Will Brent Leatherwood Take the ERLC in a Different Direction?

Conversations That Matter

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Welcome once again to the Conversations That Matter podcast. I'm your host, John Harris. Glad to be back in the chair today, not on the road, looking at a fall day, an overcast fall day outside as I think we're still actually getting the system from the hurricane that hit

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Florida. It's traveled on up the coast and I think that's what's causing what I'm seeing right now. But we definitely need the rain, so I'm thankful for it.

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But man, it's been, in my life personally, very busy the last few weeks and I was able to celebrate most recently over the weekend with family, my grandfather's 100th birthday, which is incredible.

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I can't believe that he's still able to walk and he has his mind, he has his wits about him, he can still make jokes.

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And so that was a big deal. We had actually like three different kind of celebrations during the course of the week.

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And it's just, it's wonderful to be with family. So I was in California for the last week and we flew back very late getting in on Sunday night.

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And we, of course, we're on California time. So, and it always happens this way, doesn't it?

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We get in and I'm waiting there for our, we had parked our car at a garage and I'm waiting there for like,

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I don't know, 45 minutes. And finally I said, you know, I don't know if the shuttle's coming. So I called the company and they said, well, we're waiting for the police to show up because there's been an accident with the shuttle.

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So I thought, okay, I gotta take a taxi. So I took a taxi and we got to have that experience, taxi riding in New Jersey and then get into our car and we drove whatever it is, the two hours almost it is to get to our house.

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And so we get to bed late and I'm laying there exhausted from the day and I can't sleep because I'm on California time.

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So I was probably up to like three in the morning, Eastern time, but Western time, that's only midnight, only midnight.

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And I know some of you, you go to bed at like 7, 8 p .m. But in the course of, it's funny to me, in the course of only a week, actually a week and a half,

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I acclimated to staying up to like 1130 midnight and I'm still trying to get out of it.

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I'm still, my days are lopsided. So I don't know what I'm gonna do, but I need to do something exerting, something that makes me really tired,

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I guess. So I'll go to bed earlier. Anyway, that's what I'm going through. Oh, the woes of first world problems, right?

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And then I get back and my propane tank is the company that I use for fuel.

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They haven't delivered the propane tank and it's been like three weeks. I've said, I need a propane tank for the upstairs apartment that we've been renovating.

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We're almost done with that. And it's still not there. So I've been on the phone yesterday and today and I'm probably gonna have to switch companies.

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So that's, when you have, what I have like four subs, it's five,

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I think actually, five subs. That is also an ordeal. So I'm dealing with that. And then we had another birthday, family birthday party last night, which was great.

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But I just feel like I'm like driving here and there. And I sat down at this chair right here that I'm sitting in right now.

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And I thought, deep breath, I'm home. And we're gonna get into some, some, now some social justice stuff.

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But seriously though, there's been a lot on my agenda as far as things to talk about.

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People have been asking me a lot of questions and I realize, I said all that I just said to give you this information.

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I am getting to it. It's just been one thing after another. So yes, the questions about the retreat,

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I am gonna be answering those within like the next two days. The questions about speaking or just other things.

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I know a lot of people have sent me, John, have you seen this? Have you seen that? I am keeping an eye on things as much as I can.

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But there's gonna be just a lot of me digesting information over the next two days. And so I wanted to give you some things that have been a little bit on the back burner since I've been traveling.

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That there, it's old news, but it's not. It's old news in the sense that some of the things that I wanna talk about have other people have been talking about, but I don't think they brought up some of the things that I'm gonna bring up about those situations.

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So we're gonna do some SBC stuff, I think, today and tomorrow. And then after that, we'll get to some other things.

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We'll step outside SBC stuff and we'll talk about more national things. And that's the plan at least.

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We'll see how that goes. For those who have asked about the book club that we're gonna do, yes, we're gonna do that still.

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And the book is, the first book we're gonna go over is Ideas Have Consequences. And I explained, I think it's important to have really good books, really good information that helps us understand the context in which we're living.

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We also need really good biblical analysis, exegetical preaching, understanding of the text.

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We need that. And I think a lot of you who listen, I'm not saying all of you, but a lot of you, I think, have that. You have resources to go to, whether it's,

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I was about to say desiring God, and then I caught myself. I meant renewing your mind.

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Is it renewing your mind? R .C. Sproul, what's R .C. Sproul's? I'm forgetting the name of his.

