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Conservative Evangelical leader Russell Moore chastises the GOP for ridiculous rhetoric on Syrian refugees.

Mario Tama / Getty Images

Moore, the president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) of the Southern Baptist Convention, told BuzzFeed News Thursday that he isn’t feeling the increasingly panicky, xenophobic rhetoric spinning off the right. “Evangelicals should recognize that any president who would call for shutting down houses of worship… is the sort of political power that can ultimately shut down evangelical churches,” he said, evidently referring to Donald Trump and Marco Rubio’s floating of mosque shutdowns as a potential response to radical Islamist teaching.

Moore went on to argue that there shouldn’t be any kind of religious “test” for admitting refugees, saying, “We really don’t want to penalize innocent women and children who are fleeing from murderous barbarians simply because they’re not Christians.” Good on Moore, and cheers to all the religious organizations—many of them conservative in disposition—that are fighting the good fight to treat refugees charitably.