(RNS) — During their annual meeting in Dallas next month, Southern Baptists will sing, bless missionaries, pass a budget, listen to sermons and engage in lively debate about a host of issues.
Among those issues: what to do with the denomination’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. For nearly a decade, the ERLC has been a source of controversy as the nation’s largest Protestant denomination has navigated the cultural and political divides of the Trump era.
While Southern Baptists, like many evangelicals, have been strong supporters of President Donald Trump in the voting booth, some of the president’s policy decisions and personal conduct have clashed with Baptist ethics and beliefs.
That’s left the ERLC, which speaks to ethical issues and public policy debates, occasionally at odds with the denomination’s 12.7 million members, leading to three attempts to disband or defund the agency over the past decade.
Clint Pressley, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, said he has spoken to a number of Southern Baptists about the ERLC – including Texas megachurch pastor Jack Graham, a past critic of the agency.
Some like what the agency is doing, he said. Others don’t.
While he suspects there will be a motion to close the agency at the denomination’s annual meeting in June, Pressley said the future of the ERLC is not up to him. Even if he had concerns about it, he’s got no power to make a decision. Instead, that power rests with church representatives known as messengers.
“I think those concerns about the ERLC will be answered by the messengers,” said Pressley, pastor of Hickory Grove Baptist Church in Charlotte, North Carolina. “I can’t do anything about the ERLC.”
Pressley added that his role as chair of the SBC’s annual meeting means he cannot take sides in any debate over the ERLC.
The ERLC has promoted its ties to House Speaker Mike Johnson, a former ERLC trustee, and its support for defunding Planned Parenthood, as well as its opposition to gender-affirming care for minors and “radical gender ideology.”
“The ERLC team has been diligently working to advocate for Southern Baptist beliefs in the public square while also providing meaningful resources that help our churches navigate today’s cultural challenges and gospel opportunities,” Scott Foshie, chair of the ERLC’s trustees, told RNS in an email. “Southern Baptists have supported an ethics and public policy entity for over a hundred years. We need an effective, responsive ERLC now more than ever.”
Discontent with the ERLC has been festering for years — and much of it dates back to the tenure of former ERLC President Russell Moore, who led the agency from 2013 to 2021.