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Well, R .C. Sproul. You listen to R .C. Sproul or Grace to You, John MacArthur, or you have a pastor, hopefully a good local pastor, that you're gleaning from and you're in the word yourself.

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That's the most important thing. But I think often what, I think in terms of supplements, what needs to be supplemented oftentimes is an understanding of the world we live in.

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You can't apply the scripture you're learning, at least as well, when you don't understand, and you don't have to be an expert, like philosopher or something, but at least you need to know a little bit about what's going on.

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And I think there's so much deception out there, especially in the Christian world, so much just incomplete or flat out wrong analysis of what we're living in and what the working issues are, that I think it neutralizes

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Christians. Even Christians who understand the Bible very well, they don't know how to exactly apply all the principles that they have in their mind because they're misreading what is right in front of them.

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And so my purpose with the book club, at least initially, is to give you some really good books that I think help you understand the context in which we're living.

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And the first one is gonna be The Ideas Have Consequences by Richard Weaver. And this isn't like a Christian book in the sense that we often think of a

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Christian genre of books. This is really just a book, kind of pop philosophy, but it's analyzing the world that we live in.

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And even though it was written in 1947, it's a critique of modernity. And I think it would help a lot of us.

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I know it helped me tremendously in understanding how to navigate issues. So that's gonna be coming probably closer to the holidays.

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And I think it's important we do this also just to have a positive, something positive that we're about something.

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So it's not just, look at what these evangelical leaders are doing. Look how they're deviating from biblical orthodoxy.

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But we're also rebuilding also. We have something positive that we want to advocate.

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And so starting out with some books that I can recommend to you, not just books that we're going through for the purpose of showing you the error, but books that actually have something positive.

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I think that's important. We need that. So that's coming probably closer to the holidays. I'll let you know. If you're a patron,

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I'm figuring out ways to include you in a more intimate fashion. I'm not sure exactly how that's all gonna work yet, but there will be probably a live stream link that you'll have, and the recording will be that particular link.

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And then you'll be able to participate in a chat box or questions or something like that, something of that nature.

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And then I'll broadcast it to everyone on the podcast, but the normal listener won't have the opportunity to interact like the patrons will.

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So that's what I'm thinking. So anyway, that's coming. The retreat's coming up.

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You can, by the way, still sign up. We are past the deadline, but still have not filled up. There's still some spots left.

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So you'll wanna get on it quick, but you can still sign up for the retreat. I'll put the link in the info section for that,

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October 28th through 30th with Dr. Russell Fuller. It's gonna be a great time. And I know some of you have been maybes, and I would encourage you to get off the fence and commit if you're gonna come.

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So more information for those who have committed to coming later in the week. Right now though, before we get started with today's topic in which we'll start examining the

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ERLC a little bit and just some changes there, and we'll see how far it takes us into the Southern Baptist world,

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Now, let's get into what I wanted to talk about today, and this is now going back at least a few weeks ago, but I'm on the website for the

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ERLC. This is the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission for the Southern Baptist Convention, and here's my prediction for the

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ERLC. They have a new president, Brent Leatherwood, and my prediction is more of the same.

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You're not gonna get someone that comes into the ERLC that's going to change the direction of the

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ERLC. Russell Moore obviously was the previous head of the

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ERLC before he went to Christianity Today, and he's now the editor -in -chief there. He obviously led the

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Southern Baptist Convention in a very left -leaning direction. If you doubt me, go look up all the videos and podcasts

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I've done on Russell Moore. We've talked about it. Off the top of my head, I could probably rattle off a number of things that Russell Moore did while he was in that position to compromise

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Southern Baptists. He was the one that said he wouldn't attend a homosexual wedding, but he would go to the reception for a homosexual wedding.

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Well, what does that mean? He played this kind of, this

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I'm conservative, but I'm also kind of liberal, I'm on the fence, so often, and what it ended up doing in a conservative denomination like the

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Southern Baptists is it pushed the needle left. At least he helped a lot with pushing the needle left, and I also know that from being a seminary student at Southeastern.

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I know how many of the young seminarians kind of looked to Dr. Russell Moore as this just wise sage, this person who was able to, in a very nuanced way, navigate cultural landmines that are normally problems for Christians, but he could do it in a winsome way, in which, let's just say the world, the forces against Christianity weren't offended, and they respected

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Dr. Russell Moore. I mean, he got to write for the New York Times, the Washington Post, and he was prophetic, and his prophetic -ness was him calling out the church, conservative

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Christians for hypocrisy in certain ways. He put a lot more energy towards calling out the church, quote -unquote, than he did calling out the world and the sins that are popular that the church is tempted by, and it's sad to me.

