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Why Beth Moore Has Captivated Evangelical Women


In Ms. Moore’s hands, it becomes something much more than an account of an ancient construction project. One lesson is built completely on a passage of instructions for building a piece of furniture for the portable worship space: “You are to construct a table of acacia wood, 36 inches long, 18 inches wide …” With that raw material, Ms. Moore spins a lesson on community, forgiveness and God’s love.

The books are intended for devotional purposes, to deepen their readers’ faith. But in authoritatively analyzing the Bible and asking her readers to do the same, Ms. Moore invites evangelical women into deeper acts of textual scrutiny than many comparable Bible studies.

She is also a prolific author of books focusing on single books of the Bible, including “Esther: It’s Tough Being a Woman,” and on broader spiritual topics, like “Get Out of That Pit: Straight Talk About God’s Deliverance.”

If Ms. Moore’s books attract little notice outside of evangelicalism, they are reliable best-sellers within. The 2019-20 catalog of resources for women from the Southern Baptist publishing arm, Lifeway Christian Resources, opens with 11 solid pages of offerings from her. (Ms. Moore told Religion News Service this week that she had ended her longtime publishing relationship with Lifeway, though it will continue distributing her books.)

In recent years, Ms. Moore has achieved a new fame online that is distinct from her writing and speaking career. On Twitter in particular, where she has more than 950,000 followers, she found a new audience including men and non-Christians, and space to speak on topics beyond her usual portfolio of women’s issues and spirituality.

Her new outspokenness has turned her into a kind of avatar for evangelical women who may be theologically conservative but are increasingly uncomfortable with the cultural politics they have seen revealed in their churches since the 2016 election.

In August, Ms. Moore issued a thread that read like a fiery sermon, directly addressing the racism she saw in the white evangelical world.



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