Dr. Russell Moore and the Cult of Cope

The intellectual set is currently in the "cope" stage of grief, as evidenced by Christianity Today's Russell Moore

The election is over.

The cope is only just beginning.

While it’s natural to be upset when one’s preferred candidate loses an election, the level of rage and despair coming out of the Never Trump camp has been as dramatic and apocalyptic as expected.

The TikTok crowd are simply the victims of the fake-news media. Spend two hours watching MSNBC and it becomes tragically obvious as to why so many young women are shaving their heads on social media as some kind of bizarre protest against MAGA and…checks notes…men. The legacy media is a nonstop assault of horror and judgement against half the country and one man in particular. Of course those soft, malleable minds are falling into pits of despair over one election. They consume nothing but fear porn, and what is in the heart will always escape the mouth eventually.

The intellectual set is a different story. Some of the Never Trumpers experiencing the most despair and bitterness right now are some of the most degreed and respected intellects in our nation, or at least have been in the past. Their level of cope has been particularly interesting to watch, because these are “informed” people. They are educated, cultured and well-traveled. They KNOW THINGS. This is what makes the outcome of this election so confusing to them.

They became accustomed to their perches atop the intellectual ecosystem. They traveled to conferences and appeared on shows and podcasts. Their work was coveted by various, important publications, and the unwashed masses valued their perspective. They spoke for a lot of us out here in regular America.

The intellectual set decided they despised Donald Trump, but when the rest of us didn’t follow their lead, their true opinions of average Americans were laid bare. It isn’t that they are opposed on principle, although many of them may truly believe they are. No, this particular group of elitists are angry that they have been made irrelevant.

As it turns out, people only read or watched their work because they found it entertaining, not because they were looking for thought leaders.

As it turns out, people can think for themselves, and often do.

As it turns out, the Intellectual Glitterati were wrong…about us, about Trump, about everything.

And that is really the crux of the issue.

Take Christianity Today managing editor Dr. Russell Moore. Moore has been leading the Christian magazine’s leftward charge since the first Trump administration, and has been a prominent evangelical voice against the MAGA movement in recent years.

Think Evangelicals for Harris.

He has been confidently denouncing conservative Christians for their Trump heresy this entire election cycle and beyond, writing thought-piece after thought-piece about the darkness of the souls of Trump voters and Trump himself. He admonished Christians for choosing a cult of personality over scriptural commands. He was quite uncharitable for a pastor, I must say.

Fast forward to last week, when Dr. Moore joined the large group of elitist intellectuals who were shocked to learn they neither understand the average American Christian voter, nor do they hold any influence over said voter.

It was a tough pill to swallow, and Dr. Moore took to his publication to express his shock and despair. A man of God - the God who created the universe and speaks life into existence with a whisper; the God who is the same yesterday, today and forever; the God who parted the seas and walked on water - this man of God is so despondent over his gross miscalculation of the people he is tasked to serve, he now wonders publicly how he - and we - can survive the next four years.

Christianity Today, November 2024

The article is a sad window into how men like Moore view the American electorate. It is a thousand words of cope and blame, with not an ounce of self-reflection or consideration for what he may have been wrong about.

The passivity of Americans in their own civic order is always a problem. The word woke—before it became associated with identity politics—spoke to the sense of waking people from their slumber about injustice. The opposite of passivity, though, is often not responsibility or engagement. Sometimes it’s a kind of passivity that feels like “doing something.”

Wherever someone falls on the political spectrum, that’s where “doomscrolling” comes into play. We feel we are informed by having a steady stream of drama in front of us, our emotions driven up or down by the news cycle.

We’ve seen the end result of that. The constant flow of (real and fake) information spikes our adrenaline, activating our “lizard brains.” We throw our limbic systems into the sense of having to support or to oppose something—when, much of the time, there’s actually nothing we can do about it. And this works because many people like it.

It’s your fault. You have a lizard brain and you like the adrenaline spike of bad news.

YOU. Not him. YOU.

He, of course, is immune from this type of informational deception. He’s the intellectual. The rest of you are the lizard brains.

He does take a moment near the end to remind us of God, but he also helpfully and so-very-kindly reminds us that Trump is not your daddy.

You don’t need to be part of some make-believe drama. You don’t need to adopt some politician as a father figure. You have an actual Father who is making plans for you.

He has some nerve saying this after three solid months of “MOMALA.”

Moore ends with (good) advice to find comfort in our Creator and His scripture rather than mankind. Would that he had taken that same advice over the last decade as he trashed and excoriated Christian Trump voters as, at best, misguided, and, at worst, heretical. Had he been looking at Trump supporters as fellow believers/voters who are simply engaging in the temporal affairs of mankind he perhaps wouldn’t be so incredulous about our voting instincts. Perhaps he wouldn’t need to be writing essays about how to cope with people who think differently than he does. Perhaps he wouldn’t need to write such notions at all, secure in the knowledge that these are fleeting affairs in an eternal battle for soul of mankind.

The influence of the “uppers” - be it the intellectual class or the celebrity class - is waning, and most of the hysterical coping we are seeing out of these sectors is about ego, not politics. Some people are learning the hard way…

…you are not our leaders. We elect those. You are simply our entertainers.

Just dance, and leave the governing to the people, the way God and our Constitution intended.

*You can hear me break down Moore’s entire article on the latest episode of JLTY, available wherever you find your audio podcasts. Don’t forget to like and subscribe.

*A Very Merry Podcast is back! Enjoy our funny, fangirl takes on cheesy Hallmark Christmas movies.