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So we did a lot of material over the last few years on Dr. Russell Moore, his immigration policies, his partnership with the

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Evangelical Immigration Table, his sexuality and his just halfway measures on sexual issues, homosexuality in particular, on his disdain for Evangelicals who supported

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President Trump. I don't really know what else to call it. It really was. And so with Russell Moore, you had the

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ERLC going in this terrible direction, and the

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Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission hasn't really changed. Some conservatives want to abolish it.

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Some just thought, well, if we get the right people in there, then we could have a better Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

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The Southern Baptist Convention can really do a lot better. It can get involved in politics in better ways.

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And so the moment came very recently when the new head of the

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Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission was named, and that's Brent Leatherwood. Now, Brent Leatherwood has been with the

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Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission for some time. He was serving as the acting president since September, 2021.

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And he had been previously involved as the executive director of the Tennessee Republican Party, the director of communications and policy strategy in the

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Tennessee General Assembly. And he worked for several years on Capitol Hill. And so he is someone,

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Russell Moore came from Democrat politics. Well, Brent Leatherwood came from Republican politics. Isn't that good? And I thought at the time, this is someone from within the

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ERLC. This is someone who's been there. This isn't gonna be someone who's gonna come in and change the direction and break everything up.

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They're just not gonna let that happen. So I was not surprised to find out that Brent Leatherwood was very much in the same vein as Russell Moore.

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And so how do you know that, John? Well, let me play for you this clip first, and you tell me what you think. Does this sound like he's gonna change the direction from where Russell Moore took it?

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Or does this sound like he's going to keep the direction going the same way it has been for a while?

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What are some very tangible things that Christians can do to engage the culture in the midst of a global pandemic and in the midst of such a volatile political season?

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Yeah. My boss, Russell Moore, one of the things that really attracted me to come in and serve here at the

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ERLC is, he's got this phrase, we need to engage the culture without losing the gospel.

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And so what we try and counsel Christians to do is get out there and engage people.

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All the issues that matter, the only issues that Christians really care about, but do so in a way that builds a constructive bridge so that the gospel can actually be shared with people who might be unbelieving, might be skeptical, just overall a watching world.

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Because we are ambassadors for Christ, and particularly in this culture that is fallen.

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And a lot of people would say is very adversarial towards Christianity, which

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I mean, newsflash, since Genesis three, culture has been adversarial towards us.

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But what I would say is just make sure that you are comporting yourself, you are conducting yourself in a way that honors

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Christ. And that is a way that I tried to govern myself in my previous roles.

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I ran the Tennessee Republican Party for four years before coming to this role and ran a number of campaigns prior to that.

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And I always tried to govern myself with this principle in mind.

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Is it, do folks find you agreeable to disagree with? Are you a joy to disagree with?

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In other words, you can have very deep disagreements, but are folks, do they see charity emanating from you?

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Do they see that you are actually trying to help them along? And I think if we all did that as Christians, particularly in this chaotic, very polarized moment that we're living in, man, that would go a whole, that'd go a long way.

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Well, there you have it. Brent Leatherwood wanting to follow the pattern of Russell Moore in engaging culture.

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Engaging culture without losing the gospel, he says. Now this particular interview dropped on YouTube November 2nd, 2020, and Russell Moore was still at the

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ERLC at that point. And so Brent Leatherwood is basically saying, this is the pattern, this is who

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I admire, we're gonna do it this way. Except for the fact that if you think about it, and if you've listened to this program for any amount of time,

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Dr. Russell Moore did compromise the gospel. I give an example in Christianity and social justice religions and conflict, where Dr.

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Russell Moore says at the MLK 50 event that Christians who don't care enough about sanitation workers and other social justice issues, they need the gospel preached to them again because they don't really have it.

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But you know who had it was Martin Luther King Jr. And of course, Martin Luther King Jr. was a false teacher.

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He didn't have the gospel. He didn't have, he wasn't Orthodox in his understanding of the gospel. And yet here you have

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Dr. Russell Moore in that particular speech saying, follow the pattern of MLK.

