The president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), Brent Leatherwood, suddenly lost his job Monday in a historic and unprecedented move by trustee leadership.
A brief statement from ERLC gave no reasoning for Leatherwood’s termination, which came a day after he issued remarks applauding president Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw from the 2024 presidential race.
The next day, the chair of the ERLC board of trustees, Kevin Smith, apologized for a “consequential procedural mistake.”
Leatherwood had been on staff with ERLC—the public policy and advocacy arm for Southern Baptists—for the past seven years and president of the entity since 2021. Just a few hours before his termination was announced Monday evening, Leatherwood was still working and sharing ERLC resources on social media.
An increasingly vocal minority of Southern Baptists have called for the defunding of the ERLC year after year. Some of their ire was directed at Leatherwood, his unwillingness to endorse an abolitionist pro-life stance that would criminalize mothers who abort, and his calls for gun reform after his children survived the 2023 shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville.
Yet Leatherwood also had a reputation as an effective and respected leader for Southern Baptists in Washington, DC. At an ERLC luncheon last month, former vice president Mike Pence had recognized Leatherwood in particular, saying it was only with his advocacy and partnership that the previous Trump administration was able to advance certain pro-life and religious liberty measures.
In a brief statement issued Monday evening in a press release and in Baptist Press, the SBC’s news service, the ERLC said Leatherwood had been removed by the executive committee of the board of trustees, “in accordance with our bylaws.” The statement said further details and transition plans wouldn’t be shared until their board meeting in September.
On Tuesday morning, Smith wrote on social media:
The trustees of the @erlc steward the entity on behalf of Southern Baptists. In leading them, I made a consequential procedural mistake. The exec cmte and other trustees are Christ-honoring volunteers, who give much.
The mistake was mine; I apologize.
The ERLC bylaws allow its executive committee to “remove any officer of the Commission (including, without limitation, the President/Chief Executive Officer) without a Full Trustee Vote.”
The last time—and only time in recent memory—that an SBC entity president was fired by trustees was in 2018, when Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary’s board ousted Paige Patterson after a 13-hour-long meeting.
The ERLC statement was unsigned, and the ERLC did not respond to CT’s request for the names of the members of its executive committee who were tasked with voting on Leatherwood’s dismissal.
Monday’s news surprised Southern Baptists, including members of the ERLC’s larger board of trustees.
“I am so sad to see this development. Please pray for Brent and the Leatherwood family,” tweeted Philip Bethancourt, a Texas pastor who previously served as an ERLC vice president. “I believe that the @ERLC still has a pivotal role to play in the midst of this hostile cultural moment.”
The Center for Baptist Leadership—a new, conservative group calling for “institutional revitalization within the SBC”—backed the decision to remove Leatherwood, criticizing the ERLC and calling out Leatherwood’s recent comments on Biden.
Leatherwood was quoted in Baptist Press as saying, “Despite what some partisans will say, to walk away from power is a selfless act—the kind that has become all too rare in our culture.” He also wrote an article for the publication calling it “an astonishing moment for American history.”
The center’s statement also called for ERLC trustees to share their reasoning in September: “This is an opportunity for them to choose accountability and transparency over obstruction and spin as they reveal the reasons for removing Leatherwood. The ERLC needs better leadership. Southern Baptists should both demand and expect this.”
At the SBC annual meeting in June, Founders Ministry president and Florida pastor Tom Ascol made a motion to abolish the ERLC for becoming “increasingly distant from the values and concerns of the churches that finance it,” but the motion—like previous proposals to abolish or defund the entity—failed to receive a majority vote on the floor.
The ERLC received over $3 million from the SBC’s Cooperative Program last fiscal year, about 1.6 percent of the $191.8 million in Southern Baptist giving that was distributed to denominational entities and activities.
In Leatherwood’s address to the annual meeting, he said, “The work of this commission is not just rooted in this convention, it is responsive to this convention,” bringing up ERLC resources addressing gender confusion and political engagement and its advocacy around pro-life policies, international aid, and conscience rights.
Leatherwood succeeded Russell Moore, who led the ERLC until his resignation in 2021.
Moore also faced backlash for his advocacy and messaging, particularly around Donald Trump. Moore now serves as editor in chief of Christianity Today.
This is a breaking news story and will be updated as more information becomes available.
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