The Southern Baptist Convention is now using its massive sway to call for gun control in Tennessee.
Brent Leatherwood, the Southern Baptist Convention’s president of the church’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), demanded gun control in a letter published by The Tennesseean.
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U.S. Representative Bob Latta (R-OH-5) is leading a charge by federal lawmakers against the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) relaxation of safety requirements for abortion drugs so consumers can access them by mail.
The Bowling Green-area lawmaker coauthored a letter with U.S. Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS) and garnered signatures from 75 other members of Congress to insist that the FDA’s recent actions violate federal law. In particular, the legislators object to the agency’s approval of chemical abortion-inducing substances while no longer requiring in-person dispensing.
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On Thanksgiving Day, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) of the Southern Baptist Convention tweeted its support for a new evangelical group calling for Christians to embrace young illegal immigrants. Voices of Christian Dreamers claims to be grassroots, but in reality is the creation of powerful immigration activists. “As we celebrate Thanksgiving, this group of Christian Dreamers shares why they’re thankful,” said the ERLC tweet, which included a link to a video produced by the group. As we celebrate Thanksgiving, this group of Christian Dreamers shares why they’re thankful. Watch here: https://t.co/RnUqmaNF47 https://t.co/4sqOPIIDv4 — ERLC (@ERLC) November 23, 2017 ERLC President Russell Moore has frequently been criticized by conservatives for his support of progressive immigration policies. The ERLC is the Southern Baptists’ public policy arm and has offices in Washington, D.C., and Nashville. Voices of Christian Dreamers describes itself on its website as “a grassroots, Dreamers-led movement committed to changing the conversation about undocumented immigrants in the Church and beyond, through highlighting biblical teaching, personal stories and other helpful resources.” Its website explains: Dreamers—a term derived from the DREAM Act, a bill that has been repeatedly introduced but never yet passed into law—are individuals brought into the U.S. as children…
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Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), kicked up a storm Tuesday with a Reformation Day tweet in which he portrayed himself as a theological giant serving as a bridge between Protestantism and Catholicism. The tweet featured a photo of bobblehead dolls of Pope Francis, Moore and Martin Luther, with Moore standing between Francis and Luther. The tweet carried the words “A uniter, not a divider. #Ref0500.” Tuesday marked the 500th anniversary of the day Luther, a German monk, launched the Protestant Reformation with the posting of his 95 Theses. The movement led to a break with the Catholic Church and the creation of Protestant denominations, eventually including Baptist groups. Moore’s tweet confused and angered many conservative Protestants on social media. Many said he was minimizing the Reformation and also the doctrinal differences that continue to exist between Catholics and Protestants. Some called out Moore for being arrogant. Some took his tweet as a harmless joke, but others said that while it may have been a joke, it was an inappropriate one. Here are some of the comments tweeted Moore’s way in response: What denomination are you again? Was your account hacked? Seems a little…presumptuous,…
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A group of evangelicals organized by Russell Moore is calling on Congress to allow DACA recipients to become eligible for status as legal residents or citizens. Meanwhile, another coalition of evangelicals, which includes Eric Metaxas, is urging Congress to put Americans first, along with those who have applied to enter the U.S. legally. Moore is president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC). In a statement released Thursday, 51 signers expressed support for the goals of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program begun with an executive order by former President Obama. President Trump has rescinded the order but has given Congress a chance to act. DACA allows young people brought to the U.S. illegally as children and who meet certain criteria to temporarily live and work in the U.S. Around 800,000 have received DACA status and nearly 690,000 are currently enrolled. DACA recipients are known as “Dreamers.” “We support the underlying policy aim of DACA because we believe this is a special category of immigrants who are not legally culpable, who in most cases have no home other than the United States, and who are a blessing to their communities and to their churches,” reads the statement…
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Russell Moore, head of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), will speak at a conference in North Carolina this weekend alongside two Christian activists who promote economic redistribution as well as progressive ideas about race and immigration. Moore’s own progressive views on race, immigration and social justice have been an ongoing source of controversy. While he has a loyal following among some Southern Baptists and other Christians, especially younger ones, he has been widely criticized by more conservative evangelicals. The ERLC is the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention and has offices in Nashville and Washington, D.C. Critics of the ERLC under Moore’s leadership are concerned not only about the views he expresses but also about the left-leaning groups with which he associates. John Perkins and Noel Castellanos are the other two keynote speakers at the “Courageous Conversations Conference” Saturday in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, hosted by Word Tabernacle Church. The focus of the one-day conference is on race, but an emphasis on economic redistribution is interwoven with the activists’ teachings. Perkins is the founder of the Christian Community Development Association (CCDA) and Castellanos is its current president. Started in 1989, the CCDA grew and became more organized…
