If ERLC President Brent Leatherwood were to change jobs today, is it more likely that he would find his next job in the present administration in Washington, D. C., or at Christianity Today with former boss Russell Moore? It’s a speculative question, but I believe it’s a worthwhile one to ponder when considering the question of why there has continued to be such a disconnect between the work of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) and so many cooperating churches of the Southern Baptist Convention.
To ask a few other questions: Why does it feel that in a time in which Southern Baptists overwhelmingly supported the current Trump administration in the voting booth that the entity representing Southern Baptists in Washington has positioned itself with neutrality towards the Trump administration—with little active presence or influence? Why are there other prominent voices among social conservatives leading the charge in effecting positive change in our culture on so many issues where the ERLC is seemingly absent, or even worse, linking arms with progressive views? Why are some individual Southern Baptist voices invited to speak into the policies of the Trump administration and to pray for the president, but the ERLC has not been welcomed to do so?
As a pastor of an average sized church in the SBC, I have been asked before by concerned prospective church members whether we use the resources provided by the ERLC for our church. The simple answer is “No.” When it comes to the most significant issues in our culture today, our church has not used their resources because we find other resources to be more faithful to our concerns as biblical Christians.
In this essay, therefore, I want to consider the relationship between the political action arm of the SBC from the vantage point of the pulpit and the pew. In particular, I want to answer three questions that might explain why our church is not an outlier in the SBC, but rather one more illustration of what has gone wrong with the ERLC. Here are the questions moving from the general to the specific:
1. What can informal polling among Southern Baptists tell us about the use of ERLC material?
2. How has the ERLC positioned itself in relation to the present Trump administration?
3. How has the ERLC engaged over the last decade in one specific major cultural issue, namely relating to social justice, critical race theory, and Intersectionality?
Informal Polling
First, while being conscious that my church has not widely used the material produced by the ERLC, I pondered whether we were simply an outlier among self-professing Southern Baptists. So I decided to ask other Southern Baptists what they think. In an informal poll posted in three of the largest Southern Baptist Facebook forums, I asked a series of questions to thousands of Southern Baptists, including one of the groups which restricts its membership to only Southern Baptist pastors.
On March 4, 2025, I addressed Southern Baptist pastors, and asked the question: “Have you listened to the ERLC podcast or read a policy article from them in the last month?” I then provided four options for answers:
1. “Yes, I regularly read/listen to their material,”
2. “Yes, I read/listened to one,”
3. “No, I do not read/listen to their material,” and
4. “No, I didn’t even know they had a podcast/articles.”
As of March 24, 2025, there have been nearly 400 unique responses to the poll across the three forums with over 90% answering “No.”
While such a poll can only provide anecdotal evidence, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to conclude that my church is not unique in the experience of many other Southern Baptists. Just the opposite, I believe we are typical of Southern Baptist pastors and their churches who do not look to the ERLC to provide helpful commentary or resources for addressing many of the current cultural issues of our day.
If one of the major tasks of the ERLC is equipping to the churches of the SBC—and this has been a contentious task as Mark Coppenger and David Mitzenmacher have both pointed out—then I don’t think they have been successful in fulfilling that task. Instead, for reasons covered in this month’s theme, they marginalized themselves in the times they have spoken. And by comparison to many other voices who are unswervingly biblical and socially conservative, those standing in SBC pulpits and those sitting in SBC pews have looked elsewhere.
Relation to Current Administration
Second, the ERLC is tasked with speaking for Southern Baptists in the public square. This task often breaks down into speaking into matters in the legislative branch, judicial branch, and executive branch. While I am cognizant of the dangers of appealing to areas of silence, it is intriguing to see what the ERLC has and has not spoken to during the first two months of the new Trump administration. Since President Trump was inaugurated on January 20, 2025 the ERLC has produced five total articles related to the actions of the executive branch, along with one video interview and one podcast.
- On January 23, ERLC Policy Staff published its first article after President Trump’s inauguration about how the ERLC had joined with other pro-life groups to urge Trump to take action on the abortion pill.
- On January 24, ERLC President Brent Leatherwood commended President Trump’s executive orders reinstating pro-life policies.
