Earlier: George W. Bush Thinks That Republicans Promoting Anglo-Saxon Ideals Will Make The Party Extinct
Soros Evangelical Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, hasn’t recently done much for religious liberty, but he’s recently done quite a bit to push the Flu Manchu panic, not specifially a religious issue although it is certainly a fashionable Ruling Class cause. He’s all in for masking and myriad experimental vaccines, and adds this touch to get white conservative Christians on his side: He calls the jab and wearing a mask a “pro-life issue” [Not the mark of the beast: Evangelicals should fight conspiracy theories and welcome the vaccines, by Russell Moore and Walter Kim, The Washington Post, February 24, 2021]. That, combined with his mulish insistence on Open Borders, has to have his fellow Evangelicals (of whom I’m one) wondering whose side he's on.
Moore is annoyed that evangelicals don’t share his enthusiasm. They need to ignore “conspiracy theories,” as he and Kim wrote for WaPo, and understand that “vaccines are a cause for Christians to rejoice and to give glory to God.”
And when he’s not telling us vaccines are “pro-life” and an expression of “love for neighbor,” he waves the Stars and Stripes:
I spend a lot of time telling Christians, don’t make your country your idol. Put the kingdom of God first. [Being vaccinated] is an opportunity for good, genuine, God-approved patriotism.
[Evangelical leaders explain why skeptical evangelicals should get vaccinated, by Jeff Brumley, Baptist News, May 14, 2021]
As for face coverings, Moore wore two the day he received the first of two inoculations. And he added this corny message: “This hobbit is vaccinated.”
This hobbit is vaccinated (round one, anyway).
— Russell Moore (@drmoore) March 9, 2021
Thankful for the astounding skill and speed of medical science to help rid us of this plague. pic.twitter.com/gNHelHmqfN
Hobbits, however drink beer and smoke pipes and don’t fret about viruses.
VDARE.com has published much about Moore because he backs Open Borders, bashes Donald Trump, gloats over white demographic decline, and is therefore permitted to pen occasional opinions for the Washington Post and The New York Times.
Moore is a prominent member of the Evangelical Immigration Table , a branch of the National Immigration Forum subsidized by George Soros [SBC Press Outlet Publishes Demonstrably False Information About Entity Head’s Ties to George Soros, by Jeff Maples, Reformation Charlotte, January 9, 2020].
But significantly, despite Moore’s captaincy of the SBC’s religious liberty panel, he seems to have said nothing about the arrest of Canadian pastor Atur Pawlowski, who chased the cops out of his church when they tried to shut it down for violating pandemic rules. Two others have been arrested as well [Third Canadian pastor arrested over breaking coronavirus rules, by Kelly Valencia, Premier Christian News, May 17, 2021]. The word from Moore? Crickets.
Then there's what Moore says, and has said, about immigration and the National Question, VDARE’s signature issues. If Moore wants to take an experimental vaccine, that’s his business. But when he wants to import thousands of low-wage illiterates to take American jobs, glom onto welfare, flood public schools, and overload hospitals, well, that’s our business.
As the non-woke evangelical Capstone Reports noted, such is Moore’s zeal for Open Borders, he forgets all about the global Covid-19 pandemic when it comes to “refugees”—
Dr. Moore is fully committed to the replacement of American voters with malleable Third World immigrants – something recently exposed as a key Democratic Party strategy by Tucker Carlson
[Amid pandemic Russell Moore demands more refugees, April 19, 2021].
Then came Moore’s May 6 Zoom talk with former President George W. Bush, who’s pushing his Open Borders book, Out of Many, One. It contains stories about 43 immigrants—scandalously, including illegals—whom Bush illustrated with his oil paintings.
For a Bush Center program entitled Immigrants and the American Future on Zoom, Dubya joined Moore, the moderators, and three other Open Borders enthusiasts: Ali Noorani [email him], of the National Immigration Forum, Yuval Levin and Bush Center director Holly Kuzmich.
Dubya summarized immigration policy of the past few decades.
I campaigned on immigration reform in 2000 and 2004 and nothin’ got done. But nevertheless, it was an important issue to highlight, and uh, nothing’s been done since. The system is broken, it’s fractured.
“Nothin’s been done since?” By the end of the Trump administration, things were getting done, but not things Dubya wanted. Trump, he says, inspired “nativism.”
Said POTUS 43:
What has been done however is there’s been a populist streak that has shown up and, uh, throughout our history we have had, uh, these populist streaks that have turned nativist at times. And to me, a people who view immigration with alarm forget about what immigration has done to our country. …
We should not fear the erosion of a culture. Immigrants enhance our culture of freedom and freedom of religion and freedom to speak enthusiasm toward what America represents. ...
One of the things that immigrants have done is they bring enormous brainpower to our country.
What planet does Dubya live on? One of the “brainiacs” here on a student visa planned to assassinate him!
What attracts all that “brainpower?” Moore asked Dubya. “The freedom to succeed,” Dubya replied. Succeed at what?
Dubya also regaled listeners with the story of Paula Rendon, right, the Mexican family servant who became mother figure to him, and as James Fulford explained in 2010, a Bush Clan retainer who brought her entire family here.
