Three new and potentially explosive issues will come up for a vote by messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting Wednesday, June 12.
That will happen before the convention considers another highly controversial matter carried over from last year — a second reading of the so-called Law Amendment that would codify a total ban on SBC churches ordaining women, allowing women to preach or giving female staff members the title “pastor.”
The three new items originated as motions from the floor Tuesday and — unlike what normally happens — were not referred somewhere else for study or ruled out of order. Instead, they were scheduled for debate and vote.
The normal pattern in the SBC is to refer most all motions to the various entity trustees boards rather than allow up or down votes on them.
The three motions to be debated Wednesday morning would:
- Censure Al Mohler, Ben Mandrell and Bart Barber for signing on to an amicus brief related to a sexual abuse case in Kentucky.
- Request the incoming SBC president to appoint a task force to “examine all legal matters” related to the North American Mission Board between 2017 and 2024.
- Abolish the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.
Two of these motions touch on hot-button issues that have been simmering for years yet have not been put to a straight-up vote. The other, the censure of three leaders, is from a newer event related to the SBC’s entanglement with responding to sexual abuse.
If any one of this motions passes, it would be earthshaking in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination. If all three were to pass, it would signal a revolution.
Here’s why this matters.
Al Mohler
Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.; Mandrell, president of Lifeway Christian Resources in Nashville, Tenn.; and Barber, the current and outgoing SBC president all signed on to an amicus brief in a sexual abuse case in Kentucky that on its face has nothing to do with the SBC. The case does involve expansion of the statute of limitations for sexual abuse cases in Kentucky and the ability of victims to sue third parties who knew about abuse but did not stop it.
Southern Seminary, Lifeway, the SBC, the SBC Executive Committee, Mohler, Mandrell and others are named defendants in another case based in Kentucky in which the daughter of a former seminary student who also managed Lifeway’s campus bookstore alleges she was severely abused by her pastor father for years, even though as a child she reported it to a seminary employee.
Sexual abuse survivors and their advocates were outraged when they learned of the amicus brief that put the SBC opposing a known abuse survivor who, it turns out, was a member of a Southern Baptist church while she was being abused.
Ben Mandrell
Barber has apologized for signing the brief on behalf of the SBC; Mohler has issued an explanation of why his lawyers told him to sign it; and Mandrell has said nothing. BNG previously reported that Lifeway originated the amicus brief.
Trustees of the SBC Executive Committee expressed shock that their former interim president — who later resigned for falsifying his resume — had signed the brief on advice of Lifeway’s legal counsel. But trustees of Southern Seminary and Lifeway have been silent on the matter, even when pressed by Southern Baptist pastors and lay leaders for answers.
Because the SBC power structure normally circles the wagons to protect agency heads, for this potential censure to be put to a vote is a big deal.
If messengers exonerate the three leaders, they will signal they don’t care about sexual abuse survivors — which will further the SBC’s bad press on this subject. But if they do censure the three leaders, such a public rebuke would be historic and damning.
The motion to censure was made by Louis Cook, pastor of Oak City Baptist Church in Oak City, N.C.
NAMB problems
Critics of the SBC North American Mission Board have been unsuccessful year after year in demanding more financial accountability from NAMB and its president, Kevin Ezell. Typically, motions calling for financial transparency get referred to NAMB’s own trustees, who are the very overseers accused of lacking transparency.
Kevin Ezell
This year in Indianapolis, one motion calling for a forensic audit of NAMB’s finances got automatically referred to NAMB trustees — just as in previous years. A messenger managed to challenge that referral and call for a vote on the original motion itself, but his motion failed to get the required majority.
Then later the same day, the Committee on Order of Business let through a motion by Joel Breidenbaugh, lead pastor of Gospel Centered Church in Apopka, Fla. His motion asks the incoming SBC president to appoint a task force to investigate NAMB’s “legal matters” between 2017 and 2024.
That time frame corresponds with a defamation case brought against NAMB and Ezell by Will McRaney, former executive director of the Baptist Convention of Maryland and Delaware. McRaney alleges, and NAMB does not deny, that he was fired by his own board when Ezell threatened to withhold $1 million in funding unless McRaney was fired. McRaney opposed Ezell’s new plan for church planting that cut out a longstanding partnership with the two-state convention.
Through seven years of litigation — at one point reaching the U.S. Supreme Court — NAMB and its attorneys have made arguments that critics say violate Baptist history and polity. McRaney has warned if NAMB wins against him, the repercussions will be felt through ascending liability claims across the nation.
All this relates to a net of concerns about Ezell’s perceived arrogance, threatening of employees and SBC partners, lack of accountability and excessive spending. NAMB’s trustees have refused to enter the fray and, like Lifeway’s trustees, have been entirely silent.
ERLC
However many critics NAMB and Ezell have, the ERLC has more. Following a decades-long pattern that haunted its predecessor agency, the ERLC is a lightning rod because of its work with some of the most divisive social issues of the day.
Brent Leatherwood
Previous ERLC head Russell Moore said he was driven out of the job by the unreasonable demands of far-right critics. Current ERLC head Brent Leatherwood — a staunch anti-abortionist — has been criticized for everything from not being anti-abortion enough to believing religious liberty ought to extend to people who are not Christians.
Given this long history of controversy — and having not been satisfied by the response of ERLC trustees — critics on the far right have sought instead to shut down the entire agency. Messengers to an SBC annual meeting do not have the authority to hire or fire an agency head — one motion this year to demand Leatherwood’s resignation was ruled out of order — but they do have the authority to create or kill a denominational entity.
Thus, having been unsuccessful in reshaping the ERLC to their extreme views, these critics now will get the vote they’ve wanted — an attempt to silence the ERLC entirely.
Related articles:
Why is Lifeway silent on sexual abuse amicus brief? | Opinion by Mark Wingfield
Open letter to NAMB trustees warns of dangers in NAMB’s defense of McRaney case
SBC Executive Committee files amicus brief supporting NAMB against Will McRaney