Beth Moore on life after the SBC – and why she never could quit Jesus

HOUSTON (RNS) — For Beth Moore, leaving the Southern Baptist Convention was like falling off a cliff and not knowing if anyone would catch her.

At times, she’d walk through the woods near her Texas home and have some pretty candid conversations with Jesus.

“I would say to him over and over, I hope you know where we’re going,” she told Religion News Service in a recent interview. “I hope you know where we’re going, because I don’t have a clue where we’re going, and I don’t know where I’ll ever belong again.”

It’s been five years since Moore, bestselling author and Bible teacher, left the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, a church that had been her refuge while growing up in a troubled home and that gave her a life she loved. Since then, Moore has found a new church home as an Anglican, rebuilt her ministry, written a memoir, recovered from spinal surgery and kept doing what she’s always done — helping women learn how to dig deep in the Bible.

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But last month, Moore announced she’d begin winding down Living Proof Ministries, the nonprofit she’s run for 30 years, and will stop hosting major public events. Next spring, she’ll hold her last major event, in Nashville, Tennessee. She plans to still accept some speaking engagements, but it’s the first step toward retirement for Moore, who will turn 70 next year.

“I could not turn back the hands of time,” said Moore, acknowledging that all good things come to an end and it’s time to pass the baton on to younger leaders and to cheer them on. That’s not an easy thing to do — especially for Christian leaders who have long been in the spotlight.

“I’m getting closer and closer to the day that I’ll see his face,” she said, referring to Jesus. “What are we going to do? Take our big old egos with us?”

On a sunny Tuesday afternoon in Houston in mid-March, Moore sat in the study at Living Proof. Lined with commentaries like the New Interpreter’s Bible, the Anchor Yale Bible, a series of Bible Dictionaries from InterVarsity Press, a host of other scholarly works and numerous translations of the Bible, the study is a one-room theological library.

By her side in the sunlit room with a vaulted ceiling were her trusty Christian Standard Bible and a cup of Starbucks.

Moore said she was undone by the decision to walk away from the Southern Baptist Convention, the denomination that had been her whole life. She worried she was betraying the people she loved, even as church leaders and former friends turned against her — mainly because of her outspoken criticism of the actions of Donald Trump and her advocacy for survivors of abuse.

“It’s such a strange thing to have known people so well, and to look across the table at one another, and I mean this both ways, and truly not be able to understand what the other is thinking,” she told Religion News Service. “Honestly, you can’t wrap your mind around it. I thought we were all on the same side.”

Moore has spent a lot of time thinking about the things that divide her fellow Christians in recent years, and how values like telling the truth or loving your neighbors are now seen as suspect by conservative evangelicals. Even repeating the words of Jesus, who told his followers to love God and their neighbors, is now viewed with suspicion.

“What has happened to us?” she said. “We have lost all sense of nuance. Everything is so polarized.”

She said she longs for more focus on discipleship — the idea of being a Christian is not just to be saved but also to be changed and to become more like Jesus in how you act. Being less kind and more hateful – no matter what your party or what side you are on – is not becoming like Jesus.

“We’ve gotten so brutal and so mean and turned into bullies from every side and certainly every extreme. And that could not be more oppositional to carrying a cross and following Jesus,” she said. “To emulate the love and the truth and the grace and the word of Christ, that ought not be idealism.”

Finding a new church was difficult. Though women from all kinds of different churches had attended her events and read her books, almost all of her church experience had been among Southern Baptists. They were her people, her home, the place she felt safe, and the rhythms and songs of the Baptist world helped her make sense of the world. There are times when her Baptist heart still stirs. Like the Sunday when the congregation at her new home church sang “Blessed Assurance,” a beloved hymn of her childhood.

It took her back to sitting with her grandmother and other family members in the pews at First Baptist Church in Arkadelphia, Arkansas, where she had grown up.

“The things that were dear are mine forever,” she said. “I refuse to give it up.”

She said the thought of quitting her faith has never occurred to her. “It was too late. By the time all this happened, I was already completely enamored and devoted to Christ.”

Still, she’s not been able to escape the past. About a year and a half after she left the SBC, someone tracked her down and found her on a livestream at her new church. She was in a robe and had been the lector that day, so she was reading the Scripture. The photos went viral. She feared her past troubles would haunt her new church.

“I thought I found a safe place,” she said.

Moore called church leaders, who she said tried to reassure her that things would be all right. She recalled that one of the women in the congregation took her aside and told her the church had her back. “You will never, ever have to fight for yourself here,” she recalled the church member saying.

