The Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) might be the most public-facing and visible group within the entire Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). For about a decade and a half now, hyperconservative SBC leaders have publicly bristled at the ERLC and its leaders’ decisions. This week, though, the friction between the SBC’s factions came to another major head. The chair of the ERLC’s board summarily fired its president for being nice to someone the SBC hates. But then, the other leaders of the ERLC had to walk back that firing and the chairman resigned.

It’d be absolutely hilarious if these dysfunctional authoritarian jackasses weren’t claiming to speak for the omnimax god of the universe.

Oh, wait. Who am I kidding?

That’s what makes this whole story absolutely hilarious.

Let’s examine the ERLC and its relationship to the SBC as a whole, see who their bosses are, and then cruise into this firing and re-hiring.

SBC Faction Warfare notes: The “Old Guard” is hyperconservative. This faction refuses to address the SBC’s monstrous sex-abuse scandal—or its entrenched racism, sexism, and overall corruption. Their enemies are the “Pretend Progressives.” This second faction isn’t progressive by any means, but they do want to gently poke at the SBC’s many problems—as long as the results don’t impede their own ambitions and desires too much. In terms of their overall theological and doctrinal stances, the factions are nearly indistinguishable. PS: Neither faction has an official name. These are simply the ones I use.

(From introduction: The Ásatrúarfélagið; The Satanic Temple; one of the old-time YouTube atheists being a drama bomb these days. This post went live on Patreon on 7/26/2024. Its audio ‘cast lives there too!)

Quick Rundown:

The Southern Baptist Convention has a lot of subgroups. Among these subgroups is the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC). The ERLC tries to help SBC-lings win their culture wars by lobbying lawmakers, participating in trials that touch on the culture wars, and trying to turn public opinion toward letting the SBC control Americans’ lives.

Decades ago, the ERLC began life as a hyperconservative group. It’s still very alarmingly conservative. However, its last two leaders (Russell Moore 2013-2021 and now Brent Leatherwood 2022-present) aren’t hardline and conservative enough. Just in the past few years, hardline ultraconservative Southern Baptists have lobbied twice to shut down the ERLC for good.

On July 21 on the ERLC’s official site (archive), ERLC president Brent Leatherwood issued a statement praising President Joe Biden’s decision to drop out of the 2024 presidential race. His full post appeared on Baptist Press the same day (archive). Leatherwood said that Biden’s decision was “selfless” and laudable, then drilled down hard on the SBC’s forced-birth, anti-abortion doctrinal stance.

It might have seemed like nothing to get overexcited about, but tribalism is a helluva drug. In the dysfunctional authoritarian swamp of the SBC, nobody is allowed to say anything nice, ever, about the tribe’s enemies. Indeed, from what I’ve seen a lot of ERLC people let Leatherwood know they didn’t like his statement at all.

On June 22, Kevin Smith, the chairperson of the ERLC’s executive committee, summarily fired Leatherwood (archive). Interestingly, Smith only got appointed to his role a year ago (archive). In his defense, Smith said later that he thought he’d had a “consensus” on firing Leatherwood and that he’d simply made a “consequential procedural mistake.”

(And sure, I guess it might be—if the mistake is ignoring the entire procedure. Also, bear in mind that the SBC’s top-ranked Executive Committee is not the same thing as the ERLC’s own internal executive committee. For ease of reading, I’ll always capitalize the former and never the latter.)

On Tuesday morning, the 23rd, the ERLC’s executive committee realized that Smith had stepped well outside of the SBC’s bylaws to do this (archive). He was supposed to call for a formal vote, and he hadn’t. So about twelve hours after firing Leatherwood, the ERLC walked back the termination.

Then, later that day on the 23rd, Kevin Smith resigned (archive). The ERLC put out a statement apologizing for the confusion that Smith had caused—and praising Leatherwood as a good leader of “utmost moral and ethical integrity.”

TLDR: Chair of the ERLC board Kevin Smith fired ERLC president Brent Leatherwood. Then, the ERLC’s other leaders realized the firing wasn’t done right at all and backtracked the whole thing. Smith ended up resigning instead, and Leatherwood is still the president of the ERLC.

This story fascinates me because there is so very much lurking beneath these murky waters. Come explore the details of this seemingly trivial squabble!

The ERLC itself is strikingly new

Let’s start by examining the ERLC itself.

In one form or another, the ERLC has existed for almost as long as the SBC itself. Originally founded in 1907, it became the Christian Life Commission in 1953. It stayed that way until the mid-1990s. From what I can see from old SBC Annual Reports (like this one from 1990), the Christian Life Commission operated as a small group devoted mostly to teaching the flocks how to behave. They did some lobbying, but that wasn’t their main focus. From p. 47 of that 1990 report, we see they added an interesting third point just that year:

The Commission seeks (1) to assist the churches by helping them understand the moral demands of the gospel, (2) to help Southern Baptists apply Christian principles to moral and social problems and (3) to promote religious liberty in cooperation with the churches and other Southern Baptist entities.

