Beth Moore is starting to wind down the ministry she has led for decades, announcing she will stop hosting major public events and begin the first steps toward retirement. The longtime Bible teacher, who left the Southern Baptist Convention more than five years ago and has since continued her work through Living Proof Ministries, said the shift marks a transition to younger leaders and the end of an era for a following built around women’s study of Scripture.
Moore said she has carried a complicated mix of grief and longing since leaving the SBC, describing the decision as something that made her question where she would fit in Christian life afterward. In a recent interview, she recalled speaking with Jesus while walking in the woods near her Texas home, saying, “I hope you know where we’re going,” and adding, “I hope you know where we’re going, because I don’t have a clue where we’re going, and I don’t know where I’ll ever belong again.”
Moore, who has written books and led Bible study through Living Proof Ministries, described her departure from the nation’s largest Protestant denomination as a break from a refuge that had shaped her life. She said the change also came with sharp personal consequences, as church leaders and former friends turned against her—she linked that rejection to her criticism of former President Donald Trump and her advocacy for survivors of abuse. She told Religion News Service that the emotional challenge was trying to understand how people who knew her so well could see things differently: “It’s such a strange thing to have known people so well, and to look across the table at one another, and I mean this both ways, and truly not be able to understand what the other is thinking,” she said. “Honestly, you can’t wrap your mind around it. I thought we were all on the same side.”
After leaving the SBC, Moore said she found a new church home in the Anglican tradition and continued rebuilding her ministry. She also has continued speaking and teaching, including in a ministry posture that emphasizes discipleship—being changed to act more like Jesus—rather than only salvation. Moore said she sees polarization as driving brutality and mean-spiritedness in Christian circles, arguing that becoming less kind and more hateful contradicts what she sees as the cross-shaped demands of following Jesus. She said, “We’ve gotten so brutal and so mean and turned into bullies from every side and certainly every extreme,” and added that it stands against “carrying a cross and following Jesus.”
Moore said she wants more focus on discipleship, and she pointed to the idea that Christians should not hate even when they disagree. She said Jesus taught believers to love God and their neighbors and that there are “no exceptions to those rules,” with Christians permitted to disagree and fight but not hate. She added, “We cannot get comfortable with our hate,” saying hate is “poison to us,” and stating, “We have to fight. We have to fight for the right to love and not let someone drag us into hate.”
Finding belonging, Moore said, took time and was not free of painful episodes. She described how, about a year and a half after she left the SBC, someone tracked her down while she was livestreaming at her new church and had been serving as a lector, reading Scripture. Moore said photos of the moment went viral, and she worried her past troubles would follow her into the new community. She said she called church leaders, and one congregant later told her, according to Moore, “You will never, ever have to fight for yourself here.”
As she plans for what she described as her last major Living Proof events, Moore said she believes the core of her calling still centers on opening Bible resources and studying with a group. She said she does not want to become a preacher, describing what she is most called to do as “open those pages with a group, encourage them to get into it with me.” She also recalled her approach to teaching from the years before, including the props she used in classes, and she said the experience of Bible study remains alive to her: “There’s nothing more alive than the Scriptures.”
Moore’s retirement plans come as longtime participants and other observers reflect on her impact. Julie Salva, who said she first heard Moore teach in the 1990s, described Moore as a teacher who helped her understand she could study the Bible on her own, and she said she hopes to attend Moore’s final event in 2027 in Nashville. Megan Lively, who said she plans to see Moore in April at a retreat center in Asheville, also described Moore’s influence as distinctive in evangelical life for women seeking deeper Bible study.
Kristin Du Mez, a historian at Calvin University, said Moore’s movement toward retirement ends what she called an era for women’s ministries, describing Moore as a leading figure in space that helped evangelical women feel seen and included. Du Mez said Moore’s Bible-teaching style combined humor and approachability with scholarship and substance, and she added that she believes some church leaders underestimated the power of what happened during women’s Bible studies. Du Mez also said Moore has struggled to make sense of the political climate and to find belonging, arguing that evangelical friendships can fracture in the Trump era.
Moore said she thinks about what comes after her teaching ends and what she hopes people will remember. She said she is “getting closer and closer to the day” she will see Jesus and asked, “What are we going to do? Take our big old egos with us?” She also said she could not reverse time, describing the moment as one in which “all good things come to an end” and it is time to pass leadership to younger figures. She said, “I would hope they would be able to say, well, you know, that girl was a mess,” and she added, “But she loved Jesus and she wanted us to love him.”