(RNS) — During their annual meeting in Dallas next month, Southern Baptists will sing, bless missionaries, pass a budget, listen to sermons and engage in lively debate about a host of issues.
Among those issues: what to do with the denomination’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. For nearly a decade, the ERLC has been a source of controversy as the nation’s largest Protestant denomination has navigated the cultural and political divides of the Trump era.
While Southern Baptists, like many evangelicals, have been strong supporters of President Donald Trump in the voting booth, some of the president’s policy decisions and personal conduct have clashed with Baptist ethics and beliefs.
That’s left the ERLC, which speaks to ethical issues and public policy debates, occasionally at odds with the denomination’s 12.7 million members, leading to three attempts to disband or defund the agency over the past decade.
Clint Pressley, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, said he has spoken to a number of Southern Baptists about the ERLC – including Texas megachurch pastor Jack Graham, a past critic of the agency.
Some like what the agency is doing, he said. Others don’t.
Southern Baptist Convention President Clint Pressley at the SBC annual meeting at the Indiana Convention Center in Indianapolis, June 12, 2024. (RNS photo/AJ Mast)
While he suspects there will be a motion to close the agency at the denomination’s annual meeting in June, Pressley said the future of the ERLC is not up to him. Even if he had concerns about it, he’s got no power to make a decision. Instead, that power rests with church representatives known as messengers.
“I think those concerns about the ERLC will be answered by the messengers,” said Pressley, pastor of Hickory Grove Baptist Church …