Six reasons why you should avoid Beth Moore

By Elizabeth Prata

I have accumulated a list of links to critiques showing why Beth Moore should be avoided. I began it in 2011 when I wrote 2 series on her teachings.

The links in my list are written by me, other women Bible teachers, and by men who are pastors or theologians. The critiques start in 2011 and run through 2022 as of this writing.

Beth Moore’s popularity has remained high and visible throughout her teaching career, 40 years now. She is still negatively influencing women with her bad example.

Universal popularity is a warning sign.

The Bible says in Luke 6:36, Woe to you when all the people speak well of you; for their fathers used to treat the false prophets the same way.

Here are reasons to avoid Beth Moore:

1. She claims to receive direct revelation from Jesus. She repeats these ‘conversations’ with his words in quotes. She claims he gives her prophecies apart from what is written in the Bible. She claims he gives her visions. She has said this alleged Jesus told her to go forth and teach these new revelations to people- which makes her a Prophet. All this violates Revelation 22:18-19, Colossians 2:18, among other verses. All this destroys the sufficiency of scripture.

2. Beth Moore partners with wolves and false teachers such as Joyce Meyer, Christine Caine, Joel and Victoria Osteen, and Brian Houston, for a few examples, violating 2 Corinthians 6:14 and 2 John 1:10.

3. Beth Moore teaches and preaches to men, blatantly violating 1 Timothy 2:12.

4. Rather than steadily preach the straight word, Beth Moore jumps on fads and then leaves them when they diminish in popularity, such as saying mantras, home altars, Lectio Divina, Contemplative Spirituality, blue bracelets, and so on. 2 Peter 2:3 comes to mind.

5. Beth Moore doesn’t interpret the Bible correctly, using a standard interpretive technique such as literal-grammatical-historical hermeneutic. Instead, she waits for direct revelation or a vision, or cobbles together words out of context- again from supposed direct revelation the ‘Spirit’ gives her, or allegorizes what should be literal, and bases her lessons on those methods. She also uses undignified high emotion and props to distract the audience from these flaws.

6. Beth Moore rejects the biblical roles God has ordained for women, both by example of living functionally as a feminist wife, and explicitly when she rejected and apologized for teaching complementarianism.

These reasons should be enough to warn anyone off a teacher, including and especially Beth Moore. There are better examples of teachers out there to follow, mainly your own pastor, and publicly, Susan Heck, Martha Peace, The Women’s Hope podcast, Brooke Bartz of the Open Hearts in a Closed World conference, (it’s a free, online annual summer conference) and many solid men teachers too numerous to list.