By 1990, as you might guess from that quote, SBC leaders had already begun fretting about losing temporal power over the United States.

(When evangelicals say “religious liberty,” what they really mean is “Christian privilege.” Some of their leaders have only recently begun to realize how important the “wall of separation” truly is. Strange, isn’t it? The harder they try to grab at others’ rights and liberties, the worse their decline gets for them.)

Just a few years later, however, the SBC underwent a major shakeup. After decades of bitter infighting, the SBC’s Old Guard faction finally won their ultraconservative takeover of the denomination—and they drove out anyone suspected of even sympathizing with less-conservative causes or people. Flush with success (archive), the faction’s leaders reorganized a lot of the SBC’s various departments. I can’t overstate how deep this reorganization went. As you can see from one official SBC report from 1996, it was extensive. Departments got split apart or fused (archive), while about 200 employees got downsized.

One of these reorg victims was the Christian Life Commission. It became the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, or ERLC. The SBC’s leaders didn’t just want to teach SBC-lings how to live. They were thinking far more expansively than that! No, they wanted to force everyone in America to obey their rules.

The ERLC wasn’t even recognizable after the reorganization

According to a 2020 grab of their official site, the ERLC has three stated goals:

The Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission exists to assist the churches by helping them understand the moral demands of the gospel, apply Christian principles to moral and social problems and questions of public policy, and to promote religious liberty in cooperation with the churches and other Southern Baptist entities.

In the SBC’s 2023 Annual Report, we see the same. The ERLC of today has largely abandoned its individual focus on SBC flocks. These days, it exists as the public-facing arm of the SBC’s culture wars. Its official website proclaims that it exists “to bring hope to the public square.”

(It’s not so much “hope” as evangelical control-lust, but evangelicals lost the ability to distinguish between the two some 20 years ago.)

The ERLC now sits roughly under the Executive Committee in rank. In a very real sense, the Executive Committee functions as the day-to-day SBC, so it is the top-ranked group within the denomination. Though the ERLC is supposed to function largely without the Executive Committee’s input, the latter still holds power over the former. Namely, the Executive Committee handles some oversight and budgeting stuff for the ERLC.

It’s also worth noting that the Executive Committee has always been a stronghold of the Old Guard. The ERLC started off Old Guard, but then it veered right out of that faction’s control.

Nothing enrages those who lust for control quite like losing any of it.

At first, faction warfare didn’t exist between the ERLC and the Executive Committee

Originally, the newly-christened ERLC was led by stalwart culture warrior Richard Land. In fact, he’d also led its previous incarnation, the Christian Life Commission, from 1988 onward. Land was an Old Guard crony, so I’m sure the Executive Committee got along great with him.

For a long time, Land helped shape evangelicals’ conceptualization of Christianity’s Savior as a bro-dude American tough guy and gun nut. If you’ve ever heard jokes about “Republican Jesus,” Land probably had a hand in creating the image that springs to mind. Worse, he likely had a hand in convincing American evangelicals that they should be mini-mes of Jesus rather than obeying any of his boring direct orders to his followers. Of particular note, Land sneered at the entire idea of turning the other cheek. No, he wanted evangelicals to arm themselves to the teeth and be ready to make the grass grow (archive).

To get his message out, Land had a radio show that he did for a while. In fact, it was that very radio show that lost him his cushy ERLC gig. In 2012, he decided to weigh in on the Trayvon Martin controversy. To him, it seemed like then-President Barack Obama was capitalizing on this young Black man’s death to get votes.

That already pissed off a lot of people, as you can well imagine. But then, Land made matters worse for himself. A week or so later, it turned out that his racist rant wasn’t even his own work. He’d plagiarized it from an op-ed published the month before in Washington Times.

In June 2012, the SBC yanked Land’s radio show off the air (archive). At the same time, the ERLC’s board issued a stinging reprimand to their once-imperious lord.

A couple of months later and to the surprise of nobody, Land announced his retirement (archive). He set his official stepping-down for October, 2013. However, it must have been obvious to everyone that he would be jumping ship the second he got another job offer. And that is exactly what he did. In April 2013, a North Carolina seminary hired him to be their new leader. (Land finally retired-retired in 2021, but he’s apparently still the Executive Editor of Christian Post. Think of that rag as America’s answer to The Daily Mail. I love it.)