Dubya suggested that Rendon’s story “scares people,” which Moore was only too happy to run with:
You mention that fear, and we’ve seen that so many times over American history when Irish Americans are first generation or Italian-Americans or Mexican-Americans.
There’s often this sense of fear you’re going to change our country. And we certainly see a lot of that right now. How do we help people get around that fear and see the benefits?
As for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, Barack Hussein Obama’s DREAMers’ Amnesty, well, Dubya says that’s necessary because “the failed labor system that we don’t recognize, uh, the fact that there are jobs that need to be done and people willing to do 'em and that needs to be part of a reform.”
Ah yes, illegals and their kidlets “do the jobs Americans won’t do.” Where have we heard that before?!
We need a “rational work policy that enhances the border—you come here and work and do jobs that need to be done. They don’t have to sneak across the border,” Dubya continued.
Dubya has been peddling that line since 2004. Remember his plan to “allow willing workers to enter our country and fill jobs that Americans are not filling,” the long way of saying “displace American workers?”
Moore and Dubya then veered into the religious aspect of immigration policy, the usual attempt to guilt-trip Christians into supporting their own dispossession and replacement.
Dubya waxed philosophical. “It depends on where you start your philosophy from,” he began an answer to Moore:
I started mine from all life is precious and we’re all God’s children … if that’s how you view immigration then you don’t view, uh, people with hostile eye. You view them with a loving eye. Loving eye doesn’t mean tearing down a border wall.
Loving eye means treating people with respect. This ought to be an issue … geared to all religious people.
Moore fretfully replied:
But you know some surveys are showing that religious communities like mine are actually becoming less supportive of immigrants and refugees when that used to be the reverse.
Well, the polls certainly show that white evangelicals are least likely to support DACA, the least opposed to a border wall, the least in favor of importing refugees, and the most likely to say that “immigrants are invading our country and replacing our cultural and ethnic background [Immigration After Trump: What Would Immigration Policy That Followed American Public Opinion Look Like? PRRI, January 20, 2021]
Moore asked:
How do we turn that around?”
Dubya had an answer:
Get speakers who come there and remind people of the call, you know, and so the fundamental question is are we losing the basis of, the core basis of religion to begin with? Are our churches too political? Are they focused on the right mission and which is saving souls and, uh, it seems to me [in the] recent past the churches have become particularly, the white evangelical churches, have become very, have become political instruments. it’s always been the case in the African-American community … until there is a religious awakening, to a certain extent, kind of a revival of mission, this issue may not be as important as it used to be.
Translation:
Dubya even offered his evaluation of the 1920s immigration shutdown:
It was said we had too many Jews and Italians and therefore the stated immigration policy was zero—zero immigrants—also happened to be a period of protectionism and isolationism.
Dubya started talking about Texas, apparently not noticing the irony:
We’ve had Mexicans come up as workers for centuries, hell, we were Mexico at one time and anyway we’re very accustomed to Mexican-American relations and uh anyway.
Does DUBYA know why Mexico lost Texas—and why it might gain it back again? Demographics!
After Dubya demonstrated that he doesn’t understand American history related to the acquisition of Mexico, one had to wonder why anyone should listen to him. And truth be told, no one in the GOP that matters really is listening to him.
As VDARE’s Washington Watcher II has repeatedly observed, the GOP party faithful are Trump’s now, and even some top GOP leaders are adopting Trump’s positions. Even Mike Allen and Jim VandeHai of Axios have reported that Trump’s takeover of the party is unmistakable on myriad issues: trade, immigration, and voting reform, to name three. GOP House leaders just booted anti-Trump Rep. Liz Cheney from her top post [Institutionalizing Trump, May 7, 2021].
As for Moore, several months ago, an SBC task force called his ERLC a “significant distraction from the Great Commission work of Southern Baptists,” and blamed it for a shortfall of more than $1 million in congregational donations to the denomination [SBC report calls never-Trumper Russell Moore’s agency a ‘significant distraction’, by Bob Smietana, Religion News Service, February 1, 2021].
A simple solution: Abolish the ERLC and dump Russell Moore. The real strength of SBC lies in local congregations, not the elitist central bureaucracy hijacked by the likes of Moore.
He no more speaks for rank-and-file Baptists than George W. Bush speaks for rank-and-file Americans.
MAY 21 UPDATE: Unbeknownst to me, the day previous to the publication of this article (May 18), Russell Moore had announced that he is leaving the ERLC to work for Christianity Today. I wouldn't be surprised though if Moore continues to emphasize the same things, nor is Moore the only woke Southern Baptist leader. See No More Russell Moore in Southern Baptist Leadership, But Departing Moore Not the Only "Woke" Baptist Leader .
American citizen Allan Wall (email him) moved back to the U.S.A. in 2008 after many years residing in Mexico. Allan's wife is Mexican, and their two sons are bilingual. In 2005, Allan served a tour of duty in Iraq with the Texas Army National Guard. His VDARE.COM articles are archived here; his Mexidata.info articles are archived here; his News With Views columns are archived here; and his website is here.
