Baptist News Global: Mohler Has Changed His Tune on the SBC ERLC
Baptist News Global: SBC Membership Shrank by One Fourth in Two Decades
It's Kind of a "Who Really Cares?" Moment in the Southern Baptist Convention
The Southern Baptist Convention established the Christian Life Commission in 1953 as a lobbying organization mainly for the protection of religious liberty and the separation of church and state issues. It was Baptists, operating out of their traditional position that the church should be independent and autonomous, free from the political coercion of the state, that influenced both Jefferson and Madison and led to the first amendment's inclusion of religious liberty and the establishment clause, which separates church and state, in the Constitution.
But that has, over time, drastically changed. Though there are still plenty of Baptist churches, fellowship groups and associations who hold to their traditional perspective on separation of church and state, and who defend freedom of conscience from government coercion, the majority of those in the Southern Baptist Convention, influenced by the infiltration of fundamentalist doctrine and practice, have taken a different position. Desiring their Christian Life Commission to become more involved on the side of anti-abortion activism and less opposed to church-state separation, that prompted the SBC's withdrawal from the Baptist Joint Commission on Public Affairs (now "on Religious Liberty). And that changed the mission and direction of the Christian Life Commission.
Led by Bush ally Richard Land, renamed the "Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), the organization pushed hard to become an anti-abortion activist organization and to drag the SBC into Republican right wing extremist politics following the "Conservative Resurgence." Neither Land nor Paul Pressler, the Texas appeals court judge who was one of the major "architects" of the resurgence, were ever able to push the SBC to the point of outright endorsements of GOP Presidential candidates, but that was not for lack of trying.
Then Land stepped down in 2013, due to a shift in denominational politics, and Russell Moore became executive director. Moore's legacy at the ERLC looked to be more bland, conservative extremism, until the election rolled around in 2016 and he became an outspoken right wing Evangelical opposed to Trump's candidacy, because of his disgusting immoral behavior and crude, worldly attitude. Moore, now editor of Christianity Today , never backed down from that perspective, so the Trump machine within the SBC went to work to try and bring the whole organization down.
And that's what's happening now, with the involvement of the great Southern Baptist pontificator, Dr. Al Mohler, President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.
Mohler wasn't a Trumper in 2016 either, but he's a "lick your finger and stick it in the air to see which way the wind is blowing" kind of Baptist leader. So he eventually changed his mind. But Moore never did. He managed to make an exit and land on his feet in a more sympathetic, more moderate, less politically insane branch of Evangelicalism. His successor failed to denounce him or trash his reputation or behave in other un-Christ-like vengeance, and so, jiggling with rage, Southern Baptist Trumpers are now pushing to simply shut down the whole ERLC to hurl their hatred and get back at the remaining leadership for not bowing at the feet of their political enamorata and favorite ungodly idol.
Mohler has had his own issues with the Conservative Resurgence crowd in the SBC, and with its Trumpers, whose defacto leader, Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas, is the Southern Baptist Convention's Trumper-in-Chief. Jeffress, himself rejected as head of the White House Faith Office under Trump, a job he wanted so bad that he embarassed himself trying to suck up to Trump to get it, is still somewhat resentful of Mohler's prior position as a never-Trumper. He helped put a stop to momentum to elect Mohler as President of the Southern Baptist Convention on two different occasions, including one very embarassing moment when Mohler was actually placed on the ballot.
As the Southern Baptist Convention has embarassingly, to its shame, failed to come to grips with a very ugly clergy sexual abuse scandal in its midst, angry conservatives need other issues to rally the troops and distract the media from their absolute and complete failure to handle this scandal. So taking down the ERLC solves a couple of problems. One, it is vengeance for the long-gone Moore's failure to bow the knee to the orange headed buffoon. It's an attack on a reasonable position consistent with the denomination's claimed conservative Christian values. Two, it frees up money that the cash strapped, rapidly declining denomination desperately needs to pay legal fees for the lawsuits that have cropped up as a result of their being stymied in trying to deal with a sex abuse scandal.
Who really cares? The Southern Baptist Convention, which keeps billing itself as the "Nation's largest Protestant Denomination," is rapidly disintegrating. It has lost a quarter of its membership and a third of its weekly attendance in two decades, the vast majority of it in the time since Trump first started running for President. Support for the worldly, morally bankrupt Trump among Christians in a conservative denomination hasn't been as big a hit as many people hoped. It's led to an exodus of most of its younger, and more politically moderate church members. This has hit hard, especially in the pocketbook, at a time when bills from legal challenges resulting from the incompetent manner in which denominational leaders have handled the sex abuse crisis.
Too Little, Too Late
On the surface, the purpose of the ERLC was similar to the Christian Life Commission in preserving the separation of church and state, and protecting religious liberty of churches and denominational institutions in the public square, including its six seminaries, two mission boards and Lifeway Christian Publishers by fighting against government intrusion. Under Land, most of what it did was related to the anti-abortion issue, and attempting to bring the denomination into right wing politics.
Under Moore, when the scope and extent of the sexual abuse scandal was revealed, the ERLC was the first entity in the denomination to open its doors to victims as a place where they could express themselves, and to develop and offer ministry to help victims recover. For doing this, they were widely criticised. Since the scandal broke, the whining and caterwauling has all been about the money the denomination stands to lose for the ham-handed way they've handled this. Very little effort or sympathy has been expressed for the hundreds of victims. Once Moore was pushed out the door, any assistance, and expressed sympathy, for the victims was over.
The current staff of the ERLC, following the direction of its trustees, isn't sinking into the mire of extremist right wing political support, and is distancing itself from the right wing extremism. Its own trustees continue to be supportive of the leadership, but in the quirky way the SBC is structured, the convention messengers at an annual meeting can completely defund it, leaving it without financial resources.
Not that it matters. Most Southern Baptists are, to the detriment of their denomination, caught up in right wing politics. They are uninterested and trying to distance themselves from any responsibility for the sexual abuse crisis, hiding the misogyny of the leadership behind local church autonomy.
The chickens are already coming home to roost.
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