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Russell Moore, head of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), is among a group of evangelical leaders calling on President Trump not to deport immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children and offered a reprieve by former President Obama. President Trump will announce Tuesday what he intends to do with the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. With a 2012 executive order, Obama offered young illegal immigrants who met certain criteria permission to temporarily live and work in the U.S. Those eligible for the benefits became known as “Dreamers.” Moore, who serves on the Evangelical Immigration Table, said in a statement Wednesday: It is long past time for Congress to work together to find a workable solution for our broken immigration system — especially for the hundreds of thousands of young, undocumented immigrants who were brought to our country by their parents. Many of these Dreamers have stepped forward in good faith. Congress should respond with a legislative solution that delivers on the promises made to these men and women and protects them from perpetual uncertainty. Let’s pray for a fair solution that highlights both justice and compassion. Other evangelical leaders involved with the Evangelical Immigration…
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Nashville Mayor Megan Barry on Tuesday criticized the Nashville Statement written and signed by evangelical Christians to show support for traditional marriage and maintain that homosexuality and transgenderism are sinful. The document was approved Friday at a meeting in Nashville of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW). The meeting was hosted by the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commision (ERLC) during its annual conference. Barry, a progressive Democrat, tweeted that the statement and its name reflect poorly on Nashville because the declaration “does not represent the inclusive values of the city.” The @CBMWorg's so-called "Nashville Statement" is poorly named and does not represent the inclusive values of the city & people of Nashville — Megan Barry for Congress (TN-7) (@MeganCBarry) August 29, 2017 In 2015, when she was a Metro councilwoman and a mayoral candidate, Barry officiated the first same-sex wedding in Nashville just hours after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges that the 14th Amendment extends the right to marry to same-sex couples. Denny Burk, president of CBMW, wrote on the organization’s website that naming the statement for the city of Nashville follows historical practice. He said: There is a long Christian tradition of naming doctrinal…
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A pastor and writer in Louisiana is taking Russell Moore to task for his latest opinion piece in the Washington Post titled “White supremacy angers Jesus, but does it anger his church?” The piece was written in response to the violent clashes in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Saturday between white supremacists and radical leftist counterprotesters. In a blog post, Shane Kastler writes, “His latest article is classic, liberal propaganda, Russell Moore-style. He takes a minuscule segment of the white population, implies that they represent a much larger segment than they do. And then skewers, ‘the church’ for being racist. And just in case you doubt him, he takes the words of Jesus out of their scriptural context, twists them for his political ends, and uses them to justify his argument.” Kastler is pastor of Heritage Baptist, an independent Baptist church in Lake Charles, Louisiana. He is known in Tennessee for his biography of Nathan Bedford Forrest which chronicles how Forrest became a Christian later in life. Moore is president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention. He has been criticized by conservatives for his progressive views on race and immigration, his denunciations of President Trump…
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Southern Baptist leaders object to the U.S. Army’s new mandatory transgender sensitivity training, reports Baptist Press. The training follows last year’s repeal of a ban on transgender men and women serving openly in the armed forces. Former President Obama’s defense secretary set a deadline of July 1 for fully implementing the new policy across all branches of service. Current Secretary of Defense James Mattis recently announced a six-month delay in enlisting transgender people, but those currently enlisted are allowed to transition. Soldiers are being told they must accept soldiers of the opposite sex who feel they have a different gender in barracks, bathrooms and showers. Andrew Walker, director of policy studies for the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), told Baptist Press that Army leaders’ acquiescence “to the demands of transgender activists is misguided.” “Most problematically, the Army is complicit in advancing a worldview that tells fundamental distortions about what it means to be a man or a woman,” Walker said. “The Army’s actions overlook the protests of dissenting soldiers uncomfortable with the idea of sharing private spaces with members of the opposite sex, which also pose risks to religious liberty. “It is unfortunate and lamentable that a venerable…
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Nashville area pastor Stan Mitchell is among those at the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention in Phoenix this week to try to persuade Southern Baptists to embrace LGBT activism. Mitchell is the founding pastor of GracePointe, a nondenominational evangelical church in Franklin that made national news in 2015 when it began to offer gays all the privileges of membership, including marriage. The church touts itself as “a progressive Christian community.” Mitchell is involved with Faith in America, an advocacy group that believes that “LGBT people should be removed from the sin list,” according to a May 31 news release. The group claims that conservative Christians are harming LGBT youth by making them feel bad about their sexual orientation, which the group says has led some young people to kill themselves. “Southern Baptists Must Change (and they are not the only ones),” Mitchell posted on his Facebook page June 9. Group organizers asked Southern Baptist leaders to meet with them before or during the convention, but that could not be arranged because of a busy schedule, Southern Baptist Convention spokesman Roger Oldham told The Tennessee Star. The group is welcome to meet with Southern Baptist leaders at their Nashville headquarters another time,…