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He had, he knew how to really preach the gospel. And Christians today, evangelicals today, they don't have it because they just don't care enough about justice issues.

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So who's, what's the basis for the, for receiving, understanding, apprehending the gospel?

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What's the basis for the finished work of Christ being applied to our accounts? Is it our works?

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Is it the amount, the level to which we care about social justice? Or is it

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Jesus Christ's work and his work alone? That's the question. And that's always been the question, the soteriological question with social justice.

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And Russell Moore at best monies the water. I would say he preaches a false gospel at times.

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And this is the person that Brent Leatherwood thinks really does a good job because, you know, he builds this constructive bridge to the watching world.

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And how does he do that? Well, it's a joy to disagree with, if it's a joy to disagree with you and from the world standpoint, from people who disagree with Christianity, then you must be doing it right.

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And the question I have is from whose perspective? Is it, does the watching world that hates

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Christianity, when they disagree with Christians, are they thinking such a joy to disagree with this person?

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And because they say that you're then vindicated, or is it, I mean, could you wind up with a scenario where you've done everything you possibly can?

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You've spoken in a very nice tone, but they're still offended because you've spoken the truth. You've said that marriage is between a man and a woman, and they just can't take that, even though you say it very gently.

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There's some Bible verses I think that apply to this. There's many actually, Matthew 10, 22. You will be hated by all because of my name.

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And, but it is the one who has endured to the end and who will be saved. John 15, 18, if the world hates you, you know that it hated me before it hated you.

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And we could go on and on. There's so many verses. And in the Old Testament as well, there's verses along these lines. So if you look at the

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Old Testament example of what being prophetic is, there's a lot of hatred, especially towards the people that are being confronted for their sin, which are people that are disobeying the law of God, and in blatant ways, idolatry, sexual immorality, and they don't wanna be corrected.

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And Russell Moore saves his powder. He keeps it dry until there's an evangelical to blast for some kind of hypocrisy or something he can come up with.

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That's the way that Russell Moore has practiced being quote unquote prophetic. It's not the pattern you have from the

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Old Testament. It's not the pattern you see in Jesus or the disciples. In fact, if the world loves you, that's a bad sign.

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Now, you do have verses like in 1 Timothy 3, verse seven, you have verses that say that if one wants to be an elder, it's in the qualifications, he must have a good reputation with those outside the church so that it will, he will not fall into the reproach and snare of the devil.

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Well, why is that there? Well, it's simple. Think about the job that you have. Are you ethical on the job?

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Are you pilfering from your employer? Are you, if you're doing unethical things, then that's not something that's going to get you a good reputation necessarily in the world.

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If it's hurting other people, people that you're accountable to, people that rely on you, people you have obligations to.

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So if your family, even if they're not Christian, knows that you're stealing from them or abusing them in some way, and you'd have a bad reputation because of that, that's a good indication that you shouldn't be an elder.

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And so I think, I'm trying to think of verses that you could appeal to to say that you must have a good reputation with the world.

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This one though, I don't think would, it wouldn't be, at best, what it would mean is that you just have a good, overall a good character.

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So you could have someone, I had employers like this, who just did not agree with my social views that came from Christianity at all.

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Yet they knew I was a good employer. And I was, I had a good reputation. I've always had good reputations on the jobs that I've had pretty much.

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So that's what 1 Timothy is looking for in the actual relationships where you have obligations, where people can see your day -to -day life, or are you who you say you are.

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I can think of Matthew 5, 16 as well as another verse that might apply. It says, let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works and glorify your

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Father who is in heaven. Now, the question I think here is what mechanism exists for that transfer or that, not transfer, but that reaction of glorifying

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God based upon noticing these good works. Well, that's gonna be, I think, a work of God. That's going, it doesn't come from a darkened heart because in the book of John, it says that the darkness hated the light.

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And because its deeds were evil, men hated light because their deeds were evil. So they run towards darkness.

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That's the natural state of man. So if you let your light shine, then when people see your good works and they glorify your

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Father who is in heaven, that is what we're commanded to do. But that doesn't mean that people who hate God, that's gonna be their reaction.

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God's gonna have to do a work in order for that to happen. That's what I believe. So, because I have to make sense of all the various verses, and there's so many about the world hating us as Christians.

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Matthew 24, nine, same book, right? That we just quoted from about letting your light shine before men.

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Then they will deliver you to tribulation and will kill you. And you will be hated by all nations because of my name. Sounds great, right?

