(RNS) — In a head-scratching turn of events, the executive board of the Southern Baptist Convention’s public policy arm now says its leader has not been fired.
On Monday evening (July 22), the SBC Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission announced Brent Leatherwood, the group’s president, had been fired — a day after he praised President Joe Biden for ending his reelection bid.
Brent Leatherwood speaks from the floor of the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting at the Indiana Convention Center in Indianapolis, Wednesday, June 12, 2024. (RNS photo/AJ Mast)
Less than 12 hours later, the ERLC’s executive committee issued a new statement on Tuesday, saying Leatherwood would remain in leadership.
“Brent Leatherwood remains the President of the ERLC and has our support moving forward,” the statement read.
The committee also said ERLC board chair Kevin Smith had acted on his own in announcing that Leatherwood was fired. Smith, a former seminary professor and denominational administrator who currently pastors a church in Florida, has resigned as ERLC chair, according to the statement.
“There was not an authorized meeting, vote, or action taken by the Executive Committee,” the executive committee’s statement said.
Smith, who has served on the ERLC board since 2018, was elected chair last fall.
Smith, a pastor at Family Church in West Palm Beach, Florida, did not immediately reply to a request for comment. He told Baptist Press, an official SBC publication, that he had spoken with other members of the ERLC executive committee about removing Leatherwood and thought they agreed. He now said that he was wrong.
“After multiple conversations with Executive Committee members of the ERLC, I was convinced in my mind that we had a consensus to remove Brent Leatherwood as the president of the ERLC. It is a delicate matter and, in an effort to deal with it expeditiously, I acted in good faith but without a formal vote of the Executive Committee,” he told Baptist Press. “This was an error on my part, and I accept full responsibility.”
The ERLC’s bylaws do allow the executive committee to fire the entity’s leader. The bylaws require 10 days’ notice for special meetings of the board of trustees but do not detail notice requirements for executive committee meetings.
Smith is a former professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, and a former executive director of the Baptist Convention of Maryland/Delaware. Smith told Baptist Press he resigned both as chair and as an ERLC trustee.
Eric Costanzo, pastor of South Tulsa Baptist Church and an ERLC trustee board member, praised Leatherwood after it was announced the ERLC president was not fired.
“Brent deserves countless apologies for this error and all the assumptions that came with it,” Costanzo wrote on X. “He has proven to be a faithful leader and man of integrity time and again.”
The confusion over Leatherwood’s status is the latest crisis for the ERLC — which has been embroiled in seemingly endless controversy since the election of Donald Trump as U.S. president in 2016. Several prominent megachurches withheld funding for the group after Leatherwood’s predecessor Russell Moore was critical of Trump, leading to calls for Moore to be fired.
That led to a meeting between Moore and Frank Page, who was then head of the SBC’s Nashville, Tennessee-based Executive Committee, where the two pledged to work together to unite Southern Baptists. Page later resigned in a scandal.
The SBC’s Executive Committee went on to investigate the ERLC in 2020 for allegedly being divisive and causing a shortfall in denominational donations. A 2021 report from the investigation, which was led by Georgia pastor Mike Stone, a fierce critic of Moore, called the ERLC “a significant distraction.”
Moore resigned as ERLC president in May 2021, leaving the commission for a role at evangelical magazine Christianity Today, where he is now editor-in-chief.
Critics such as Florida pastor Tom Ascol, head of a Calvinist group called Founders Ministries, have repeatedly called for the ERLC to be shut down. This summer, Ascol made a motion to that effect at the SBC’s annual meeting. The motion failed.
Leatherwood has been criticized for opposing legislation backed by Ascol and other members of the so-called abortion abolition movement that would have jailed women who have abortions. More recently, Leatherwood criticized the GOP for dropping anti-abortion language from its 2024 platform.
Leatherwood also called for gun law reforms after a shooting in March 2023 at a Nashville Christian school where his children were students.
He did not respond to requests for comment. Leatherwood did post his thanks on social media.
“I deeply appreciate everyone who has reached out, especially our trustees who were absolutely bewildered at what took place yesterday and jumped in to set the record straight,” Leatherwood wrote Tuesday morning on X.
In a statement on Tuesday evening, the ERLC Executive Committee said that Smith acted on his own and that his actions violated the group’s bylaws. The committee also acknowledged that the ERLC has faced criticism, citing the call to disband the entity, which was made at the SBC annual meeting.
“While the executive committee recognizes a wide range of opinions on the work of the ERLC, most visible in a recent attempt to abolish the organization at the 2024 SBC annual meeting, the executive committee does not believe that this discontent rises to the level of a dismissable offense,” the committee said.
According to the statement, the committee also dismissed any supposition of misconduct on Leatherwood’s part. “We find Brent Leatherwood to be a man of utmost moral and ethical integrity,” the committee said.
The committee said it stands behind the staff of the ERLC and the group’s mission and will discuss how to move forward at the ERLC’s board meeting this fall.
“We know that these events have shaken trust in the executive committee, the trustee board, and the organization especially,” the committee said. “It is imperative that we commit ourselves as trustees to ensuring that trust is rebuilt. We will work with the staff to do so in a way that addresses the real concerns of Southern Baptists and strengthens the good work of this organization.
This is a breaking story and will be updated.
