Baptist pastors consider defunding ERLC over Russell Moore's anti-Trump stance

Russell Moore, president of Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), has come under fire from other Southern Baptist pastors due to his opposition to President-elect Donald Trump.

Moore has criticized Trump over his policy proposals on immigration as well as his moral character. He also castigated conservatives for their support of the Republican Party regardless of the candidate.

The ERLC president asserted that the religious right "normalized an awful candidate" and added that religious conservatives were one of the only groups "willing to defend serious moral problems."

Pastors from multiple states felt that Moore's rhetoric was an insult to many of the people he was supposed to represent as the chief advocate of Baptists in Washington D.C.

According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, some baptist pastors are considering cutting funds to the ERLC, the policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). The pastors argue that Moore has burned bridges to have access to the incoming president.

Jack Graham, Prestonwood Baptist Church in Texas, said that his 40,000-member church is "considering making major changes in our support of the Southern Baptist Convention" due to Moore's denunciations of Trump and some of his supporters.

Robert Jeffress, the senior pastor at First Baptist Dallas, said that the deacons of his church are worried about the direction of the ERLC.

"They do not believe it represents our church's beliefs," he said. "I've got other things to be concerned with but our church, like many churches, is always looking at the wisest expenditure of its dollars," he went on to say.

Younger Southern Baptists came out in support of Moore. Some expressed their appreciation for the ERLC president's leadership on Twitter using the hashtag #IStandWIthMoore.

James Forbis, a student at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, believes that Graham, Jeffress, and the other pastors have other motivations.

"Donald Trump will surround himself with whomever he wishes and already Dr. [Robert] Jeffress is there as is former Governor Mike Huckabee, whom are both influential Southern Baptists, so the question is why does this even matter?" he said in an email to The Christian Post.

Forbis asserted that Jeffress and the other pastors are worried about losing control of the SBC and Southern Baptist becoming culturally irrelevant.

In response to the backlash, Moore issued an apology on a blog post in which he noted that there were pastors and friends who thought that he was criticizing anyone who voted for Trump.

"I told them then, and I would tell anyone now: if that's what you heard me say, that was not at all my intention, and I apologize," he wrote.