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You have to just, you have to realize what the full, the full spectrum of what

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Christianity, what the Bible teaches on this. You have to understand that, I think, first before you can start making these, honestly, irresponsible statements that Brent Leatherwood makes about, well, you need to be a joy to disagree with.

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I think there's a sense in which we can say, yeah, you shouldn't be a raving, raging lunatic, and you shouldn't be just going off on people, and you shouldn't be just angry at full steam, and the anger of man is not actually the righteousness of God.

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But that's not what he said. He said that you should build a constructive bridge to a watching world, meaning the people that disagree with Christianity, and you should be a joy to disagree with.

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From their perspective today, I don't see how that's going to be possible in most instances.

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I mean, there's no way to sugarcoat that you believe in traditional or biblical marriage. How? How do you make, how do you get someone from the other side of that debate to say, well, it's just a joy disagreeing with you?

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It's gonna become more rare and more rare, and there's wartime leaders and there's peacetime leaders. And in the situation we're in right now,

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Brent Leatherwood is showing he's not a wartime leader. If that's his posture, if it's not, we need to take every thought captive to Christ.

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We need to destroy these earthly philosophies that are making war against Christ. We need to make sure the church remains pure because there's so many threats from the outside.

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We need to make sure we are a true prophetic voice, which means the world is going to be angry at us. And guess what? When they persecute us for Jesus, we count it all joy.

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That's what you need to hear from Brent Leatherwood, and he's not saying it. He's not saying it. So that's

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Russell Moore -esque, and that's, I think, why a lot of people who knew who

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Brent Leatherwood was weren't that excited about this. But I wanted you to hear from his mouth exactly what he's saying.

26:41

So, well, John, maybe Brent Leatherwood is more in that Russell Moore vein, but what about the positions he has?

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Maybe he's not as radical or social justice -minded as Russell Moore. Well, here's

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Brent Leatherwood on social justice, specifically the BLM iteration of social justice.

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The sanctity of human life from the womb to the tomb, and part of that is social justice reform, and we look at what happened earlier this year with the killings of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, and the church must acknowledge, right, that even in the midst of a highly -

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Contentious. Pretentious, yes, that we're recognizing that the human dignity and sanctity of life is that wide gap from beginning to end.

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That's right, yeah. And that we need to stand and be a part of the answer to the world's problem in that regard, right?

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That's right. I mean, look, Christians are called to be advocates for the widow, the orphan, and the marginalized.

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And for folks who, you know, they feel embattled by their local law enforcement,

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I really feel like we can be a voice that gets in there to help rectify that situation, because you can both affirm, right, that the vast majority of police officers out there are good folks that are just trying to keep community safe, but then at the same time realize that maybe some of the policies themselves are in some ways oppressing the folks that are in the community.

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And so, I think, like, we can bridge that gap. This is not an impossible thing to bridge.

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And I think we could be a really helpful voice in that. And, you know, you mentioned several instances that have taken place over the last year that are just heartbreaking, you know?

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So whether it was George Floyd or Breonna Taylor or Ahmaud Arbery, those are instances that should grieve the heart of Christians.

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And I feel like we have a duty to speak up for those individuals, for their families that have been afflicted, and to say that we can do better, because that's what

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God calls us to. So you can see he accepts the basic premise of much of the

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BLM movement, although where he deviates somewhat is he tries to say, well, you know, most police officers, they're not bad, but he blames policy.

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So these policies, though, are, and we need to change them. He doesn't get specific. What policies?

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What policies would have led to different outcomes, I wonder, with George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery?

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What was the flaw that the RLC can then step in and do what he's saying, bridge the gap?

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I don't think you're gonna get specifics. It's the assumption that these things are motivated somehow by racism is just, it's there in this particular clip, that it's not all police officers, but there is this hyper -focus on incidences that BLM has then used to try to push for a narrative that there's systemic injustice in police departments and that there needs to be fundamental change somehow.

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And Brent Leatherwood is going along with that. So instead of pushing back, which is,

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I think, what you would need to hear from someone on the ERLC, who's gonna lead the ERLC, and pushback would look like, you know, listen, we're getting a false narrative here about the police, and it's tragic, and we need to realize that this is actually harming real people when police officers stop doing their jobs.

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It's called the Ferguson effect. And they don't police areas. They pull out of areas. Their rules of engagement are less aggressive.

