Southern Baptist leader Russell Moore's criticism of President Donald Trump and religious leaders who publicly supported him could result in his dismissal, The Washington Post reported.
Moore, who heads the public policy arm of the SBC and oversees his organization's policymaking and lobbying apparatus, during the presidential campaign called Trump an "awful candidate" and criticized "the old-guard religious right political establishment" for backing him.
Frank Page, president of the SBC Executive Committee, said the group is studying whether 100 of the denomination's 46,000 churches threatened to cut off financial support for the SBC’s umbrella fund because of discontent with Moore. Page planned to meet with Moore on Monday, and told the Post he would not rule out asking Moore to resign.
Bill Harrell, the pastor emeritus at Abilene Baptist Church in Georgia and a member on the SBC committee that created the group Moore leads, told NPR in December that Moore's comments on several issues were ones "the Southern Baptist people at large don't agree with. It's developed into a very touchy situation, and it needs to be addressed in some way."
If Moore leaves, the shake-up would be significant.
"The fallout will be the denomination signaling to African American and other ethnic groups that they're tone deaf and disinterested in that membership," said Thabiti Anyabwile, a pastor of Anacostia River Church, a Southern Baptist congregation in Washington.
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