The president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission is Brent Leatherwood. After a statement from him praised President Biden, Leatherwood found himself in political hot water only to emerge the political victor after Kevin Smith, board chairman of the ERLC, announced he was stepping down for attempting to oust Leatherwood.
Leatherwood was already a controversial figure within the SBC even before he praised President Biden for stepping down as the Democrat nominee. Leatherwood’s statement, posted July 21 on the ERLC website, states, “We should all express our appreciation that President Biden has put the needs of the nation above his personal ambition.” The statement goes on to suggest Biden demonstrated a “selfless act” by “walking away” from power.
Many critics of Biden contend he buckled under pressure to put his political party first, not the country, when panicking donors and Democrat leaders forced him out as the nominee after his disastrous June 27 debate with Donald Trump.
The ailing 81-year-old president is also vowing to remain in office until January, now six months away, so he has not “walked away” from the presidency and given up what many call the most powerful job in the world.
On Monday, a day after Leatherwood’s statement published, a statement from the ERLC executive board said Leatherwood was being removed because of his words about Biden. A day later, on Tuesday, the ERLC executive board said the idea of ousting Leatherwood came from only one person – Smith – and did not reflect an official decision.
“I was convinced in my mind that we had a consensus to remove Brent Leatherwood as the president of the ERLC,” Smith said in a statement to The Baptist Press. “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.”
Smith has served as a member of the ERLC board since 2018. He was elected chairman of the executive board last fall, the first black to hold that position, according to The Christian Post.
Reacting to the back-and-forth controversy, Daily Wire reporter Megan Basham told American Family Radio the main issue with the ERLC remains Leatherwood himself.
“Leatherwood has very much carried on the tradition of Russell Moore,” she said, “taking policy positions in the name of Southern Baptists that many Southern Baptists do not support, things like lax border policies, gun control measures.”
Moore, the former ERLC chairman, became a pariah to many Southern Baptists for publicly criticizing Trump’s candidacy in 2016 and for also criticizing Southern Baptists who supported him. For his stance, Moore became a go-to interview for liberal media, such as NPR and The New York Times, but he stepped down from the ERLC in 2021 after complaining he was living in “psychological terror” because of the Southern Baptist Convention.
Moore mocks 'evil and stupid' Smith
Moore, now editor in chief of Christianity Today, also commented this week about the Smith-Leatherwood controversy. “Sometimes the Venn diagram of evil and stupid is a perfect circle,” he wrote on X, referring to Smith and his failed attempt to oust Leatherwood.
According to Basham, whose Daily Wire beat includes contacts in the SBC and ERLC, Leatherwood was indeed in trouble for his statement about Biden but Russell Moore came to his rescue in a post on X. Not only did Moore defend his ERLC replacement, she told AFR host Jenna Ellis, Moore put pressure on the ERLC board to “walk back” its plans to punish the ERLC president.
Moore was also helped, Basham said, by his friends in the liberal news media at CNN, The New York Times, and Politico, among other outlets.
“A whole bunch of media figures, who are not Southern Baptists, not even Christians, many of them,” she told Ellis.
Basham was referring to her own eye-opening X post, published Wednesday, that showed screen shots of prominent columnists, reporters, and correspondents who shared Moore's post about Smith and the ERLC.
Basham created the montage of posts and retweets after she mocked on X for suggesting a "vast liberal conspiracy" against the ERLC. That mocking post came from Mike Cosper, who is employed by Christianity Today.