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And so you end up letting criminals do what criminals do. And we need to, as Christians, take a stand against that.

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We need to uphold law and order. We need to make sure that there's not this misunderstanding and misrepresentation, lying, right?

31:34

That's kind of a bad thing. And this unequal weights and measures in which when things happen to white people that are comparable, they're not focused on at all.

31:43

It's only those particular circumstances that will forward the agenda that paints the police as somehow racist.

31:50

We need to make sure that we're not in league with people who are lying and using unequal weights and measures to forward amounts to a

31:59

Marxist agenda. You're not hearing that from him, though. He goes along with it once again, which is similar to Russell Moore.

32:06

So I don't expect any change from the ERLC based on that. Well, you say, well, John, maybe the greatest threat though is the whole

32:13

COVID stuff we saw. We saw what the federal government did to churches and how churches were marked in so many areas as non -essential, whereas even liquor stores were essential.

32:23

How does that work? Well, here's Brent Leatherwood on that particular topic. Listen for yourself.

32:29

One of the main things I think that a lot of Christians are asking today is with everything that's going on with John MacArthur in California and other pastors throughout the nation, is religious liberty under attack in America?

32:46

You know, actually, if you just look at this just expired Supreme Court term,

32:51

I mean, we're talking here the 1st of October, so a new Supreme Court term has started, but the one that just ended in June, actually, if you just take a step back, religious liberty is in many ways the strongest that it has been, at least in recent history.

33:10

We just had a Supreme Court case that was decided, the Our Lady of Guadalupe case, where the majority opinion actually cited the amicus brief that the

33:22

RLC submitted to the court, which we were thrilled about. I mean, that's just not something that happens a lot.

33:30

Now, granted, you kind of have to be a bit of a legal nerd or a court nerd to probably really appreciate that, but the core of the finding stated that churches and religious institutions, they can hire people consistent with their beliefs, and there's nothing that any secular institution or government can do to overcome that.

33:53

So essentially, what that means is churches like yours, churches like the one I go to, they are protected in their orthodox beliefs to build the teams that are consistent with their beliefs.

34:06

And so that's a really important religious liberty holding, and it's something that we wanna draw attention to.

34:13

Now, look, in this moment, we are living in just an incredible time.

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So there are naturally going to be collisions between church and state, and we have spoken to the ones where there are really legitimate concerns, where maybe the government has overstepped its ground.

34:35

So just recently, Capitol Hill Baptist in Washington, D .C.,

34:42

they have really tried to extend themselves to meet the standards that the city of Washington, D .C.

34:50

has put in place for religious institutions. And they've worked within the parameters.

34:56

They even have tried to get feedback from the

35:01

Washington, D .C. city folks, saying, hey, we would like to host an outdoor service.

35:08

They have been meeting across the river in Virginia at a satellite location. But just recently,

35:15

Washington, D .C. said, hey, we're gonna start permitting outdoor services, and they tried to get an answer from them, and they just haven't been able to do that.

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And so they finally said, hey, we're gonna file a lawsuit against you. And that is a very legitimate thing for them to do because they have tried to partner with officials in Washington, D .C.

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So this is a crazy time for sure. So there you have it.

35:40

We're at an all -time high, apparently, for religious liberty. It's in better condition than it has been in recent memory.

35:47

And John MacArthur's situation just ignored by Brent Leatherwood, even though that's brought up by the interviewer.

35:53

And he goes to cite Nine Marks and Capitol Hill Baptist Church because they worked with the officials.

35:58

They're working with them, and that's the important thing. You work with those officials. I'm all about working with officials, but you gotta know who you're dealing with.

36:06

And if anything, I mean, Jonathan Lehman was the one who went out there and said, before you follow

36:14

John MacArthur and just open up, wait, wait, right? He wrote this whole thing on it. And then later in the year,

36:22

Nine Marks is like, you know, it's too much now. Now it's too much. Well, it was too much from the beginning.

36:28

That was a point I was trying to make from day one with this whole thing. Look, from the get -go, this was an overreach.

36:34

As soon as churches were designated as non -essential, it was an overreach, and these other places were essential.

36:46

It's just not the kind of person I think you want in a position of leading the ethics and religious liberty for the largest

36:53

Protestant denomination in the country, that he can't see that, no, while he's saying this, religious liberty is actually, it's threatened, incredibly threatened.

