The Southern Baptist Convention Takes on Trump

With more than 15 million members, the Southern Baptist Convention is by far the country’s largest Protestant denomination. Through its policy arm, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, it has been a powerful bastion of the Christian right since the 1980s, with a predictable slate of priorities: combating abortion and pornography, promoting prayer in public schools, and recently cheering the law in Mississippi that allows businesses and government employees to deny services to LGBTQ people. But under Moore, who assumed the ERLC presidency in 2013, the denomination has taken on a new assignment. Believe it or not, Southern Baptists have become the loudest chorus of anti-Trump voices within conservative evangelicalism. And as has happened in other precincts of the right, the real estate mogul’s candidacy has forced evangelical leaders to confront the contradictions between their values and their political allegiances. “My concern is not so much about the presidential election,” Moore told me. “I’m more concerned about the witness of evangelical Christianity, which I see compromised in the apologies from some Christian leaders for Trump and his behavior.”