Beth Moore

Beth Moore

Beth Moore (born June 16, 1957) is an American Christian evangelist, author, and teacher. In 1994 she founded Living Proof Ministries. Based in Houston, Texas, the ministry organization focuses on aiding women who desire to model their lives on evangelical Christian principles.

Beth founded Living Proof Ministries in 1994 with the purpose of teaching women how to love and live on God’s Word. She has written numerous books and Bible studies, including Breaking Free, Believing God, and The Patriarchs, that have been read by women of all ages, races, and denominations. Through the years, American missionaries and expatriates have taken the Bible studies overseas, resulting in Beth Moore Bible study groups popping up all over the world. Upon completion of a tour of New England this fall, Beth’s Living Proof Live conferences will have taken her to all fifty states since 1994. The events have been attended by more than 658,000 women. God has graciously given Beth the opportunity to serve the body of Christ in many different countries, including Ireland, England, Singapore, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, India, Angola, Kenya, and South Africa. With great joy, she began a radio ministry in 2004 called Living Proof with Beth Moore. Each Wednesday, Beth can be seen teaching Bible study on the television program “Life Today with James and Betty Robison.”
– Source: Beth Moore’s Bio at Living Proof Ministries. Last accessed Feb. 22, 2010

While her ministry is popular, Christian apologists and other theologians caution followers regarding Moore’s careless and at times faulty interpretation of the Bible.

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Articles

• Beth Moore’s Bad Teachings by Glenn Chatfield
  

  Many of the teachers that Moore promotes are known to be problematic themselves. Therefore, it is no surprise that one who gets her teachings from the likes of Henry Blackaby, Brennan Manning, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, et al, and who associates herself with mystics and the heretical Word of Faith crowd on a regular basis, will have problems properly dividing the Word of God.

• Beth Moore’s “Breaking Free” Review by Glenn Chatfield
  

  If she could eliminate the claims of special revelations and correct her hermeneutics, this could be a valuable book for women. … I’m not going to address every time Beth has poor or misleading teaching, rather I am going to concern myself only with poor use of Scripture, claims of special revelation, and eisegesis. To point out every problem would be an arduous task!

• Beth Moore Gives Thumbs Up to Be Still DVD By Lighthouse Trails Research. Documents concerns regarding Beth Moore’s support of Contemplative Prayer/Contemplative Spirituality and advocates of the practice.
  

  You may be asking yourself, where does Beth Moore really stand with regard to contemplative. The answer to that may at least partially be found in a book she wrote in 2002 called When Godly People Do Ungodly Things. In a section about “Unceasing Prayer” Moore states: “I have picked up on the terminology of Brother Lawrence, who called praying unceasingly practicing God’s presence. In fact, practicing God’s presence has been my number one goal for the last year” (p. 109).

  Moore says: “A head full of biblical knowledge without a heart passionately in love with Christ is terribly dangerous–a stronghold waiting to happen. The head is full, but the heart and soul are still unsatisfied” (p. 60). This language is very indicative of contemplatives and echoes Richard Foster who said we have become barren within or Rick Warren who said the church is not fully mature without contemplative prayer. However, all of this talk leads one to think that the Word of God is little more than a philosophy and needs the help of contemplative prayer to be effective at all. The insinuation is that the Holy Spirit is dormant and ineffective without this extra stimuli. This is perhaps why contemplative-promoter Rick Warren says the last thing Christians need is another Bible study. Contemplatives are making a distinction between studying and meditating on the Word of God versus loving Him, suggesting that we cannot love Him simply by studying His Word or even through normal prayer–we must practice contemplative to accomplish this. But the Bible makes it clear that the Word of God is living and active, and it is in filling our minds with it that we come to love Him, not through a mystical practice that is never once mentioned in the Bible, except in warnings against vain repetitions and Old Testament warnings against divination.