37:04

And not just in the United States, across the world. In Canada, probably much more severely, but in certain places in the

37:14

United States, it got bad. And it's so out of touch,

37:19

I don't even know what to say. But that's the person who's running the ERLC now. Now that brings us to, let's say,

37:26

John, I see what you're saying. I see that, you know, he's soft on social justice. He doesn't see the threat to religious liberty.

37:34

He's following the example of Russell Moore, but you know, John, the abortion thing,

37:39

I mean, that's the main thing, right? And I would say, yeah, I mean, abortion is, I mean, there's a lot of things that are important, but murdering people, legally sanctioned murdering people, yeah, that's probably the worst.

37:54

And that's the one that gets us all, it should get us all mad the most, I would say, righteously indignant.

38:02

And Brent Leatherwood, unfortunately, I believe is somewhat compromised even on this issue.

38:09

And I did a whole podcast on this where there was a Louisiana proposed legislation,

38:14

HB 813. And there was a letter opposing that particular piece of legislation put out.

38:24

And it claimed that women were victims of abortion. The, one of the people who signed off on this was

38:32

Brent Leatherwood, they have the ERLC, that we need to oppose this

38:38

Louisiana bill because this bill, even though it didn't, it didn't like select out women that get abortions for special treatment, all it really did was it said abortion now falls under the laws we have in this state about murder.

38:52

But if you do that, guess what? That would mean that women who opt to get abortions are also going to be liable to some extent.

39:01

And oh, we can't have that. And so Brent Leatherwood, along with another, a number of other quote unquote pro -life groups went out there to oppose this piece of legislation.

39:11

He was confronted about this on the floor of the Southern Baptist Convention this past summer,

39:17

Southern Baptist Convention 2022 in Anaheim, California. Here's what happened. My name is

39:24

Brian Gunter. I am a messenger and a senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Livingston, Louisiana.

39:33

Earlier this year, I worked with my state legislators to introduce

39:38

House Bill 813 in the Louisiana legislature. HB 813 was a bill that sought to immediately end all abortion in my state by providing equal protection to the child in the womb.

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Simply stated, if life begins at conception, then our laws should protect life from the moment of conception.

40:02

So you can imagine my surprise when you signed a letter dated

40:08

May 12th urging all state lawmakers across America to oppose this bill and others like it because it would make it a crime for a woman to kill her own child by abortion.

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I thought that Southern Baptists, when we say we're pro -life, we mean that no person should be able to murder an innocent child in the womb.

40:34

So this is my question. Is it really your position that the mother who willfully kills her own child by abortion is never guilty before God and she should never face any consequences under the law?

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Here's the deal. We agree on the bottom line. We want abortion ended. We want it ended today.

41:06

We want it ended tomorrow. We want to end it as soon as humanly possible. But while we hold fast to that goal and continually shout that is what we want, why not support legislation that promises to save one more life in any context?

41:21

I will say this. To get the record straight, no letter was sent directly to Louisiana about a

41:30

Louisiana piece of legislation. Right after the draft opinion from the

41:36

Supreme Court was leaked, National Right to Life approached us as well as 75 other pro -life organizations from around the country to say, hey, this would make sense since functionally, if this were to be law or this were to be the final decision, abortion will be returned to the states.

41:55

It would seem to make sense that we send a letter to legislative leaders in all 50 states to let them know what the principles of the pro -life movement are.

42:07

And so in a state like California, for example, where we are, it makes sense to send that because they're gonna have this issue right in front of them.

42:17

And in a state like California, they're gonna have to take any available win where they can.

42:24

Here's the reality. You're not going to get me to say that I want to throw mothers behind bars.

42:31

That's not the view of this entity. That is not the view of this convention. It is not the view of the pro -life movement.

42:40

That was proven yet again today. I believe the same principles that Jesus used in John four and John eight apply right here.

42:49

Maybe instead of rushing in like a mob, we instead rush in with the truth given to us by the author of life, showing we are able to bear the burdens of others and offer the healing that comes with grace, just as has been poured out for us.

43:04

So he brings up John four, which would be the Samaritan woman. He brings up John eight, which is the woman caught in adultery.

43:12

In both cases, Jesus confronted the sin. And he's using that to justify why his position is that mothers should not be punished or put, well, yeah, that really is what he's saying.

43:25

They shouldn't be punished for seeking an abortion. What if you made the analogy a little different?

