Tom Ascol, senior pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Cape Coral, Florida, and president of Founders Ministries, made the motion to abolish the ERLC. “The last eight years, the ERLC has become increasingly distant from the values and concerns of the churches that finance it,” he said.
ERLC President Brent Leatherwood responded to the motion, saying that eliminating the ERLC would be the “wrong move” and that “we are in a great hour of need in our culture and in our convention.” Messengers overwhelmingly voted to reject the motion.
SBC Clarifies Pro-Life Position With Resolution on IVF
On Wednesday (June 12), SBC messengers adopted a resolution reaffirming the convention’s commitment to the protection of unborn children with regard to in vitro fertilization (IVF) and other reproductive technologies. The resolution comes about three months after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos have legal standing as children.
The resolution states that life must “be respected and protected from the moment of fertilization until natural death, without regard to developmental stage or location.” It acknowledges the “searing pain of infertility” while affirming “the embodied union of husband and wife as the singular normative expression for procreation.”
Newly elected SBC President Clint Pressley gave a press conference Wednesday evening, where he said, “I didn’t plan ever to be the president, [but] thought about it several times in the last few years and now seemed like a really good time to do it with all that’s going on in our convention.”
Pressley, who had supported the unsuccessful Law Amendment, was optimistic about the SBC’s commitment to complementarianism. And despite the fact that the SBC does not yet have a database to track predatory church leaders, the new SBC president said he is confident in the convention’s current systems for dealing with sexual abuse.
Pressley also praised the newly appointed president and CEO of the SBC’s Executive Committee, Dr. Jeff Iorg. “It’s great now to have a leader who seems to be very sympathetic to the plight we’ve seen in the last few years,” Pressley said, regarding Iorg’s commitment to creating the database for tracking abusive church leaders. “So I have lots of confidence.”
Mike Law Urges Churches Not To Leave SBC Following Failure To Pass Amendment Barring Women Pastors
After his amendment to the SBC’s constitution failed to be ratified at the annual meeting on Wednesday (June 12), Pastor Mike Law urged Southern Baptists not to leave the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.