I’m telling you all of this so you know that originally, the ERLC’s work did not annoy anyone in the Old Guard. The Executive Committee had no trouble with Richard Land or his ERLC. He was their man: a belligerent culture warrior who didn’t seem to care who he antagonized or hurt with his cruelty-is-the-point antics. Despite all the posturing he did, he never asked the SBC’s leaders to change or become less evil.

But that friendliness would change hugely with the next ERLC leader, Russell Moore.

When the ERLC takes its mission completely seriously

It’s obvious to me that after all the embarrassment that Richard Land had brought them, the ERLC wanted a leader who was his complete polar opposite. So in June 2013, they rebounded straight into the arms of Russell Moore. Moore actually seemed to embody every quality they thought they wanted in an ERLC leader.

As the old saying goes, though, be careful what you wish for.

From the very get-go, I think the Executive Committee hated Russell Moore. Less than a year after taking the helm, he accurately criticized SBC leaders for having a “narrow vision of religious liberty.” Contradicting their message about OMG TRIBULATION PERSECUTION ANY DAY NOW, he said on a podcast in April 2014 (archive):

I think one of the problems is that for a long time evangelical Christianity, at the lay populist level, has had a narrow vision of religious liberty, because we haven’t had a lot of threats to it in a real sense. [. . .] That means we’re the people who ought to be saying the loudest: ‘We don’t want the mayor and the city council to say that a mosque can’t be in our town.’ [. . .] The government doesn’t decide that. We’ve got to be the people who are saying that [I think he means that evangelicals should be saying “the government doesn’t decide that”].

And then secondly we’ve had a lot of people who have cried wolf over situations. They’ve cried persecution when there is no persecution. So you have kind of these fake senses of where we’re aggrieved, we are persecuted, because the lady at Wal-Mart says ‘Happy Holidays’ instead of ‘Merry Christmas.'”

Yes, he even criticized the eternal evangelical war on the war on Christmas! In addition, Moore didn’t think conversion therapy worked. And he tried to counsel SBC parents not to abandon or cast out gay and lesbian children.

By far the most infuriating thing Moore did, however, was criticize Donald Trump—and evangelicals’ full-throat fellating of him as a Dear Leader strongman. In 2015, he came out hard against Trump. He was one of the first evangelical leaders I encountered who pointed out the obvious:

Jesus taught his disciples to “count the cost” of following him. We should know, he said, where we’re going and what we’re leaving behind. We should also count the cost of following Donald Trump. To do so would mean that we’ve decided to join the other side of the culture war, that image and celebrity and money and power and social Darwinist “winning” trump the conservation of moral principles and a just society.

Opinions like that almost got Moore fired more than once. Worse, though, ultraconservative churches began threatening to downsize their contributions to the mother ship if he remained at his post.

The SBC’s crony network finally drove Russell Moore away in 2021 (archive). In fact, he not only resigned from the ERLC but left the SBC itself. The rest of the gang was clearly very happy to see him go.

I’m not ever going to call Moore a hero or a stunning example of real love. But I will say this: He clearly cared enormously about the ERLC’s stated goals. In fact, he cared more about those things than even the Executive Committee. Dude left rather than compromising his ideals.

If the Executive Committee had only made clear to him that the ERLC’s goals were just dreams of a wistful someday—and plausible deniability, of course—rather than actual concrete goals to actively work toward, things might have gone differently for both them and Moore.

Brent Leatherwood bravely runs the ERLC gauntlet next

The next and current president of the ERLC is Brent Leatherwood. He’s a literal who, though he’s been with the ERLC for quite some time. He became the ERLC’s acting president after Moore left. In 2022, I briefly mentioned him in an article about an abuse report about how 19th-century evangelicals treated Native Americans. At the time, he’d only just become the ERLC’s official president.

Almost from the beginning, Leatherwood was in the fight of his life. At the Annual Meeting in 2022, an attendee named Joshua Scruggs brought up a motion to completely dissolve the ERLC (archive). Leatherwood had to take the podium to argue against that idea. Though today’s ERLC is thankfully far from what it was in Richard Land’s day, even Land himself spoke against it! Though the vote was “not close,” according to that source, it had to be an unnerving beginning to Leatherwood’s reign. And the Old Guard had smelled blood in the water.

During this past year’s Annual Meeting, the Old Guard tried again. This time, the Old Guard had one of its biggest names, Tom Ascol, lead the charge. But again, the vote failed. This failure prompted Protestia, one of the hardliner sites loyal to the Old Guard, to publish a meme comparing the ERLC to Wormtongue from The Lord of the Rings whispering in the SBC’s ear (archive).