43:32

Bring it outside the womb instead of inside the womb. Let's say a mother decides she wants her 10 -year -old killed and she pays someone, she pays a criminal.

43:41

Now we have to use our imaginations a little. Let's say it's sanctioned somehow. There's a protection for people who want to end the lives of 10 -year -olds.

43:49

And she takes a 10 -year -old in and says, I want the life of this 10 -year -old to be ended. She signs the papers.

43:56

The 10 -year -old dies at the hands of a murderer.

44:02

And then there's no consequences then for the mother in that case. I mean, that would seem silly to us and rightfully so, because we know that there would be complicity, that this was something that was sought, that just because you push the button on the machine gun or something, or the drone, doesn't mean that you lack somehow the moral culpability.

44:28

Pushing buttons from even a far off location still makes you responsible for what takes place on the ground in real life, in the tangible existence we live in.

44:40

And so if a mother does that with her child, when it's inside the womb and says, I would like my pre -born child to die, would you help me kill this child?

44:50

And then a doctor kills the child, then the mother would have culpability. There's really no category for the mother to be innocent, biblically speaking of that.

44:59

And to bring up John 4 and John 8 does nothing to invent that category. It just means that Jesus is forgiving. Praise God for that.

45:06

For the woman caught in adultery, he's forgiving. Go and sin no more is what he said.

45:13

That doesn't mean that the law should not take its effect. In fact, civil procedure wasn't being followed in that passage, if you recall, because the man wasn't there.

45:21

So the Pharisees were not following their own law in administering the rightful punishment. In this case of the

45:29

Samaritan woman, Jesus confronts her. He actually initiates the confrontation. You have five husbands.

45:34

The one that you're with is not your husband. And it's a confrontation of the sin that she was involved in.

45:44

So that didn't even have any teaching in it that comes to bear upon what the magistrate is supposed to do in those situations in which there's a law that ought to be applied from God's word to a criminal act.

45:59

So it's irrelevant what he's bringing up to that. If there's any relevancy, it's that God forgives.

46:05

God knows, he sees. And then when there's repentance and faith, he forgives.

46:10

And that should be the encouraging thing, but not as a club used to beat people who simply wanna make abortion murder, which is really what that Louisiana proposed legislation was gonna do.

46:21

Just gonna make abortion like any other murder. And Brent Leatherwood, I would say, is compromised on that to some extent.

46:29

So that's what I see with Brent Leatherwood. I don't see someone who's going to deviate from Russell Moore's pattern.

46:36

If anything, he's gonna keep it going. And maybe then some, we will see. But I have been, now it's more probably like a month ago, but I had a lot of people reaching out to me about this.

46:48

And, hey, did you notice who's now leading the ERLC? And what do you think?

46:54

And so that's what I think. That's who's leading the ERLC. And we'll talk a little more about Southern Baptist stuff probably tomorrow on the podcast.

47:03

I'm hoping that those are the only two days. I know some of you are Southern Baptist, some of you aren't. For some of you, this is helpful.

47:09

For some of you, you ignore these podcasts because you've already pegged the Southern Baptist Convention as a compromise nomination.

47:17

And there's really no information, no new information you need. And I totally understand that. But for those who are still in there, who are still wanting to understand,

47:23

I did put the links in the info section. You can go check them out for these particular interviews that you just saw.

47:29

I think it would help you when you're trying to reason with others, perhaps, who might be excited about this or think that there's no problem with Brent Leatherwood.

47:37

You can then use those resources. Send them these videos and say, what do you think of this? Or you can send them this podcast.

47:43

But sometimes that doesn't work out too well with people on the other side of the political aisle because they have me pegged as someone that you shouldn't listen to John Harris or something.

47:50

Well, don't listen to me. Look at the facts. Look at actually what Brent Leatherwood says. Compare it to what the word of God says and compare it to what reality is.

47:59

Compare it to the situation that we see before us. We're not in a situation in which people are, we're just respecting

48:06

Christians so much that disagree in a polite way. We're not living in a society in which people enjoy disagreeing with you about these very, very basic fundamental topics.

48:24

I mean, the disagreements between us right now, the divide between us is not something that can be brought back together through winsome dialogue.

48:36

It's so fundamental, so diametrically opposed that one side either has to win or lose.

48:42

That's the bottom line. And which side is the URLC going to be on? You can't straddle that fence.

48:49

So hope that is helpful for some of you Southern Baptists out there. More coming later in the week. God bless.