Johnnie Moore

Rev. Johnnie Moore has been called one of America's most influential evangelical leaders and he is especially known for his multi-faith work at the intersection of faith and foreign policy. His effective human rights and religious freedom advocacy prompted the Communist Part of China to sanction Moore in 2021. He is the author of seven books including Defying ISIS: Preserving Christianity in the Place of Its Birth and The Next Jihad: Stop the Christian Genocide in Africa. Moore is also a business person who founded one of America's leading, boutique public relations and communications consultancies, The KAIROS Company. The KAIROS Company was acquired by JDA Worldwide in April 2022 and Moore now serves as President of JDA Worldwide. He was twice appointed as a Commissioner for the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, serving across the Trump and Biden administrations. In January 2018, Rev. Moore was deemed a "wunderkind" and an "evangelical gatekeeper" by the Washington Post in a major feature which said that "Moore's gift is being able to speak to different types of people, to exude warmth and collaborative energy during one of the most divisive periods in modern America." Newsmax Magazine has named him one of the "ten most influential religious leaders in America" (2020) and previously as "one of the twenty-five most influential evangelical leaders in America" (2017). In 2017 The Christian Post called him one of the "seven leaders to have the most impact," and in 2017 he became the first evangelical ever invited to deliver a sermon at the Cathedral of St. Matthew in Washington, D.C. in view of the nuncio of Pope Francis to the United States and patriarchs of the catholic and orthodox churches of Syria, Iraq and Lebanon. Also, in 2017, he became the youngest ever recipient ever of the prestigious "medal of valor" by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a leading Jewish human rights organization, at their annual Tribute Dinner, a star-studded affair in Beverly Hills chaired by more than two dozen leading lights of Hollywood. On the same evening the late Israeli icon Simon Peres was a posthumous recipient of the same honor. Rev. Moore's groundbreaking work on behalf of religious freedom in the middle east has received wide reaching acclaim. He was involved in the drafting of King Hamad bin Isa Al-Khalifa of Bahrain's landmark Bahrain Declaration on Religious Freedom and Peaceful Coexistence in the Middle East. One month later, he helped lead the first ever evangelical delegation to meet with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi; on the same trip the delegation met with the present and previous Grand Muftis. In order to promote religious freedom, and as an advocate for religious minorities, he has held similar meetings with heads of state throughout the Islamic world including with the Crown Prince of the United Arab Emirates in 2018, twice with the President of Azerbaijan, and twice with the Crown Prince of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 2019 and 2018. In September 2018, Christianity Today Magazine noted that Moore was the most high profile evangelical ever invited to visit the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as a religious leader. Moore is a noted evangelical friend of the State of Israel and has met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and members of Prime Minister Naftalie Bennett's coalition as well as with various Palestinian government and civil society leaders. In 2020, Moore was credited with playing a significant role in the once-in-a-generation peace deal negotiated between the United Arab Emirates and the State of Israel. In 2019, he met with interim, transitional Prime Minister of the Sudan. He has met with ministers of Islamic Affairs, Justice and Education throughout the Islamic world to promote religious freedom and as an advocate for persecuted Christians and Jews. In September 2019 he collaborated with Muhammad Alissa of the Muslim World League to issue a joint statement calling for cooperation between Evangelicals and Muslims in order to protect places of worship around the world. He also worked with Indonesia's Nahdlatul Ulama leaders Mustofa Bisri and Yahya Staquf to issue the Nusantara Statement which acknowledges the "equal rights & dignity of all people" & condemns the political weaponization of Islam by Muslims or non-Muslim, alike. Moore speaks regularly in the national media and has written for many national news publications including CNN, the Religion News Service, The Washington Post, and Fox News. During the Obama Administration (in early 2014), Rev. Moore visited Capitol Hill to warn about the existential threat that a little-known terrorist group - later known as ISIS - posed to the ancient Christian communities of the Middle East. His advocacy was largely met by indifference and skepticism, but he continued to raise alarm. By the fall of 2014, ISIS had indeed embarked upon a reign of terror across Iraq and Syria decimating ancient Christian communities. It was then that he travelled to the region himself to meet with regional leaders including His Majesty King Abdullah of Jordan and various religious and community leaders who had been displaced by ISIS in Jordan and in Iraq. He documented the experiences of thousands of displaced Christians, verified the accounts of children being sold on open slave markets, and that ancient places of worship had been desecrated and destroyed. His resulting book "Defying ISIS" was largely credited with awakening many in the west to the atrocities ISIS was committing against Christians, Yazidis and others in the middle east. Defying ISIS received the commendation of Newt Gingrich, who said "everyone should read this and demand their government stand up against barbarism," and it prompted the Reverend Canon Dr. Andrew White of Baghdad to deem Moore, "one of the world's leading spokespersons for Christians in the Middle East." Eventually, his advocacy for persecuted Christians played a role in raising over $25 million dollars in emergency assistance for various organizations to help those communities, including the evacuation and resettlement of approximately ten thousand of them, including threatened Christians and Yazidis. Moore was also intimately involved in the advocacy for genocide resolutions against ISIS passed unanimously in both houses of the United States Congress and in the British and European Parliaments. On the eve of Secretary of State John Kerry's statutorily required assessment of ISIS' activities, Moore appeared at a press conference at the National Press Club alleging that Secretary Kerry would go down in infamy as a genocide denier. The next day, under immense and bipartisan pressure, Sec. Kerry reversed his position and declared ISIS guilty of genocide. Moore has been an unrelenting advocate for human rights and religious freedom in Iran and a vocal critic of the Iranian regime and the JCPOA, including writing in a viral editorial urging Iranian Shia to "take back their religion" from Iran's Supreme Leader. Moore was intimately involved in the advocacy that led to the release of an 82-year-old prisoner of conscience in Pakistan, Abdul Shakoor. His efforts have also assisted in the release of religious prisoners in Yemen, and his economic, pressure efforts to help release Pastor Andrew Brunson from Turkey were reported globally, including in The Financial Times. Moore continues to invest a significant amount of his time and energy speaking out on behalf of human rights, promoting religious freedom, and combatting Christian persecution as well as anti-Semitism around the world. He serves on the Anti-Defamation League's Task Force for Minorities in the Middle East and is on the advisory council of the Combat Anti-Semitism Movement, alongside luminaries like Natan Sharansky and former senator Joseph Lieberman. To that end he has lectured at diverse institutions including Liberty University and Union Theological Seminary (also once the seminary of Dietrich Bonhoeffer). He is a fellow of the Townsend Institute for Leadership and Counseling at Concordia University. He has spoken at Georgetown University's Institute of Politics and Public Services and the USC's Annenberg School of Journalism. He was a delegate to the middle east meeting of the World Economic Forum in 2019. In the 2016 presidential election, Moore first served as a spiritual advisor to Dr. Ben Carson before being tasked to help organize - and serve on - candidate Trump's influential Evangelical Advisory Board. In 2016, Moore noted that he would have also served as an informal advisor to democratic nominee Hillary Clinton had he been invited because "religious leaders are not responsible for whether their advice is taken but whether they had the opportunity to provide advice and chose not to." Previously, he held executive positions in higher education and in Hollywood, most recently as chief of staff for mega-producer Mark Burnett and previously as Senior Vice President of Liberty University, one of largest faith-based institutions of higher education in the world and the largest not-for-profit university in the United States.