Though they’ve failed twice to eliminate their enemies, Ascol and his cronies have been emboldened by their faction’s enthusiastic response to the attempts. Since then, Ascol hasn’t been shy at all in his criticisms of both Leatherwood and the ERLC itself. Nor have the other usual hardliner sites.

The Old Guard have made their wishes clear. They consider the ERLC “compromised.” And no insult an evangelical can snarl or hiss or bellow cuts as deeply as that one single word. In Christianese, it means completely corrupted and unfit for service. If you’re wondering, they’re purity spiraling about the ERLC’s less-extreme, less-draconian opinions about abortion. Leatherwood has publicly rejected the idea of imposing criminal charges on women seeking abortion care. And that is not okay with the Old Guard.

It probably hasn’t even occurred to the Old Guard that they themselves have very obviously been compromised for decades. There’s not a speck of real love in the entire spiteful lot of them. It’s just control-lust all the way down. Everything they do just reinforces my belief that no god is involved with Christianity.

Tribalism is a helluva drug

The SBC is a dysfunctional authoritarian system. In other words, its lack of accountability combined with its authoritarian structure has led to the SBC becoming nothing more than a conduit for power for its leaders. Long ago, those leaders became a crony network. They protect their fellow members’ interests, provide opportunities for each other, and band together to attack common enemies.

In such a group, we should expect to see intense tribalism. With tribalism, a group identifies its members as the heroes who are correct and morally pure. Their enemies become the opposite: craven villains who are incorrect and evil. The more tribalistic the group, the more stark and comically extreme their caricatures become.

Worse, tribalism causes purity spirals (archive). In a purity spiral, the ingroup turns on itself. To start one, leading members of the group become more extreme about one of their opinions. They send their minions to attack anyone in the group who expresses any doubt or disagreement with that new, more extreme opinion. Eventually, nobody’s left to express doubt or disagreement. The group is in lockstep again, and their views are now more extreme. But before long, the group’s leaders will start another purity spiral, the process begins again, and the group becomes even more extremist.

Purity spirals are an effective way to winnow out anyone who isn’t completely obedient. These spirals also grow enormous personal power for the leaders, since they function as flexes of power. However, they often have the secondary effect of making the group look really bad to outsiders, who then become more reluctant to join up. So each purity spiral only makes the group smaller and smaller.

Functional groups can feature a wide array of opinions, especially if they’re not authoritarian. But in dysfunctional authoritarian groups, every single person who steps out of line becomes a risk to their leaders’ power. Thus, dysfunctional authoritarian groups cannot allow any member to step outside the group’s lockstep.

When tribalism matters more than a god’s direct orders

In the face of a risk to their power, the Old Guard can’t worry about little details like obeying their god’s direct orders. They can’t love their enemies. They can’t even make Jesus’ divinity known through their loving treatment of each other. Most of all, they can’t do good to those who despise them. Don’t hold your breath, either, waiting for them to repay perceived evil with blessings!

Something far more important than obeying Jesus is at stake here, you see. The man-children in the SBC and its Old Guard in particular can just murmur a quick little “I’m super sowwy, Jesus!” and still go to Heaven no matter what they’ve done, so they’re not worried about obedience. Jesus can wait. Their “fire insurance” policy remains intact.

No, we’re talking about the real world now. We’re talking about vast personal power and an USD$10B-a-year money-making machine on the line.

So when Brent Leatherwood praised Joe Biden for dropping out of the presidential race, he was being nice to the tribe’s sworn enemy. He did not step out of line even a little with the SBC’s politics, but that doesn’t matter. Dude might as well have said that some of Adolf Hitler’s ideas were good, or that Lucifer actually helped humanity grow in the Garden of Eden.

The Old Guard has been completely ass-blasted for years with loss after loss. For years, they’ve been doing every single sneaky, conniving, scheming thing they can to get Pretend Progressive leaders fired—so they can replace them with Old Guard men, of course! Nothing’s worked so far, and the clock is starting to tick very loudly indeed. They are clearly well aware of the fact that they only won the Conservative Resurgence because their faction won top elections for a number of years running—and now that’s happening in reverse!

So they pounced on Leatherwood’s impurity. As impurities go, this one’s as mild as sweet summer sweat. It’s just one half-tick off center, at most. The Old Guard’s overreaction to it is unseemly, their motivation embarrassingly obvious. But it’s all they’ve got right now.

The ERLC must be captured.

And if it cannot be captured, then it must be destroyed.

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Captain Cassidy

Captain Cassidy is a Gen-X ex-Christian and writer. She writes about how people engage with science, religion, art, and each other. She lives in Idaho with her husband, Mr. Captain, and their squawky orange tabby cat, Princess Bother Pretty Toes. And at any given time, she is running out of bookcase space.

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