Dozens of Alabama pastors sign letter denouncing Roy Moore

Dozens of progressive Alabama pastors have signed onto a letter calling GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore unfit for office, accusing him of preaching “extremist values” and lumping him in with politicians who have “cynically used Christianity for their own goals.”

In the letter, posted online Friday, the pastors say that their opposition to Moore began long before recent allegations of sexual misconduct against him emerged, blasting his positions on LGBT rights, immigration and religious liberty. 

“Christianity affirms God’s love for the neighbor and care for the most vulnerable in society: the widow, the foreigner, and the orphan,” the letter reads. “But he has denigrated people from other countries and other faiths.”

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“Christianity thrives in religious freedom from government interference, and a government impartial toward people of all faith traditions,” it adds. “But instead he has sought to entangle government with religion.”

More than half of the 59 progressive Christian ministers who signed onto the letter come from mainline Protestant denominations, Alabama news outlet AL.com noted.

The letter also takes aim at Moore for the sexual misconduct allegations against him, saying his actions serve to “reopen the wounds of anyone who has been abused by leaders who should have been committed to compassion, to justice, and to healing God’s world.”

“We repudiate the actions of religious and political leaders like Roy Moore who have sought to silence, to cover up, and to be complicit in the sexual abuse,” the letter states.

Numerous women in the past week have accused Moore of pursuing sexual and romantic relations with them when they were teenagers and he was in his 30s. One of the accusers was 14 at the time of the alleged encounter.

Moore, a hard-line Christian conservative, has vehemently denied most of the allegations against him, and has resisted calls from a growing number of Republicans in Washington to withdraw from Alabama’s special Senate election.