Richard Albert Mohler Jr. (born October 19, 1959) is an American evangelical theologian,[1] the ninth president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, and host of the podcast The Briefing, where he gives a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.
[2] Mohler attended college at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton in Palm Beach County as a Faculty Scholar.
[11] In 2018, Mohler labeled turmoil in the Southern Baptist Convention as the SBC's "own horrifying #MeToo moment" and said it stemmed from "an unorganized conspiracy of silence" about sexual misconduct and abuse.
[12] In early 2019, explosive newspaper reports of sexual abuse by church leaders and volunteers shook the Southern Baptist Convention, and Mohler called for independent third-party investigations.
[15] One day after Mohler's remarks to the Houston Chronicle, his Southern Baptist Theological Seminary office released a related statement by him.
[15][16] Mohler joined the staff of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1983 as Coordinator of Foundation Support.
[22] In 2006 he stated "any belief system, any world view, whether it's Zen Buddhism or Hinduism or dialectical materialism for that matter, Marxism, that keeps persons captive and keeps them from coming to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, yes, is a demonstration of Satanic power.
The bigger problem with Islam is not that there are those who will kill the body in its name, but that it lies about God [and] presents a false gospel, an un-gospel...[23]In a 2003 interview with Time magazine, Mohler further argued that faith must be differentiated from ideas of race or ethnicity: The secular world tends to look at Iraq and say, well, it's Muslim, and that's just a fact, and any Christian influence would just be a form of Western imperialism.
[25] On April 15, 2003, Mohler was interviewed by Time[26] on the subject of evangelizing Iraqi Muslims in the form of Christian aid groups.
[27] On December 18, 2004, Mohler debated retired Episcopal bishop John Shelby Spong on Faith Under Fire, a program hosted by Lee Strobel and appearing on PAX, a Christian television network.
On December 19, 2013, Mohler appeared on CNN to discuss the controversy surrounding comments made by Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty.
[30] On February 25, 2014, Mohler delivered a Forum Lecture in the Marriott Center Arena at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.
In this role he was one of the principal organizers of Justice Sunday, a nationally televised event broadcast from Highview Baptist Church, in Louisville on April 24, 2005.
The purpose of the broadcast was to mobilize the conservative base in lobbying the United States Senate to curtail debate on the nominations to the federal judiciary made by George W. Bush.
[33][34] During a March 13, 2014, podcast of The Briefing, Mohler stated that Evangelicals "simply cannot accept the legitimacy of the papacy" and that "to do otherwise would be to compromise Biblical truth and reverse the Reformation.
[35] Mohler stated that he was one of the original signatories to the Manhattan Declaration because it is a limited ecumenical statement of Christian conviction on the topics of abortion, euthanasia and gay marriage, and not a wide-ranging theological document that subverts confessional integrity.
[37]Mohler has also been critical of emergency contraceptives that prevent implantation of the fertilized egg, which he believes "involve nothing less than an early abortion.
[46] Mohler has argued that libertarianism is idolatrous, and as a comprehensive world view or fundamental guiding principle for human life, is inconsistent with Christian ideals.