Christian author, evangelist Beth Moore leaves Southern Baptists, says ‘this is not who I am’

Published 9:42 pm Tuesday, March 9, 2021

Arguably one of America’s most powerful evangelical Christian women is leaving the denomination in which she was closely tied for many years.

Beth Moore, who led the Houston, Texas, Living Proof Ministries and has been a prolific author, speaker and evangelist, has announced she will be leaving the Southern Baptist denomination.

“I am still a Baptist, but I can no longer identify with Southern Baptists,” Moore told Religion News Service. “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.”

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“At the end of the day, there comes a time when you have to say, this is not who I am,” she said.

Moore had been increasingly at odds with Southern Baptist beliefs, beginning in 2016 with the election of Donald J. Trump.

Moore had spoken out against Trump, saying the former president’s behavior was un-Christian and suggesting that evangelicals who followed Trump needed to rethink the decision.

“I do not believe these are days for mincing words. I’m 63 1/2 years old & I have never seen anything in these United States of America I found more astonishingly seductive & dangerous to the saints of God than Trumpism. This Christian nationalism is not of God. Move back from it,” Moore wrote in a December Twitter post.