The Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, or ERLC, is now looking for a new president after Brent Leatherwood stepped down July 31, ending a tenure that was mired with controversy.
An announcement from the ERLC Board of Trustees, which named Miles Millun the acting president, thanked Leatherwood for his “leadership, dedication, and service” to the SBC.
William Wolfe, who leads the Center for Baptist Leadership, has been an outspoken critic of Leatherwood for the political positions he has taken as a Southern Baptist spokesman. Leatherwood, for example, opposed a pro-life bill in Louisiana and supported an amnesty bill for illegal aliens in Congress.
“Brent Leatherwood seems to hold political positions on a host of issues that I would argue are to the left of the vast majority of Southern Baptists in the pews,” Wolfe tells AFN.
Last summer, Leatherwood survived an attempt to remove him as ERLC president after he praised President Biden for stepping down as the Democrat nominee.
“We should all express our appreciation that President Biden has put the needs of the nation above his personal ambition,” read last year's statement on the ERLC website.
The ERLC statement goes on to suggest President Biden demonstrated a “selfless act” by “walking away” from power when, in reality, Biden was unhappily forced out as the rightful nominee in a panicky political coup led by Rep. Nancy Pelosi.
At the time, an initial statement from the ERLC executive board said Leatherwood was being removed because of his words about Biden, but the board later said the idea of ousting Leatherwood came from only one person, chairman Kevin Smith. Smith himself was forced to step down and Leatherwood survived.
Because the ERLC is the public policy voice of the Southern Baptist Convention, many pastors, deacons, and lay people have been dismayed by Leatherwood’s comments. His liberal views were making headlines while representing a denomination that keeps fighting off repeated attempts to drift leftward in theology and the culture war.
That is also why the ERLC has been targeted for termination at the annual SBC convention, most recently in June of this year, when it survived thanks to a 57%-43% vote to maintain it. That percentage, although seemingly wide, was only a difference of 925 messenger votes of 6,581 ballots that were cast. Approximately 3,000 messengers did not cast a vote.
Even though the ERLC survived the vote, Daily Wire reporter Megan Basham wrote on X it came after Leatherwood and his allies sneakily worked behind the scenes. Leatherwood was given more stage time in front of messengers than his critics, she said. ERLC defenders were also allowed to pass out literature and use an SBC email to lobby messengers.
Basham, a tenacious religion reporter, has become a thorn in the side of the ERLC. She has documented the ERLC's partnership with left-wing groups, such as the Evangelical Immigration Table, and also documented the flow of donations to the ERLC from far-left donors.
Leatherwood is the second controversial ERLC leader in a row after Russell Moore. Moore, now editor of Christianity Today, became a pariah to many Southern Baptists for publicly criticizing Trump’s candidacy in 2016 and for criticizing Southern Baptists who supported him.
Moore’s reward for criticizing his own denomination was glowing interviews in The New York Times and at NPR. He stepped down from the ERLC in 2021 after complaining he was living in “psychological terror” because of the Southern Baptist Convention.
According to Wolfe, he predicts the successor to Moore and Leatherwood could be Daniel Darling, who is described as a protégé of both men.
On his X account, Darling has not posted about or mentioned Leatherwood and the ERLC.
