PROVO — Theologian and preacher Russell Moore faced severe backlash from Southern Baptists in early 2017 when he signed onto an amicus brief supporting the rights of a Muslim group in New Jersey to build a mosque.

The criticism against Moore marked an especially divisive time for Southern Baptists, not because Moore was part of a separate denomination, but because he wasn’t.

Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, saw his support of the Muslim group as a protection of all religious freedom, including his own. Others in the church, however, saw it as an attempt to further a false religion.

Many believe Moore faced such harsh disagreement within his own denomination, however, because he had recently spoken out against President Donald Trump, said The Atlantic’s religion reporter Emma Green during her keynote speech Thursday at Brigham Young University's annual religious freedom symposium. The symposium is a two-day review centering around the theme "Religious Freedom and the Common Good."

“(There is) an era of fracture that has come during the Trump administration and this current political climate,” Green said. “The biggest legacy to come from this time is a legacy of division, of internal grappling over identity.”

The Trumpian era has issued in increased conflict, not just in the political sphere, but the religious as well, she said.

Green pointed to the president’s rhetoric about minorities and actions related to the travel ban of those from certain Muslim countries as things that have contributed to division in the “current political climate.”

The way that religious communities define and think about themselves is changing, according to Green. The issues that religious groups agree are core and fundamental to their identity or worthy of advocacy are slowly becoming more discordant topics or morphing altogether. Infighting among religious factions is more prevalent.

There was recently an uproar among liberal Jews across the country when a group of Orthodox Jews welcomed Attorney General Jeff Sessions to speak at a conference. The two groups came together long enough to release a statement condemning the separation of immigrant families at the border, “but this is a temporary papering over a long-term and simmering difference over the right approach to advocacy, the right approach to politics,” Green said.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued statements protesting family separations at the border, but “it’s not so clear the people in the pews are supporting the clergy,” Green explained. Many Catholics often hear derisive comments on news programs that blame organizations criticizing family separation (like the Catholic church) for earning money by taking in refugees, she said.

Conflicts like these will shape the nation’s legal landscape from the ground up and influence religious freedom, advocacy, the cultural mood and political will in the U.S., according to Green.

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Religious beliefs deserve as much protection as race and gender, LDS leader says

Religious beliefs are as much a part of many people’s core identity as race, gender, ethnicity and sexual orientation and should be offered at least as much protection, said Elder L. Whitney Clayton of the Seventy.

Utah may be the only state in the nation, the reporter added, that has attempted pluralism — a system in which two or more often-opposing groups coexist.

As an example, Green mentioned the “Utah Compromise,” a bill passed by the Utah Legislature in 2015 that banned discrimination against LGBT people in housing and employment, but also protected rights of religious expression and laid out exemptions for religious institutions.

“(Yet even) in … the LDS Church, there are lots of internal divisions over the legacy of how LGBT people are treated,” Green said. “This just shows that, even in a place with a commitment to that kind of pluralistic compromise, there can still be issues that carry over and create pain.”

Green believes the Trump administration’s legacy will be one of “breakage” as different demographic groups remap and think about their own religious identities, and how those identities relate to political advocacy, presence and voice. There may even be a formal or informal splitting or fracturing in different groups and religious communities, she said.

While this may sound grim, Green is convinced conflict doesn’t need to mean collapse.

“Ultimately, the U.S. is a country of … differences and diversity,” she said. “The greatest characteristic of the U.S. is that of difference, but difference that comes with struggle and hard boundaries and not easy answers or platitudes.”

Symposium presenters included fellow keynote speaker Elder L. Whitney Clayton, a member of the LDS church's Presidency of the Seventy; husband and wife Terryl and Fiona Givens, authors of "The God Who Weeps" and "The Crucible of Doubt;" Islamic Center of Nashville resident scholar and Islam In 500 founder Ossama Bahloul; and Deseret News religion reporter Kelsey Dallas, among others.

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