Below is a great podcast that examines in detail the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), which is supposed to be the denomination’s lobbying arm. Recall that the ERLC is controlled by political progressives. Among the points made during the podcast are the following:
- That legislators in Washington D.C. tend not to hear from the ERLC, that the organization does not “move the needle”, and that its people are not physically present in D.C.;
- That the ERLC has made inroads in the seminaries and in some of the large churches, influencing pastors and future pastors;
- That its former leader, the progressive/ socialist Russell Moore, was a “stone cold political operator”, and that he has enormous influence over its current leader, Brent Leatherwood;
- That Tami Fitzgerald, the leader of the NC Values Coalition, used to serve on the ERLC board, and that she was opposed by Moore’s people; and
- That Southern Baptists and especially their pastors are tuned out, thereby enabling the progressive/socialist crowd to control the ERLC.
Check it out if you are concerned about the direction of the Southern Baptist Convention and the manner in which its public witness has been compromised:
Sounds like there will be an everlasting battle between conservatives and the social justice crowd within the SBC.
Maybe, Fred. It is part of the “long march through the institutions”. But it ought to be sobering the quality of leaders and seminaries and pastors Southern Baptists had been funding for decades.