Dr. Russell Moore has written a scathing rebuke of President Donald Trump, his enablers in the White House and the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol last week, calling on Congress to impeach the President and Vice-President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment.
This is not about politics. This is about our country, about the rule of law and about the sanctity of human life. The President invited mobs to Washington—promising a “wild” time—and told them to march to the Capitol. Despite the fact that there was not one thing that Vice President Pence could have lawfully done, the President called him a coward, and whipped up crowds against him who, many of them, then chanted “Hang Mike Pence!” while constructing gallows on the Capitol grounds. An American flag was thrown down and replaced with a Trump flag, while another insurrectionist paraded a Confederate flag through the Capitol. Police officers were attacked. Congressional leaders hid while the doors buckled from mobs seeking to attack them. People are dead. The Capitol is ransacked. Administration officials are resigning in protest.
If you read nothing else, read this: If you can defend this, you can defend anything. If you can wave this away with “well, what about…” or by changing the subject to a private platform removing an account inciting violence as “Orwellian,” then where, at long last, is your limit?
This isn’t exactly a new stance for Moore. As president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, he was a fierce critic of Trump and his evangelical supporters during the 2015 campaign. His words brought fierce opposition from prominent SBC leaders that briefly put Moore’s job on the line. Moore’s been less vocal about his distaste for Trump over the last four years, but came out swinging after Wednesday’s storming of the Capitol. Now, Moore acknowledges that his fresh furor may cost him his job.
I don’t speak for anyone else, only myself. But you deserve to hear from me what I honestly think. If I were the President, I would resign. If I were the Vice President, I would assemble the cabinet in accordance with the 25th Amendment. If I were a Member of Congress, I would vote to impeach. And if I were a United States senator, I would vote to convict. And I would be willing, if necessary, to lose my seat to do so. As a matter of fact, I am willing, if necessary, to lose this seat.
Again, I might be wrong. But, if so, propose what can be done to make sure that justice is done and that this never happens to our country again.
It’s a long and thoughtful post that grapples honestly with Moore’s own history and puts together a “Roman’s Road” for the way forward from here. You can read the whole piece at Moore’s website.
