No Good Options: William Wolfe's "Biblical Language" and Beth Moore

How Christian X took Wolfe's "engagement hacking" bait

On December 23, the perpetually attention-seeking Christian Nationalist, William Wolfe, stoked the ire of moderate and liberal Christian X (formerly known as Christian Twitter), when he posted, “If you can’t admit that Beth Moore was an ungodly, even demonic, influence on the SBC—I really won’t be able to trust you. Even if you say based stuff now.”

This is a textbook “engagement hacking” post from Wolfe, where he is courting mass disagreement within the comments of his post, in order to receive revenue from X’s ads revenue sharing program, and to drive like-minded people to directly pay him through X’s subscription program. The post has three key components:

• Attacking a prominent, controversial figure (Beth Moore) to produce arguments between detractors and supporters in the comments.

• Using extreme language in the attack (accusing her of demonic influence) to ensure that the arguments will be highly emotionally charged and last longer than usual.

• Using childish internet lingo (based) to signal to his anonymous fan base—who are often actual children—to jump into the fray. He commonly courts this most vitriolic, and persistently unchristian, element in his tweets with this language, such as when he posted yesterday, “Have you supported [American Reformer] today, anon?” In fact, a perusal of the engagement to most of Wolfe’s posts show that they are mostly propped up by these anonymous malcontents, who are often explicitly authoritarian- and ethno-nationalist.

As for Wolfe’s subject, Beth Moore is no one to defend if you hold to a position of orthodox Protestantism. She has an entirely heterodox position on female preaching, promotes the Enneagram (a personality assessment whose founder admitted to creating it by channeling spirits through automatic writing), and is increasingly friendly towards the false doctrines of progressive Christianity and charismaticism—including modern-day “prophesying.” She is a regular subject of discussion among Reformed heresy watchdogs, such as Justin Peters and Gabriel Hughes.

Side note: Given that these two men make their living eagerly correcting egregious heterodoxy, I find it quite interesting that they have both remained silent on Doug Wilson’s apparent Semi-Arianism and return to promoting Federal Vision theology.

Unfortunately, though most of his criticisms against Moore are correct, Peters often hurts his own case by taking things too far, including using the argument from silence fallacy¹ and going out of his way to goad others into declaring her a false teacher. Peters recently pressed pastor and popular YouTuber Gavin Ortlund to declare Moore a false teacher, to which Ortlund replied, “Beth Moore is my sister in Christ whom I appreciate.” Similarly, I could find no prominent Christian personality who criticized both Wolfe and Moore in their response. In response to Wolfe’s post, Karen Swallow Prior, a Christian author and former professor at Southeastern Theological Seminary, defended Moore, writing, “Where are the ‘good’ men in high leadership positions in these spaces speaking out against this sort of thing?” In the post, she linked to Baptist News’s breathless, tone-deaf take on Wolfe’s post, When angry white men can’t give up hating Beth Moore, the title of which affirms everything Moore’s detractors say about her camp being “woke.” Kuyper College professor Anthony Bradley agreed with Prior, saying those in leadership positions “are cowards.”

Lastly, Wolfe rebutted Prior by hilariously claiming he “used biblical language to criticize a public false teacher,” as if solely calling someone “ungodly” and “demonic” constitutes a Scriptural rebuke. This ridiculous assertion is as much an indictment of Southern Seminary as it is of Wolfe’s horrid understanding of doctrine, considering he has two master’s degrees from them.

This whole situation is a perfect encapsulation of the stupidity and tribalism that has taken over public Christian discourse, and the Christian media industry in general. Those of us who wish to remain orthodox, charitable and faithful to Christ above all earthly alliances—the actual Scriptural approach (2 Timothy 2:24-26, James 3:17, Romans 12:18, Hebrews 12:14)—have no prominent personalities faithfully championing our cause, who equally apply their criticism to people both in and out of their economic circles. The discourse of pop-conservative Christianity, from Beth Moore to Doug Wilson, is dominated by people far more concerned with protecting their tribe, and maintaining the income they derive from it, than being faithful, consistent stewards of orthodox Protestantism. Beth Moore is someone whom we should strongly rebuke (with actual Scripture) while rejecting those who aim to stir up the mob against her, for their own profit.

1. Readers may find it ironic that I point out Peters’s argument from silence fallacy immediately after criticizing his silence on Doug Wilson. What makes his an argument from silence fallacy is that he explicitly claims that Moore is pro-choice and affirming of homosexuality, based on her silence on those subjects.