(RNS) — Brent Leatherwood, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, resigned on Thursday (July 31), saying it was time for him to move on.
“After nearly four years leading this institution, it is time to close this chapter of my life,” Leatherwood said in a press release announcing his departure. “It has been an honor to guide this Baptist organization in a way that has honored the Lord, served the churches of our Convention, and made this fallen world a little better.”
The move comes after a tumultuous year for the ERLC, the public policy arm of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination. In summer 2024, after an attempt to abolish the agency failed during the SBC’s annual meeting, the former chair of the ERLC’s board announced that Leatherwood had been fired — only to be overruled hours later by the rest of the board.
Last month, nearly half (43%) of the delegates to the SBC’s annual meeting voted to shut the ERLC down — the fourth attempt to defund or disband the agency in recent years.
Leatherwood, who took office in 2022 after serving as interim leader for a year, is the third ERLC president in a row to step down under fire. Like his predecessor Russell Moore, who stepped down in 2021, Leatherwood was criticized for not being in line with President Donald Trump’s MAGA agenda. Critics also say the agency has been out of touch with local churches and has become too liberal on issues such as immigration. Those critics had called for Leatherwood’s resignation.
Scott Foshie, chair of the ERLC board, said he was grateful for Leatherwood’s leadership during a difficult period.
“Brent has led the commission well and demonstrated loving courage in the face of a divisive and increasingly polarizing culture in America,” he said in a statement.
The ERLC has become controversial during the Trump era. While Leatherwood, like past ERLC leaders, was a vocal critic of abortion and same-sex marriage and held conservative views on most social issues, he and the agency supported immigration reform rather than mass deportations, in large part because the SBC has for years passed resolutions calling for such reforms. He, like Southern Baptists in the past, also supported refugee resettlement — which also put him and the ERLC at odds with the MAGA movement.
Leatherwood also clashed with so-called abortion abolitionists, who want to pass laws that would jail people who have abortions. Like many other abortion foes, he opposed such laws. He also drew the ire of critics after he called on Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee to enact a so-called red flag law after the fatal shooting in 2023 of three students and three staffers at the Covenant School, a private Christian school in Nashville. Leatherwood’s children attended the school and were there on the day of the shooting.
The controversy over the ERLC has led some churches to withhold donations to missions programs and led other church leaders to wonder if the ERLC is more trouble than it is worth.
SBC President Clint Pressley, a North Carolina megachurch pastor, said he would be praying during the ERLC’s transition period. He has said in the past that he had concerns about the ERLC but stayed out of the debate over the agency during the vote at the SBC meeting in June.
“I wish Brent and his family all the best as I know it’s been a tough couple of years,” Pressley told RNS in a text message. “Praying for the ERLC trustees in the days ahead.”
Miles Mullin, an ERLC vice president, has been named acting president.
ERLC trustees plan to start a search committee and outline the process for finding a new president in the coming weeks, Foshie told RNS in an email. They also hope to address some of the issues that have caused conflict for the agency in recent years.
“Our trustee board is firmly committed to addressing the challenges that confront us so that our next ERLC president is best supported as he serves the Lord and Southern Baptists,” Foshie told RNS in an email. He also said Mullin does not want to be a candidate for the permanent role.
Leatherwood is the second SBC entity leader to step down in recent weeks. Ben Mandrell, the head of Lifeway, the SBC’s publishing arm, resigned earlier this month to become pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church, an influential SBC megachurch near Memphis, Tennessee.
In resigning, Leatherwood paid tribute to the staff at the ERLC, saying they “diligently worked to fashion policies that reflect what our Convention has itself articulated as priorities,” he said in the release.
“Whether it was leading the effort to defund Planned Parenthood, supporting concrete steps to try to bring an end to the plague of mass shootings and gun violence, placing a record number of life-saving ultrasound machines in pregnancy care clinics, or advocating for immigration reforms that both secure our nation’s borders and offer refuge for those fleeing persecution, it has been this Commission that has never wavered in serving as a light on Capitol Hill, before the courts, and in the culture,” Leatherwood said.