Johnnie Moore

Biography

Reverend Johnnie Moore, PhD, is vice chancellor and managing director of Middle East Studies at Pepperdine University in Washington, D.C.

Rev. Moore works at the intersection of faith and foreign policy, with particular expertise in the Middle East, religious freedom, and the emerging relationship between faith and artificial intelligence. A world expert on religious freedom, he was twice appointed to the U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom, serving across the Trump and Biden administrations. In 2023, the Jerusalem Post named him one of the world’s top 25 “young visionaries” for his peacemaking work among Arabs and Israelis.

In 2020, Moore was credited with playing a meaningful role in the Abraham Accords peace agreements between Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain. In 2025, he led the U.S. Government’s historic effort to provide nearly 200 million meals to the people of Gaza.

A scholar-practitioner with experience in more than 100 countries, Moore has met with numerous heads of state and senior officials throughout the Middle East to promote religious freedom and interfaith cooperation. He helped draft Bahrain’s landmark Declaration on Religious Freedom and Peaceful Coexistence and led the first evangelical delegation to meet with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Christianity Today noted he was the most high-profile Christian invited to visit Saudi Arabia as a religious leader following the Vision 2030 reform agenda. In 2019, he collaborated with Muhammad Alissa of the Muslim World League to issue a joint statement calling for cooperation between Evangelicals and Muslims to protect places of worship worldwide, and worked with Indonesia’s Nahdlatul Ulama leaders to issue the Nusantara Statement acknowledging the equal rights and dignity of all people. On the occasion of the opening of the first purpose-built synagogue in the Middle East in nearly 100 years in Abu Dhabi, Jewish Insider celebrated “Moore’s years traveling in the Middle East fostering relationships between Jews, Christians, and Muslims.”

His book Defying ISIS helped awaken the West to atrocities against Christians and Yazidis, contributing to over $25 million in emergency assistance and the resettlement of 30,000 displaced people. Moore has been an unrelenting advocate for human rights in Iran and China. In 2021, he visited the border of Iran, where he read Psalm 91 and prayed for the freedom of Iran’s persecuted people—prompting rage from the Iranian regime. He was personally involved in advocacy leading to the release of an 82-year-old prisoner of conscience in Pakistan, Abdul Shakoor, and his efforts have assisted in releasing Jewish and Bahai religious prisoners in Yemen. His ongoing advocacy prompted a retaliatory sanction from the Communist Party of China.

Moore is a 2025-2026 Visiting Fellow at Johns Hopkins University’s Agora Institute, where he teaches a course entitled *How to Think: A Path Through our Divisions*. He is a member of Harvard’s Council on Civic Strength and chairs the public committee for the University of Haifa’s Laboratory for Religious Studies. He serves on the national Board of Directors of the Anti-Defamation League, chairs the board of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, and serves on the board of the Muslim Coalition for America.

He has spoken at many of the nation’s most influential congregations and institutions including Harvard, Stanford, Georgetown, Vanderbilt, the Brookings Institution, the Hudson Institute, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, COP 28, the European Parliament, the United Nations, and for JSCOC at Fort Bragg. He was a keynote speaker at the State Department’s first-ever Ministerial on Religious Freedom, the largest human rights event in State Department history. In 2017, he became the youngest recipient of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Medal of Valor. In 2026, he will be inducted into Indiana Wesleyan University’s Society of World Changers “as a model for future generations.”

The Washington Post called Moore an “evangelical gatekeeper” whose “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 named him one of the ten most influential religious leaders in America. He has written ten books and for the Wall Street Journal, CNN, the Jerusalem Post, Arab News, Al Arabiya, Fox News, Religion News Service, and Newsmax. 

Authored Books

• The New Book of Christian Martyrs (Tyndale, 2023)
• The Next Jihad: Stop the Christian Genocide in Africa (Harper Collins, 2020)
• We Are One: A Forty-Day Journey with the Persecuted Church (Tyndale, 2018)
• Ten Things You Need to Known About the Global War on Christianity (Tyndale, 2017)
• The Martyrs Oath: Living for the Jesus They Die For (Tyndale, 2017)
• Defying ISIS: Preserving Christianity in the Place of Its Birth (Thomas Nelson, 2015)
• What Am I Supposed to Do With My Life? (Thomas Nelson, 2014)
• Dirty God – Jesus in the Trenches  (Thomas Nelson, 2012)
• Honestly - Really Living What We Say We Believe (Harvest House, 2010)

Education

• Bachelor of Science in Religion, Liberty University 2003
• Master of Arts in Religion (M.A.R.), Liberty Theological Seminary, 2007
• Ph.D. in Public Policy (foreign policy), Liberty University, 2024
  Dissertation Subject: Evangelical Track II Diplomacy in Israeli and Arab Peacemaking. In research partnership with the University of Haifa.
• Doctorate in Divinity (h.c.), Indiana Wesleyan University, 2024.