The Dispatch: “It’s not often that a single person’s decision to leave a Christian denomination dominates the pages of Christianity Today, the Washington Post, and New York Times, but when that person is Beth Moore, one of America’s most popular Bible teachers, and she’s leaving the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, that attention is justified.
But is the commentary surrounding her departure hitting the mark? Is it capturing what’s really going on? I’m not sure. But first, let’s briefly discuss the facts.
Beth is a longtime Southern Baptist. She has filled arenas and reached millions with her Bible studies. And while she’s always been the subject of some controversy in a denomination that often wrestles with questions surrounding women’s roles preaching and teaching, she lived happily within the Baptist theological tent. …
Because of her opposition to Trump and her outspokenness in confronting sexism and nationalism in the evangelical world, Moore has been labeled as “liberal” and “woke” and even as being a heretic for daring to give a message during a Sunday morning church service.
Finally, Moore had had enough. She told Religion News Service in an interview Friday that she is “no longer a Southern Baptist.”
“I am still a Baptist, but I can no longer identify with Southern Baptists,” Moore said in the phone interview. “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 haven’t remained in the past.”
Much of the online chatter regarding Moore’s departure dealt with the possibility of an emerging ideological (rather than truly theological) split within the church–raising the question of whether people with similar theologies but increasingly different political ideologies can remain united.
Yet as I’ve read the debates about Beth’s departure, I feel like something is missing. There’s an important part of the story that’s largely left off the table. In my view, the truly important emerging divisions in the Evangelical church aren’t just theological or ideological. They’re also dispositional and temperamental.”