- On January 28, ERLC Policy Staff published an article asking the Trump administration to respect religious liberty in immigration policies.
- On February 6, ERLC press secretary Elizabeth Bristow interviewed Rachel Morrison, a Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, for a podcast entitled: “Why a Southern Baptist witness before the executive branch is vital.”
- On February 10, ERLC Policy Staff also published an article explaining these two executive orders on gender and sexuality,
- On February 10, ERLC President Brent Leatherwood did one video interview with CBN’s Faith Nation on the executive orders.
- On February 12, ERLC Senior Fellow Gregg Allison published an excellent article explaining President Trump’s two executive orders on gender and sexuality.
Yet, since February 12, there have been no further published articles interacting with the actions taken by the executive branch.
Meanwhile, to date President Trump has signed 93 executive orders since assuming office. Many of these orders relate to matters of immigration, while others pertain to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), and one executive order created the White House Faith Office. Certainly, this last executive action deserves commentary by the Southern Baptist’s public policy arm.
Nevertheless, the ERLC has been mostly silent about the overwhelming majority of the executive orders coming from this administration. Its notable that while some individual Southern Baptists have been prominently included in discussions with the newly created White House Faith Office—including Dr. Robert Jeffress (Pastor of FBC Dallas) and William Wolfe (Executive Director of the Center for Baptist Leadership)— the ERLC appears to have not been included in these opportunities. While I don’t expect an article explaining the present non-inclusion, the ERLC should expect questions about their apparent absence in Washington, D.C. and their lackluster engagement with the Trump Administration.
To put this all together, if a Southern Baptist wanted to know more details about how they should think about many of the actions taken by President Trump as it relates to ethical issues in our culture, the ERLC has not been a source for such information. Southern Baptists would have to turn to other conservative voices, such as Catholic Matt Walsh, Jewish Ben Shapiro, Mormon Glenn Beck, Catholic Michael Knowles, or Evangelical Charlie Kirk. Sadly, none of these voices are Southern Baptist (and all have various degrees of problematic beliefs), but suffice it to say, they are the voices that Southern Baptists turn to for help.
Furthermore, if a Southern Baptist desired for its public policy arm to have a seat at the table in Washington, D.C., when the current President is inviting faithful Christian leaders (as well as heretical ones) to speak for their respective churches, organizations, or denominations, it certainly appears as though the ERLC has been left out. And given the backdrop of Russell Moore’s well-known antipathy toward Donald Trump while leading the ERLC, Southern Baptists are left to wonder whether the ERLC would even accept an invitation if it were extended to them to participate in these discussions. Whatever the interpersonal dynamics are with the Trump White House, Southern Baptists are right to ask why the largest convention in the nation does not appear to have a place at the table during a time when extraordinary access is being extended to other conservative Christian leaders.
Social Justice, Critical Race Theory, and Intersectionality
Third, there has been a seismic shift in the past decade in our culture regarding issues related to LGBTQ+, immigration, race, and racism. As a Southern Baptist pastor, I perceive the ERLC’s engagement on these matters to either be woefully lacking or to be at odds with widespread Southern Baptists. While the ERLC has positioned itself to attempt to have some influence in whatever administration it finds itself under, such neutrality has had a negative impact on Southern Baptist churches lacking a bold, influential witness.
To take up one specific issue, matters relating to Social Justice, Critical Race Theory, and Intersectionality (CRT/I) is an example of why I do not look to the ERLC for trusted resources. Indeed, the ERLC has been a part of steering the SBC in a wrong direction for the last decade. This began under the leadership of Russell Moore and has continued under Brent Leatherwood.
On the matters of CRT/I, the ERLC in recent years has either ignored the problem or dabbled with its application. For all the ways that CRT/I has been a source of contention in the last decade, it is remarkable that a search for “Critical Race Theory” on the ERLC website turns up zero articles. The search for “CRT” turns up a single reflection article by Josh Wester from the 2021 SBC convention, which only describes a debate about CRT as potentially reaching a boiling point without any interaction with the issue.
