Religion News Service national writer Bob Smietana picked up one Moore big scoop this week.

Back in March, Smietana broke the internet with news of Beth Moore no longer identifying as a Southern Baptist.

This week, Smietana — one-time “longhaired, hippy wannabe songwriter” turned highly content religion reporter — was the first to confirm the embattled Russell Moore leaving the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

The ERLC’s president since 2013 will join Christianity Today, the influential evangelical magazine founded by the late Rev. Billy Graham in 1956. He’ll “serve as a full-time public theologian for the publication and … lead a new Public Theology Project.”

At the Washington Post, religion writers Sarah Pulliam Bailey and Michelle Boorstein point out that Russell Moore “blasted former president Donald Trump and his evangelical fans.” His ERLC resignation prompts questions about the SBC’s future:

Moore’s departure from the convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) follows other high-profile exits from the denomination, including popular Bible teacher Beth Moore (no relation) and Black pastors. Some evangelicals are wondering what their departures signal about the direction of the convention, which has included louder voices on the far right in recent years.

Read additional coverage from The Tennessean’s Holly Meyer, the Wall Street Journal’s Ian Lovett and GetReligion’s Terry Mattingly.

Also, if you can’t get enough of Smietana and the Southern Baptists, check out this piece on “the grievance studies hoaxer and atheist” who is “on a crusade against what he sees as a ‘woke’ invasion of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.” 

Power Up: The Week’s Best Reads

1. How abortion views are different: In a week in which the U.S. Supreme Court agreed “to hear a potentially groundbreaking abortion case,” this analysis of polling data by New York Times newsletter writer David Leonhardt is interesting and helpful.

“Americans’ views on abortion are sufficiently complex that both sides in the debate are able to point to survey data that suggests majority opinion is on their side — and then to argue that the data friendly to their own side is the “right” data. These competing claims can be confusing,” Leonhardt writes. “But when you dig into the data, you discover there are some clear patterns and objective truths.”

Another worthwhile read: Alejandra Molina, Religion News Service’s Los Angeles-based national correspondent, asks ordinary Catholics if President Joe Biden’s support for abortion rights should make him ineligible to receive Communion.

2. Gaza conflict stokes ‘identity crisis’ for young American Jews: “A new generation is confronting the region’s longstanding conflict in a very different context, with very different pressures, from their parents’ and grandparents’ generations.”

So report Elizabeth Dias and Ruth Graham, the New York Times’ dynamic duo of national religion writers, in a story that appeared on the newspaper’s Thursday front page.

A cease-fire took effect today in the 11-day war that claimed more than 200 lives — the vast majority Palestinians, as noted by The Associated Press.

CONTINUE READING: “What 'Never Trumper' Russell Moore's Departure From ERLC Means For SBC,” by Bobby Ross, Jr.