Southern Baptist ethics leader's near ouster: How a board crisis sparked a scandal

Southern Baptist Convention ethics leader Brent Leatherwood penned a column on the afternoon of Sunday, July 21 commending President Joe Biden on deciding not to seek reelection.

Twenty-eight hours later, the Nashville-based Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission announced Leatherwood’s removal as the agency’s president in a 70-word news release.

Twelve hours after that, the ERLC announced it was rescinding the statement and Leatherwood was never in fact ousted.

The dramatic news spread like wildfire based on what seemed like conservative evangelical Christians retaliating against one of their own for speaking positively about a Democrat. But the politically sensational story was at its core a matter of trustee propriety.

Still, the reasons for Leatherwood’s initial ouster and the significance of his July 21 column on Biden remain a mystery largely due to the insulated and fast-paced nature of the decision-making beforehand.

On his own accord, ERLC trustees chair Kevin Smith went to great lengths to push for Leatherwood’s removal even though bylaws, best practices and informal conversations should have given Smith a different impression as to how to proceed. High-ranking ERLC trustees who comprise the board’s executive committee and correspondence with seven individuals with close knowledge of the last week’s events corroborated details of Smith’s actions in the short window between Leatherwood’s column on Biden and the initial news of his ouster.

The events disrupted ERLC leadership’s sense of cohesion and consistency between staff and trustees. It also eroded trust among some throughout the Nashville-based SBC in the effectiveness of the denomination’s system of democratic representation to lead influential and well-funded ministries.

“There was no meeting of the executive committee with a vote taken or any permission given for the actions taken by then-chair Kevin Smith,” said ERLC trustee officers Tony Beam, Amy Pettway, Nathan Lugbill and Anthony Cox in a statement in response to a request for comment for this story. Those officers, who comprise the board’s executive committee, previously issued a statement in news releases but didn’t comment on certain details as to what transpired last week.

Smith, who resigned from the ERLC board last week, did not respond to a request for comment.

"The staff at the ERLC serves Southern Baptist churches under our president Brent Leatherwood and fulfills our ministry assignment as our board directs us," said an ERLC spokesperson in a statement in response to a request for comment.

The series of events started the evening of Sunday, July 21, just hours after Leatherwood’s column on Biden published, when Smith sought to meet with Leatherwood in-person. Initially, Smith suggested they meet in Atlanta at the offices of the SBC-affiliated North American Mission Board, a central location for the two to drive from Florida and Nashville. But when Leatherwood didn’t agree to meet in Atlanta, Smith made the full trip up to Nashville and met with Leatherwood on Monday afternoon.

The meeting between Smith and Leatherwood concluded without both parties mutually agreeing that Leatherwood would resign. After that meeting, Smith proceeded to direct ERLC staff to issue the news release of Leatherwood’s removal, a request he made while claiming he was acting with proper authority.

Provisions in the ERLC bylaws conflict with Smith’s actions, chief among which is that a chair doesn’t have the sole authority to decide on a president’s removal. In this case, Smith’s actions were unknown to his fellow board officers or to any other trustee.

“None of the executive committee members (other than Kevin Smith) had interactions or discussions with the ERLC staff about the press release sent on July 22. We did not know about it until it was published,” said the ERLC trustee officers in their statement Wednesday. “None of us, as executive committee members, were aware that Kevin was planning to drive to Nashville to meet with Brent on July 22.”

Jon Whitehead, a trustee known for more vocal critiques of Leatherwood’s leadership and of Leatherwood’s predecessor, Russell Moore, said Smith’s process last week undermined the deeper intent to raise concerns that Whitehead believes may be legitimate regarding Leatherwood’s leadership.

“Certainly, I think it’s an example of ineffective governance whenever you make a very public decision that the folks you think will back you will not back you. That does not build confidence,” Whitehead said in an interview. “But the question is, was there a good reason to start the journey?”

Leatherwood's removal rescinded: SBC's public policy arm rescinds removal of president, chair steps down amid controversy

External turbulence, internal consistency

Due to the nature of the ERLC’s work plus the confluence of factional disputes in the SBC and a personal tragedy, Leatherwood has often found himself in the crosshairs during his short tenure.