Positively, one article can be found when searching under “Critical Theory,” a May 2019 article by Andrew Walker, former ERLC Director of Research and Senior Fellow, addressing Critical Theory as a totalizing worldview that is incompatible with Christian ethics. Additionally, Jason Thacker has an October 2021 article in which he defines “Intersectionality” as “an analytic tool used to identify various power dynamics and relations through various overlapping identities among minority groups in society.” He then critiques intersectionality because Christians “do not see our true identities as grounded in mere power dynamics or economic activities, but rather as people created in God’s image (Gen. 1:26–28) with infinite value, worth, and dignity.”[1] However, the overall lack of biblical engagement on one of the most important issues in our culture over the last decade is astounding.
Of course, one need not use the explicit term “Critical Race Theory” to incorporate aspects of it with disastrous results. In the last ten years, the ERLC has too often been at the tip of the spear advancing an unbiblical approach to the matters of social justice in the SBC. For nearly a decade during his tenure as ERLC president, Moore welcomed CRT’s analytic tools into the convention. And nowhere was this more apparent than the MLK 50 Conference “Gospel Reflections from the Mountaintop.”
This 2018 conference, co-sponsored by the ERLC and The Gospel Coalition, celebrated Martin Luther King Jr.’s lasting impact upon the church. This appreciation seemingly white-washed much of King’s liberal theology and his democratic socialist ideology, while at the same time platforming prominent speakers such as Charlie Dates, Jemar Tisby, and Mika Edmonson, who all advocate in varying degrees for employing Critical Race Theory. If the SBC were to embrace CRT as a helpful ideological resource compatible with Christianity, it would do so because the ERLC was supporting the cause and platforming the voices advocating as such.
Most notoriously, CRT was hoisted upon Southern Baptists at the 2019 Annual Convention in Birmingham, when the Resolutions Committee turned a submitted resolution condemning the use of CRT/I on its head, so that it could promote the usefulness of CRT/I as “an analytical tool.” Unfortunately, CRT/I did not actually help break the cycle of ethnic disunity. Rather, it poured gasoline on the fire and caused the fire to explode. The ERLC introduced unhelpful voices into the discussion for Southern Baptists with disastrous results. And in its wake the past several years, it appears the ERLC has now all but side stepped the discussion completely. Instead of addressing the issues relating to the need for biblical unity in ways that avoid the errors of CRT/I, the ERLC has chosen to avoid the topic. Most noticeably, the ERLC has not published any articles addressing one of President Trump’s most significant actions in dismantling Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies throughout the government and the military.
To illustrate the type of engagement the ERLC could have been providing as a resource to the churches of the Southern Baptist Convention, the Center for Biblical Unity, led by Monique Duson and Krista Bontrage, is a conservative evangelical ministry that has ably responded to errors of CRT/I while stressing the need for biblical unity. Other voices that are to be commended to Southern Baptists include Voddie Baucham, Owen Strachan, Virgil Walker, Darrell Harrison, Thaddeus Williams, and Kevin Briggins. Many of these individuals contributed helpful articles in Christ Over All’s July 2023 Theme focused on Civil Rights & Civil Wrongs: What the Church Needs to Do and (Un)do. Southern Baptists can find many faithful voices in their midst on this subject, yet sadly those voices have not found a place in the ERLC’s resources. This illustrates again why our church, like many others, have stopped looking to the ERLC for being a trusted resource. Better paths towards biblical unity and ethnic harmony can be found in other places, where the anti-racism offerings of the secular CRT prophets are not being smuggled in, as they been by the ERLC.
Conclusion
All in all, the ERLC has a long way to go to rebuild my trust. While it retains the position of speaking for Southern Baptists, it does so as an untrusted voice. While I believe the idea behind the entity to be an important one, I don’t believe they have well executed that idea under the current leadership. Further, it’s not likely that a few small course corrections can turn the ship around completely at this time.
Southern Baptists ought to have the most convictional voices in the convention leading this entity and speaking up on their behalf when Southern Baptists make a stand in the public square. Pastors and their church members ought not be left to conservative non-Christian commentators to be on the frontlines for the national discussions. Rather, Southern Baptists ought to have confidence that they have the best possible representatives voicing their concerns in public. And until that is the case, the polls will continue to express disinterest in the things that the ERLC prints, publishes, and proclaims.
