Oops. Southern Baptist agency announces firing of its leader, then retracts that announcement

AP — In under 48 hours, the head of the staunchly conservative public-policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention rankled fellow Baptists by applauding President Joe Biden’s “selfless act” of withdrawing his candidacy for re-election. Then, his agency reported he was fired — and now they have reaffirmed his leadership.

The head-spinning series of events started Sunday, but by Tuesday morning, the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission announced that no, leader Brent Leatherwood wasn’t fired. Rather, he has the full support of his top board members — though its chairman resigned and apologized for the erroneous announcement.

On Monday, the commission issued a statement that the ERLC’s executive committee had removed Leatherwood in accordance with its bylaws.

But on Tuesday, it said, “There was not an authorized meeting, vote, or action taken by the Executive Committee. Kevin Smith has resigned as Chair of the Executive Committee.”

Leatherwood “has our support moving forward,” the executive committee statement said.

Smith, a Florida pastor, resigned both as chairman and as a board member, and he apologized Tuesday, according to a statement on Baptist Press, the denomination’s official news agency.

“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,” Smith’s statement said. “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. This was an error on my part, and I accept full responsibility. At this time, the Executive Committee does not wish to move forward with my course of action.”

The previous ERLC vice chairman, Tony Beam, is now chairman.

Leatherwood posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, Tuesday morning: “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 had led the embattled agency through three years as the policy spokesman for the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, but he had not joined in the increasingly public support among many Southern Baptists for former President Donald Trump.

After Biden’s announcement Sunday that he would not seek re-election, Leatherwood called it a “selfless act.”

“We should all express our appreciation that President Biden has put the needs of the nation above his personal ambition,” Leatherwood said.

Leatherwood’s statement prompted fierce blowback on social media from some within the denomination who had already targeted his agency for criticism amid a larger battle to pull the already-conservative denomination even further to the right.

Clint Pressley, the SBC’s newly elected president, joined in belittling the idea that Biden acted on principle.

“Sounds right,” Pressley posted on X in response to a post by a Southern Baptist professor. That professor, Andrew Walker, said Biden’s withdrawal was not an “act of valor” but rather a case of “ultra-powerful” Democrats forcing him out.

In a follow-up statement Tuesday evening, the ERLC executive committee acknowledged the events had been “destabilizing” and that it would need to rebuild trust in the agency among Southern Baptists.

It said Smith acted unilaterally and that no vote was ever taken to remove Leatherwood.

Staff members had issued Monday’s announcement of Leatherwood’s firing, believing “they were acting under the appropriate authority of the board,” the statement said — but committee members themselves were taken by surprise and ensured the statement was retracted.

“To be clear, this retraction was about following the procedures laid out in the bylaws of the ERLC, not about responding to pressure from outside organizations,” the statement added.

The committee “recognizes a wide range of opinions on the work of the ERLC,” as evidenced by an unsuccessful attempt to defund the agency at last month’s SBC annual meeting.

But such discontent does not rise “to the level of a dismissible offense,” it said. “We find Brent Leatherwood to be a man of utmost moral and ethical integrity.”

While Leatherwood has been a target of pro-Trump advocates within the SBC, Smith doesn’t fit that description. Smith, elected in 2023, was the first Black chairman of the ERLC, according to the agency. He roiled a panel discussion at a sideline event during the 2022 SBC annual meeting when he said some Southern Baptists “lost their minds” over the election of a Black president in Barack Obama and that some of them became “political whores with this whole Trump stuff.”

Leatherwood came to his job three years ago with conservative credentials. He was a former executive director of the Tennessee Republican Party. He was also a director of communications and policy strategy in the Tennessee General Assembly and worked for several years on Capitol Hill in Washington.

Leatherwood is the father of three children who were at the Covenant School in Nashville, last year when it was attacked by a gun-wielding assailant who killed three adults and three other children. Leatherwood joined some other Covenant parents in an unsuccessful effort to advocate for legislation that would keep firearms away from people who could harm themselves or others.

Leatherwood also denounced the publication in some news media of documents attributed to the killer, saying that it only worsened the trauma to families of the schoolchildren. He was the driving force behind a group of Covenant parents who went to court to keep the shooter’s writings from being released to media and other groups that had filed public records requests. A judge recently blocked the release of the writings.

Leatherwood and his agency had advocated staunchly conservative stances in areas such as opposing abortion, in keeping with official SBC stances, though he resisted calls to advocate legal penalties for women who seek abortions.

At this year’s annual meeting of the SBC, hundreds attended an unofficial event featuring a video-recorded address by Trump.

But Leatherwood hosted a separate event, also attended by hundreds, in which he interviewed former Vice President Mike Pence, another staunch conservative who received the wrath of Trump and many of the former president’s followers after he refused to block certification of Biden’s 2020 election victory.

That latter event underscored how the commission has continued to occupy a narrow niche — advocating for deeply conservative policies without aligning itself with Trump-oriented politics.

While Leatherwood maintained his position in office, the effort to oust him reflects “the MAGA-ness of the SBC in much of its leadership,” said Baptist historian Bill Leonard, referring to Trump’s Make America Great Again slogan.

Leonard said that although Southern Baptists have touted biblical “inerrancy” as essential, they have made compromises “in their support for Trump and Christian nationalism.”

“It appears that as their numbers decline evangelistically, they are looking to government to undergird their kind of Christianity,” said Leonard, author of “God’s Last & Only Hope: The Fragmentation of the Southern Baptist Convention.” “The history of the church, to me at least, reveals that that’s always been a historically doomed practice.”

The ERLC has long been a magnet of controversy. While it doesn’t endorse candidates, it’s the official policy arm for the country’s largest evangelical Protestant body — one whose members have been reliable foot soldiers in the conservative Christian political movement that has strongly aligned with Republican causes.

In 2021, Russell Moore resigned after eight years heading the ERLC. Moore was targeted for harshly criticizing evangelical support for Trump and said he also faced a backlash over the agency’s attempts to address sexual abuse and racism in the largely white denomination.

On Monday, Moore called the report of Leatherwood’s removal “shameful and disgraceful” in a post on X. He called Leatherwood a “great Christian man who lived through his children barely surviving a school shooting. Southern Baptists, how much more of this are you going to let go on? You cannot pretend not to see what is happening in your name.”

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AP reporter Travis Loller contributed to this report.

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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

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