If you have followed the divisions inside the Southern Baptist Convention since 1979, or even earlier, you know this name — R. Albert Mohler, Jr. He was — for some — a L’enfant terrible among the conservatives in the early biblical inerrancy wars who (like him or not) grew, as president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, into one of the most important Southern Baptist voices of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
It would be hard to describe the degree to which many Southern Baptists in the defeated “moderate” establishment detest Mohler, for a variety of theological, cultural and political reasons. At the same time, in the Donald Trump era, there are many in the ranks of far-right Southern Baptist life who view him as a traitor or even “politically correct.”
This is not an easy era in which to lead conservative religious institutions, even those with clout and many supporters. And it’s crucial to know that Southern Baptists leaders were, like evangelical leaders in general, sharply divided on whether to support the rise of Trump in 2015-2016. (Click here for the GetReligion typology describing six different evangelical views of Trump.)
Out of the tsunami of important statements by religious leaders following the U.S. Capitol riot, I have selected — as this weekend’s “think piece” — two articles by and about Mohler, Trump and the hellish scenes of January 6th. The first is a Houston Chronicle interview with Mohler by Robert “wut is happening?” Downen, an emerging religion-beat force in Texas and America in general. The headline: “Evangelical leader Albert Mohler says he’s horrified by chaos at Capitol, but stands by Trump vote.”
Downen notes that:
Mohler is the longtime president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s flagship seminary in Louisville, Ky., and is a contender to lead the SBC when the faith group elects a new president in June.
The evangelical leader has forcefully condemned Trump over the last half-decade, characterizing him as a sexual predator at one point and, after Trump clinched the Republican Party nomination in 2016, Tweeting simply: “Never. Ever. Period.”
Journalists need to read the entire interview, somehow — since it’s behind a firewall. But here are two large blocks of material linked to Mohler’s decision to state, headed into the 2020 election, that he would vote Republican in the presidential race, even if that meant voting for Trump. Many Mohler critics on the left will memorize these quotes.
The key term linked to the firestorm that resulted — “binary system.” This is another way a restating the hellish “lesser of two evils” moral debates (click here and then here) before and after 2016. In these quotes, Downen’s questions are in bold type:
What role do you think you and other evangelical leaders have had in that?
I fully expect the question, but I've tried to be extremely clear from the beginning of the Trump phenomenon in terms of my judgment. And I stand by the comments that I've made at every point. If I could rewind history, and know then what I know now, we’d be talking about a different kind of judgment.
But we have to live life in a temporal line and seek to be faithful in those moments. And for most evangelical Christians, voting for Donald Trump was seen as a necessity in a binary system.
Now, there have been some who have just openly celebrated Trump. But I think there will be a great deal of embarrassment for that now.
Here the second must-read block of material, in terms of Mohler critics and, thus, news coverage:
There are people who would hear that and say, ‘We're talking about what you would or wouldn't have done with hindsight, but it's not as if there were not people, including within that SBC and other evangelical circles, who were saying, ‘This is who Donald Trump was.’ I think you would agree they were proven at least a little bit right today. Do you feel like you should have listened to them more? What lessons do you take from that?
I'm not going to enter into the naivete that acts as if we did not have a binary choice. And we're all responsible for the choices we make.
I don't believe that there is any inevitability to Donald Trump's actions, for which he is responsible, over the last several weeks. I did not believe that he was going to go quietly into any potential defeat. But what we have seen is something beyond what, frankly, I would have imagined in an American nightmare.
However, it’s important for journalists to read a second document, if they want to accurately cover both Mohler and his critics on the SBC far right.
The following blocks of material — long, but essential — come from the transcript of Mohler’s “The Briefing” podcast the day after the U.S. Capitol riot.
Our experiment in ordered liberty means that liberty is ordered by principle and by polity. It is limited by our constitutional order. It requires honoring that constitutional order. And here's where we have to understand that the only alternative to a constitutional form of self-government is some form of liberty that ends up turning on itself. Christians turn to the Bible to see all the evidence we need, that liberty becomes anarchy, and anarchy becomes disaster. And that disaster almost always takes the form of some kind of dictatorship or autocracy. There is no such thing as disordered liberty that survives, and the American commitment to ordered liberty was put to an enormous test yesterday. In effect, it was set on fire, and lighting the fuse was none other than the president of the United States.
Here is the key point that deserves coverage, but it will be hard to work into news columns. The question: How did religious believers who take the reality of sin seriously get caught up in a “cult of personality” linked to cultural trends as twisted as “reality TV,” radio-TV opinion shows and Twitter warfare?
Read the following at least twice.
Political parties exist to extend political principles and arguments over time, not a cult of personality. The American experiment in ordered liberty is inherently threatened by a cult of personality. And we saw the results of that yesterday. One of the things that I simply want for us to note again is the fact that so many of those who were there as protestors explicitly said that they were there in the name of Donald Trump. It was Trump that was the name on the banners. They were not making the argument about trying to perpetuate certain political principles or even policies or platforms. No, it was about continuing a person in office and in power. Now throughout human history, even recent human history, we have seen political cults of personality on the right and on the left. But we have to recognize they are equally disastrous either on the left or the right. And again, it comes down to that definitional question. For what does this movement exists? What does it stand for? If there is a name at the center of that answer, then that's where you have the big problem.
This also underlines the danger in any kind of electoral system of government of demagoguery. Demagoguery simply means that you have a character who comes to power on the basis of emotion, rather than argument, and passion rather than political principles.
There is much, much more in both the Houston Chronicle interview and this Mohler transcript. It is also clear, from his podcast remarks, that Mohler will be returning to these topics early and often.
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