That incident, she said, reminded her of what she lost. She had so many friends in the SBC and felt no one had stood up for her.

“Sometimes you leave a place, not because you don’t love them anymore, but because you do,” she said.

Even as she plans for the last Living Proof events, Moore says there’s still nothing better than cracking open a good Bible resource and digging in. She believes there’s a difference between teaching the Bible and being a preacher, something she still has no desire to do.

“What I love and feel most called to do is open those pages with a group, encourage them to get into it with me,” she said.

She laughed at all the props she employed in the past — like the model brain she used to haul on airplanes with a note for TSA agents who got curious, the skeleton she brought out when teaching about Ezekiel 37 — a passage about an army of dry bones coming to life.

“I have had a good time with my classes,” she said. “There’s nothing more alive than the Scriptures.”

Julie Salva first heard Moore teach in the 1990s, when Salva was visiting her cousin in Jacksonville, Florida, and found herself in church, listening to “some lady named Beth.” Salva was hooked from the moment she showed up.

“I was like, my goodness — seriously, my goodness — this woman is a teacher,” said Salva.

Salva, who has taught the Bible to adults at Hermitage Hills Baptist Church, said Moore helped her realize she could study the Bible on her own. And she hopes to be in attendance in 2027 when Moore’s ministry hosts its final event in Nashville.

A few years ago, she met Moore at a book signing in Nashville and was beside herself with joy.

“It’s not a fan girl thing. It has nothing to do with that,” she said. “Her teaching changed my life, and as a result, I’m able to pour into other people.”

Moore’s love for the Bible is contagious, said Megan Lively, who plans to go see Moore in April at the Cove in Asheville, North Carolina, a famed retreat center started by Billy and Ruth Graham that’s a few hours from her home.

“There are two people I know who truly love Jesus and bear fruit,” she said. “That’s my mother-in-law and Beth Moore.”

Lively, who has a master’s degree from a Southern Baptist seminary, said that in the evangelical world, there are lots of opportunities for men to get advanced education in the Bible and theology, but not as many for women. Moore’s studies, she said, help fill that void.

Lively, a whistleblower and advocate for SBC abuse victims, recalled sitting with Moore and other advocates during the 2019 SBC annual meeting, as the denomination’s abuse crisis was becoming public. A year earlier, Lively had come forward, accusing legendary SBC leader Paige Patterson of covering up a sexual assault when she was a student.

The women ended up hanging out with Moore all afternoon and finding laughter amid their frustrations with the SBC.

“In the midst of a crisis, she brings joy,” said Lively.

Kristin Du Mez, a historian at Calvin University, said Moore’s move toward retirement is the end of an era. Moore, like Bible teachers Joyce Meyer and Kay Arthur, was a superstar of women’s ministries for decades — and helped create space for evangelical women to thrive on their own terms.

“It was at women’s ministry events where they really felt seen, where they felt included, where they felt like the messaging really was directed to them personally,” said Du Mez, who writes about Moore in her upcoming book, “Live, Laugh, Love,” a study about the lives of Christian women.

Du Mez said some church leaders have underestimated the power of what happened during women’s Bible studies. There was a lot of laughter and pink Bibles at those events, but also a great deal of serious study and engaging with scholarship about the Bible. Moore, she said, was known for her humor, her ability to connect with an audience and the depth of her teaching.

“That was part of Beth’s brand,” said Du Mez. “She was approachable, she was likable, but I think many women were drawn to the fact that they got something of substance from those Bible studies.”

Du Mez has also watched Moore’s struggles to make sense of the current political moment and her loss of belonging. The evangelical movement, she said, is built not just on belief but also on deep and meaningful friendships. But for some, those friendships have been shattered in the Trump era and those ties have proved fragile.

“Sometimes the silence is worse,” said Du Mez. “The silence from friends can be worse than attacks from opponents or enemies.”

The past few years, Moore said, have taught her about the power of love, even for our enemies. Jesus taught his disciples to love God and to love their neighbors. There are no exceptions to those rules, she said — Christians may disagree or fight with one another, but they are never allowed to hate.

“We cannot get comfortable with our hate,” she said. “It is poison to us. We may feel it. It may overwhelm us at times, but that cannot be a place we stay. We have to fight. We have to fight for the right to love and not let someone drag us into hate.”

When she finally stops teaching, Moore hopes she will be remembered for her devotion to Jesus, not her flaws.

“I would hope they would be able to say, well, you know, that girl was a mess,” she said. “But she loved Jesus and she wanted us to love him.”