Russell Moore Criticizes Obama's Comparison of ISIS to the Crusades

President Obama made headlines last week when he compared ISIS to the crusades at the National Prayer Breakfast. The Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission president Russell Moore criticized Obama’s words, saying that Obama sounded more like a religion professor than the Commander in Chief. 

The Washington Post reports that Obama said, “Humanity has been grappling with these questions throughout human history. And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.”

Moore said that Obama’s speech was “an unfortunate attempt at a wrongheaded moral comparison.”

The Evangelical leader suggested that it would be more productive for the President to determine a “clear strategy for defeating ISIS” instead of making religious comparisons. 

Publication date: February 9, 2015