Beth Moore’s last stand
Nicole Russell
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For the last several years, the evangelical Christian community has acted puzzled, even wronged, by Bible study teacher Beth Moore. In seemingly one fell swoop, she left the Southern Baptist Convention, a denomination she’d been a part of for decades, and denounced former President Donald Trump and the Christian leaders who heralded him, as Jerry Falwell Jr. put it, evangelicals’ “dream president.”
Moore seemed willing to take on a patriarchal evangelical society and a Christian Republican sect that was increasingly placing its faith in a misogynist running for president instead of God. Where had this temerity come from — and why now?
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Moore’s memoir — All My Knotted-up Life, released Tuesday to much acclaim and buzz in the evangelical Christian world — just might hold the answer.
While Moore has, for decades, been open about being a survivor of the sexual abuse she encountered as a child, she had never publicly named her abuser, who was her father, until this memoir. “I’m not sure anything impacts your life more than your protector being your perpetrator,” she wrote.
She’s risen to fame more than she probably thought she would, or even enjoys, in part because she has had the courage to stand athwart the Southern Baptist Convention amid its attempts to cover up alleged sexual abuse among leaders across the denomination, and in part, because she wanted nothing to do with many Christian leaders’ zealous support of Trump. It’s always made some sense: Who better to call out behavior like this than a respected female leader?
Moore had already lived a life of abuse and secrets, the result of a cruel parent. For decades, she made herself feel small to survive, minimized her influence, and silenced her own voice. By 2016, with the whole of this now-published memoir burning inside her, she’d had enough: It was already too much that she’d suffered abuse at the hands of the person she was supposed to trust the most, but then, the Southern Baptist Convention betrayed women — and Christian leaders went on to support Trump, too?
She clarified in an interview with ABC about her memoir that it wasn’t just that Republicans voted for Trump — she understands there are only a few choices — but the fervor with which Christian leaders wanted to embrace a man who had been rumored to be disrespectful to women at best and to be a serial adulterer who paid off women to be quiet at worst. That didn’t seem right to her. She had been treated with that kind of disrespect and abuse. As a child, she didn’t have a voice, but now, as an adult with a million Twitter followers, she does.
Moore’s beliefs have cost her, and yet she remains steadfast in her faith and convictions. This is admirable and demands respect, even if you disagree. She’s been lambasted by the Southern Baptist Convention, but she’s been a beacon of hope for women who see themselves in her. She has been excoriated almost daily on Twitter, and every day, she gives thanks to God.
Moore’s faith in God sustains her now as it did when she endured abuse as a child. To Moore, and Christians all over the globe, the same Jesus who has whispered to us in our childhood nightmares has sustained us in our darkest hours when adults in church or at the voting booth turn out to be just as disappointing as we feared. Moore’s message is powerful because it’s consistent, and it isn’t about herself.
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Nicole Russell is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist in Washington, D.C., who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota. She is an opinion columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.