Southern Baptist ethics leader resigns, likely due to pressure from MAGA extremists

Brent Leatherwood's resignation reveals how the Southern Baptist Convention prefers reflexive loyalty to Trump over even the mildest forms of human decency

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If you want more proof that the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the country, is more interested in following Donald Trump than Jesus, look no further than its public policy arm.

Last week, Brent Leatherwood, president of the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, resigned after years of criticism, primarily from right-wing MAGA cultists who argued he wasn’t doing enough to promote Trump’s agenda. At the SBC’s annual meeting in June, nearly half of the delegates (43%) voted to abolish the ERLC entirely. It wasn’t a majority, but the writing was on the wall.

Brent Leatherwood (screenshot via YouTube)

It’s not like Leatherwood was channeling Zohran Mamdani or AOC, though. Before he worked at the ERLC, he was the executive director of the Tennessee Republican Party as well as the director of communications and policy strategy in the Tennessee General Assembly. As ERLC president, he pushed for the conservative Christian version of “religious liberty” (where religious convictions can override pesky things like anti-discrimination and civil rights laws). He opposed abortion rights, called for Planned Parenthood to be defunded entirely, and claimed that in vitro fertilization was immoral, saying “1 million preborn children are being held in IVF clinics around the country.” He defended the Israeli government’s genocide in Gaza. He wanted to make life more miserable for transgender people by preventing trans girls from playing sports and overriding doctors’ recommendations for medical interventions for trans individuals.

He’s a conservative who’s spent his career promoting conservative policies. As the ERLC’s leader, he had the ability to sway politicians on behalf of the Southern Baptist Convention. He could accurately say he represented the views of millions of politically engaged SBC members.

So why were his haters so damn mad?

It starts with immigration. The ERLC wanted to preserve the government’s program to resettle refugees (including from countries where Christians are actually persecuted) and push for a “permanent solution for Dreamers” who were brought to the U.S. as children but now risk being deported to countries they’ve never known as home. The ERLC also opposed mass deportations like the Trump administration is carrying out right now with the support of the Republican Party; Leatherwood even supported a letter that said ICE raids in churches had “caused fear to rise among both the guilty and the innocent.”

There was also the ERLC’s response to gun violence: They wanted to decrease it. (Heresy!) To be clear, they didn’t want to ban assault rifles or repeal the Second Amendment. But the ERLC promoted red flag laws—which could temporarily take weapons away from people who were a known risk to others—and mental health interventions. (Leatherwood’s own children attended Covenant Christian School in Nashville, where a mass shooting took place, but they were thankfully not injured in the attack.)

When it came to abortion, which the ERLC opposes in every situation including when a child is a rape victim, Leatherwood said women who have them shouldn’t be put in jail, which is something many white evangelicals have demanded. (His critics promoted bills that would have classified abortion as homicide, subjecting women who have them to potential murder charges.)

Conservatives were also furious about how Leatherwood personally responded to Joe Biden dropping out of the presidential race last summer. In an essay, Leatherwood wrote that Biden “made the right decision for the country” and wrote in a separate statement that people should “express our appreciation that President Biden has put the needs of the nation above his personal ambition.” (At the same time, he criticized the selection of Kamala Harris as his heir apparent because she would “be cause for considerable concern among pro-life advocates and those who hold to a biblical definition of marriage.”)

Maybe that wasn’t surprising, given that roughly 81% of white evangelicals voted for Trump in 2020, but the vitriol directed at Leatherwood for daring to commend Biden for anything was incredible.

Right-wing commentators and Southern Baptist leaders said it was “one of the most dishonest and cynical political statements I have ever seen,” that “nothing” Biden did was selfless, and that Leatherwood was “repeating Democrat talking points.” More than one person called on Leatherwood to follow Biden’s lead and step down.

In the midst of that fiasco, the ERLC announced that Leatherwood had been fired… only to retract it a day later.

All of these positions and controversies took a toll on the ERLC; many churches even withheld donations to SBC programs supporting missionary trips. That gave Leatherwood’s critics even more ammo to use against him.

After he resigned last week, they were celebrating, pretending he was in the arms of “DC elites” rather than real Southern Baptists, by which they meant the ones who worship Trump no matter what.

It wasn’t just online critics or extremist lawmakers. Albert Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said in an interview that he had “grave doubts about the utility of the ERLC.”

Leatherwood’s resignation was all the more interesting when you know that his predecessor in the role, Russell Moore, stepped away from the job after years of criticizing Trump, condemning the sexual abuse that was rampant within the SBC, and calling for racial justice. Sure, he was also anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ rights, but condemning the One True God Trump was too much for the 100+ pastors who threatened to stop funding the SBC unless there was less of Moore.

That same sort of pressure campaign is why Leatherwood is now out of his position as well.

The sad thing about this is that the next person who takes up the role of ERLC president will only be worse. After all, who really cares about “ethics” if the Republican Party decides cruelty is the point?

The Southern Baptist Convention has now made it abundantly clear what it values. It’s not ethics. It’s not religious liberty. And it sure as hell isn’t the guy who delivered the Sermon on the Mount. By pushing out Leatherwood, a hardline conservative whose biggest “crimes” were showing the slightest flicker of empathy or rationality on issues like immigration or red flag laws, the SBC’s position is unmistakable: They don’t want leadership with integrity or even consistent theological grounding; they want a lapdog for the MAGA movement, someone who genuflects to Trump and treats mercy as a liability.

This isn’t a denomination grappling with political tensions. This is a denomination rotting from the inside, one that punishes even the most modest dissent from extremist orthodoxy.

The ERLC was meant to reflect the moral voice of the SBC as it pushed for public policies that aligned with their beliefs. Now, it reflects the sad fact that Southern Baptists who take even a hint of compassion seriously are no longer welcome there.

They’ve practically crucified their own ethicists for daring to act like Jesus.

(Portions of this article were published earlier)

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