leaders;
• Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender groups;
• NGOs, particularly those working on sexual and reproductive health with young people;
• People living with HIV;
• Media (local and national); and
• Relevant donors or outside funders

International Technical Guidance on Sexuality Education II

“A companion document (Volume II ) focuses on the topics and learning objectives to be covered at different ages in basic sexuality education for children and young people from 5 to 18+ years of age, together with a bibliography of useful resources.”

“As a comprehensive package, all learning objectives address children’s and young people’s need for information and right to education. However, while only some of these learning objectives are specifically designed to reduce risky sexual behaviour, others will attempt to change social norms, facilitate communication of sexual issues, remove social and attitudinal barriers to sexuality education and increase knowledge.”

The topics and learning objectives address four age groups and corresponding levels:

1. ages 5 to 8 (Level I)
2. ages 9 to 12 (Level II)
3. ages 12 to 15 (Level III)
4. ages 15 to 18+ (Level IV)

“The sexual and reproductive health needs and concerns of children and young people, as well as the age of sexual debut, vary considerably within and across regions, as well as within and across countries and communities. This, in turn, is likely to affect the perceived appropriateness of particular learning objectives when developing curricula, materials and programmes. Learning objectives should therefore be adjusted to their context. However, this should be done in response to the available data and evidence rather than because of personal discomfort or perceived opposition.”

On June 30, 2015, the UN General Assembly adopted a Human Rights Council resolution on that authorized the appointment of an International Expert to monitor LGBTQ rights among the member nations. In September, Thailand’s Vitit Muntarbhorn was appointed as the UN’s first independent investigator into violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Thailand is perhaps the most gender fluid nation in the world with a reputation as one of the largest child sex trade operations in Southeast Asia. (Southeast Asia a Haven for Pedophiles)

“UNICEF estimates the number of Thai children involved in prostitution to be between 60,000 and 200,000, though the organization says the exact number is difficult to track…  Sowmia Nair, a Department of Justice agent, said the Thai government often “turns a blind eye” to child sex tourism because of the country’s economic reliance on the tourist trade in general. He also said police officers are often corrupt.”

So will Vitit Muntarbhorn, a law professor at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, be protecting children in member nations of the UN from child trafficking?  No, Muntarbhorn’s duty is to enforce the UN Mandate protecting the rights of LGBTQ persons from being discriminated against using whatever public facilities they identify with, in the way of bathrooms, locker rooms, showers, or even dorms or hotel rooms designated for girls or boys on camping or school trips.

Note in the UN Resolution that the “human right” that will be protected -- at the expense of children’s right to protection from predators -- is “violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.”

Resolution adopted by the Human Rights Council on 30 June 2016

32/2. Protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity

The Human Rights Council, Reaffirming the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Recalling Human Rights Council resolutions 5/1 and 5/2 of 18 June 2007,

1. Reaffirms that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights, and that everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status;
2. Strongly deplores acts of violence and discrimination, in all regions of the world, committed against individuals because of their sexual orientation or gender identity;
3. Decides to appoint, for a period of three years, an Independent Expert on protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, with the following mandate:

(a) To assess the implementation of existing international human rights instruments with regard to ways to overcome violence and discrimination against persons on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity, while identifying both best practices and gaps;
(b) To raise awareness of violence and discrimination against persons on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity, and to identify and address the root causes of violence and discrimination;
(c) To engage in dialogue and to consult with States and other relevant stakeholders, including United Nations agencies, programmes and funds, regional human rights mechanisms, national human rights institutions, civil society organizations and academic institutions;
(d) To work in cooperation with States in order to foster the implementation of measures that contribute to the protection of all persons against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity;
(e) To address the multiple, intersecting and aggravated forms of violence and discrimination faced by persons on the basis of their sexual orientation and gender identity;
(f) To conduct, facilitate and support the provision of advisory services, technical assistance, capacity-building and international cooperation in support of national efforts to combat violence and discrimination against persons on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity;

4. Requests the Independent Expert to report annually to the Human Rights Council, starting from its thirty-fifth session, and to the General Assembly, starting from its seventy-second session;

5. Calls upon all States to cooperate with the Independent Expert in the discharge of the mandate, including by providing all information requested, to give serious consideration to responding favourably to the requests of the Independent Expert to visit their countries and to consider implementing the recommendations made in the mandate holder’s reports;

6. Encourages all relevant stakeholders, including United Nations agencies, programmes and funds, human rights mechanisms, national human rights institutions, national independent monitoring frameworks, civil society, the private sector, donors and development agencies to cooperate fully with the Independent Expert to enable the mandate holder to fulfil his or her mandate;

7. Requests the Secretary-General and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to provide the Independent Expert with all the human, technical and financial resources necessary for the effective fulfilment of his or her mandate;

8. Decides to remain seized of this issue.

41st meeting
30 June 2016

Where is the Conservative Evangelical Voice in Today's Cultural Tsunami?