The commission’s rejection of an anti-abortion “abolitionist” stance that calls for criminal penalties for women who receive abortions has mobilized opposition conservatives, who have sought to pull the convention further to the right and led to an ultimately unsuccessful push to abolish the commission at the 2022 SBC annual meeting in Anaheim.

Eight months later, a shooting at Covenant School, where Leatherwood’s children attend, led the SBC public policy leader to speak up for certain gun-reform proposals. Also, he became involved in a civil case with other Covenant parents seeking to prevent the release of the shooter’s writings. Both his comments on guns and opposition to the release of those writings animated critics of Leatherwood from a more right-wing camp.

Other animating issues then led to a renewed push to abolish the ERLC at this year’s SBC annual meeting in June in Indianapolis. Speaking against the motion, Oklahoma pastor Luke Holmes said in a floor speech that abolishing the ERLC is the “nuclear option” to resolving these disputes.

“It’s understandable that not everyone agrees with every action or stance,” Holmes said in his speech. “But we have established mechanisms for addressing these concerns: trustees, motions, public avenues of discourse and dialogue.”

The ERLC and other SBC-affiliated agencies, called entities, receive funding from the Cooperative Program, a denomination-wide budget supported by church giving. The commission receives the lowest share of that funding, yet it deals with issues about which Southern Baptists are the most passionate and differently opinionated.

This external instability necessitates steady trustee leadership, SBC President Clint Pressley said.

“When it comes to the floor of whether or not it should exist, the trustees are just going to have to step in and provide leadership in ways they wouldn’t normally do,” said Pressley, a North Carolina pastor who previously served as trustee chair for Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville. “When you have that sort of crisis, that’s when the officers have to really be diligent to the principles of whoever is leading and help discern the necessary steps.”

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On the convention’s behalf

Though perhaps the most unconventional example, Leatherwood isn't the first Southern Baptist executive to weather an embattled trusteeship.

Trustee fights over removing presidents in closed-door deliberations at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1994, and the North American Mission Board in 2006 and 2009 bred confusion among rank-and-file Southern Baptists. The most poignant example is that of Southwestern Seminary when the trustees voted 26-7 to fire then-president Russell Dilday and famously changed the locks to Dilday’s office immediately after.

The lack of information and competing public narratives between Dilday’s supporters and opponents on the board sparked an outcry at the seminary and throughout the SBC. Despite other stated reasons, Dilday’s dismissal was in reality due to divided loyalties to different Southern Baptist factions. Only later did some details emerge about the trustees' handling of Dilday’s dismissal, but the trustees' pattern of obfuscation only agitated student and faculty-led demonstrations on campus and others throughout the SBC, who protested by withholding giving to the Cooperative Program.

“Each trustee should understand they have been entrusted with this responsibility by the messengers of the annual Southern Baptist Convention meeting and should seek to represent the interests of our convention of churches in their appointed service,” said North Carolina pastor Matt Capps, who recently served as chair of the SBC Nominations Committee.

The SBC Nominations Committee recommends at the annual meeting a list of nominees for entity trustees that Southern Baptist voting delegates, called messengers, approve. This system of elected volunteer leaders is a linchpin in the convention’s bottom-up governance.

In fact, the ERLC has sought to further democratize trustee oversight through a bylaws overhaul. The new bylaws, approved at the September 2023 trustees meeting, more specifically spells out which actions require full board approval.

“The ERLC bylaws were recently amended to encourage broader participation within the full board,” former ERLC trustee chair Lori Bova, who rotated off the board in June and had served on the bylaws task force, said in a statement. “While bylaws cannot prevent someone from making a mistake, they provide swift remedy when an issue arises.”

Even with these recent bylaw changes, last week’s disorienting series of events showed the ERLC trustees room for improvement. “We want to make sure that every vital decision concerning the present and future success of the ERLC should be made by the full board of trustees,” the ERLC trustees executive committee said in a statement.

The trustees will meet for their major yearly meeting next month in Nashville.

More ERLC in-depth: How the Southern Baptist Convention became a powerful force in the fight against abortion

Liam Adams covers religion for The Tennessean. Reach him at ladams@tennessean.com or on social media @liamsadams.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: SBC ethics president's near ouster: How a board crisis became a scandal