• Beth Moore – A Review of “Stepping Up” Danny Spence
  

  In her second session about 3 quarters of the way through, she presents the Gospel to her audience. This is THE most important message we have as Christians. If she is not clear and on target with the Gospel, then nothing else matters. I listened… and waited

  Unfortunately, it was very disappointing. This is the Gospel she presented…

  This is the simplest process you have been invited to take. Simply coming to the cross of Christ and saying, I just don’t believe that You did it for everyone, I accept that You did it for me. By grace and grace alone I receive this gift. I want to walk Your path. I want to fulfill the destiny, in You, that You have had for me since before the foundation of the world. Come into my life Holy Spirit, You will never leave me or forsake me… and it’s done. And it’s done. Sealed until you see Him face to face- He’s never getting out, no matter what you do. You can try and get rid of Him and you cannot make Him go away. Believe you me, if you could, I would have done it. Take a deep breath of absolute assurance and absolute certainty. … You’ve got to know that you know that you know that you belong to Christ, no matter how you feel. Tomorrow morning you may awaken and say, “I don’t feel any different”. Well it doesn’t have anything to do with how you feel, does it girls? It has to do with what you know to be true, and you know that God is faithful to do what he promised and if you invited His Son into your life, He is there, and He is there to stay.

  Her audience needed to hear that they had broken God’s Law, that everyone in that audience, and at home, were guilty criminals before God. Beth needed to allow her audience to weep over their sins before being brought to the cross. Her presentation, you will not find any mention of sin, Hell, judgment to come, repentance or the Law of God… the very thing that Paul says is a schoolmaster that leads us to Christ. People need personal conviction of sin, and she told them to repeat an incantation, a magical phrase. She then prompted them to more of an intellectual belief in Christ rather than total surrender.

• So Long, Insecurity — Review Chapter-by-chapter review of Beth Moore’s, So Long, Insecurity: you’ve been a bad friend to us. By Leslie Wiggins. (Additional posts)
• Why Women Want Moore “Homespun, savvy, and with a relentless focus on Jesus, Beth Moore has become the most popular Bible teacher in America.” By Sarah Pulliam Bailey, Christianity Today, Aug. 13, 2010. Presents some background on Moore and presents her as an ‘exhorter.’ A companion piece, written by Halee Gray Scott, addresses Moore’s theology: First Came the Bible: Four themes that characterize Beth Moore’s teaching However, it does not provide much detail and her problematic teachings.

Note – The following articles are not available online:

• When Godly People Teach Ungodly Theology: The Subtle Error of Beth Moore by M. Kurt Goedelman with G. Richard Fisher, The Quarterly Journal, Jul – Sep, 2007. Note: The article is not available online. See footnote 1 for information on how to obtain this article.
• Get Out of That Pit-ful Theology: A Further Look at the Subtle Error of Beth Moore, by M. Kurt Goedelman with G. Richard Fisher, The Quarterly Journal, Jan – Mar, 2008. Note: The article is not available online. See footnote 1 for information on how to obtain this article.
  

  …Moore has admirable qualities, but what sound Biblical expressions she offers are often muted by faulty interpretations and a lack of adequate scriptural exposition. It’s not that what she says it completely wrong, it’s that she doesn’t say enough.

• Breaking Free from Faulty Strongholds: The Haphazard Hermeneutics of Beth Moore by G. Richard Fisher with M. Kurt Goedelman, The Quarterly Journal, Jul – Sep, 2009. Note: article not online. See footnote 1 for information on how to obtain this article.
• Believing Beth About Believing God: A Further Look at the Deceptive Drifts of Beth Moore
  by M. Kurt Goedelman and Glenn E. Chatfield, The Quarterly Journal, Jan – Mar, 2009. Note: The article is not available online. See footnote 1 for information on how to obtain this article.

Multimedia

• Beth Moore’s Dangerous Bible Twisting Chris Rosebrough recently reviewed two segments of Beth Moore’s “Bible teaching” on his radio program at Christian Pirate Radio On his blog, Extreme Theology, he writes:
  

  I know she’s popular but this woman is NOT rightly handling God’s word. Instead, she is twisting the scriptures to her own destruction and the destruction of her hearers.

  Take a listen for yourself. Not only is this bad, its downright dangerous false teaching!

Websites

• Living Proof Ministries Founded by Beth Moore.

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Footnotes

[1] The article is not available online. You can obtain it by purchasing a Back issue of The Quarterly Journal. The four PFO articles on Beth Moore are also available as a special offer.