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Russell Moore, head of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), criticized Bernie Sanders this week for opposing President Trump’s budget nominee because of his Christian religious beliefs. The Vermont senator attacked Russell Vought on Wednesday in questioning him about his theological convictions. Vought is Trump’s nominee for deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget. Sanders accused Vought of being “Islamophobic” and “hateful” because of Vought’s 2016 blog post about a controversy at his alma mater Wheaton College regarding whether Christians and Muslims worship the same god. Vought wrote, “Muslims do not simply have a deficient theology. They do not know God because they have rejected Jesus Christ his Son, and they stand condemned.” Sanders, who last year made an unsuccessful bid to be the Democratic nominee for president, said that he will vote against Vought’s nomination and that Vought “is not someone who is what this country is supposed to be about.” In an ERLC press release, Moore said: Senator Sanders’ comments are breathtakingly audacious and shockingly ignorant—both of the Constitution and of basic Christian doctrine. Even if one were to excuse Senator Sanders for not realizing that all Christians of every age have insisted that faith in…
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A New Jersey township must pay a mosque $3.25 million and submit to diversity and inclusion training to settle lawsuits alleging religious discrimination. Last year the case led to turmoil within the Southern Baptist Convention after the denomination’s International Mission Board (IMB) and Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) filed friend-of-the-court briefs on behalf of the mosque in an effort to promote religious freedom. The National Association of Evangelicals also supported the mosque with an amicus brief. The settlement agreements Tuesday resulted from lawsuits filed against Bernards Township last year by the Islamic Society of Basking Ridge and the U.S. Department of Justice. The Islamic organization had purchased a four-acre plot of land for the mosque in 2011, according to the Washington Post. But in 2013, the township changed its zoning ordinance, raising its minimum acreage for houses of worship to six acres. The township also said the mosque wouldn’t have enough parking spaces to accommodate its worship schedule, especially for Friday afternoon prayers drawing people arriving separately from work. The lawsuits said the requirements placed an undue burden on the Islamic Society and that the group was being unfairly targeted because of its religion. A federal judge ruled in December that the…
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In today’s climate, the vitriol that Tennessee state Senator Mark Green faced for his orthodox Christian beliefs while being considered for Army secretary would surprise few. But there also was a conspicuous lack of a vigorous defense from his fellow Republicans and even his fellow Southern Baptists. With few exceptions, there was little in the way of significant pushback against the torrent of rage against Green’s past statements on LGBT issues, Islam and other topics of concern to biblically-minded Christians and other conservatives. Under intense pressure, Green withdrew his name from consideration May 5. “Green’s nomination drew immediate backlash from Democrats, and even some Republicans,” reported McClatchy DC Bureau. “His support was lukewarm at best, and few in Washington showed an appetite to defend his controversial comments.” Raymond Baker, a Franklin resident and retired Republican political consultant, told The Tennessee Star that what really hurt Green was that Tennessee’s two Republican U.S. senators, Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander, did not fight hard enough on his behalf when the going got tough. Corker and Alexander, along with other “so-called Republican leaders” long ago sold their soul to liberal interest groups, Baker said. After President Trump nominated Green for the post,…
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A research fellow with the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) has written a piece for a liberal website criticizing Vice President Mike Pence for the boundaries he sets for his marriage. Karen Swallow Prior wrote in Vox that “virtue ethics is better than the Billy Graham rule.” Prior, an English professor at Liberty University, referenced the vice president’s longstanding rule to never eat alone with a woman other than his wife or attend events where alcohol is served unless his wife is with him. A recent Washington Post profile of Pence’s wife, Karen, mentioned how the vice president had spoken publicly about this commitment back in 2002. Such an approach to honoring marital fidelity is dubbed “the Billy Graham rule” by some evangelicals because the famed evangelist is known for teaching and practicing similar safeguards. But Prior said the focus on rules is misplaced and that what should be discussed is prudence. “Prudence, in fact, is what seems to be missing from the conversation about the vice president’s ‘rules.’ And I don’t mean prudence in the way that some supporters of the Billy Graham rule are using the term. Prudence as properly understood is a virtue, not a rule,” Prior wrote.…
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Russell Moore’s position as head of the Southern Baptists’ public policy arm could be in jeopardy, the Washington Post is reporting. More than 100 Southern Baptist churches have threatened to cut off funding for the program that supports the denomination’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), according to the article in the Post. Moore has been a controversial figure since becoming president of the ERLC in 2013 because of his progressive views on immigration and race, his promotion of religious pluralism, and his disparaging statements about past efforts by the religious right to influence American culture and politics. In recent months, he has been criticized for the provocative way he denounced President Trump and his followers in the 2016 election and also for signing a friend of a court brief supporting construction of a New Jersey mosque involved in a zoning dispute. That decision, as previously reported by The Tennessee Star, prompted a large Southern Baptist church in East Tennessee to escrow funds. Later, a megachurch in Texas decided to do the same. Other churches taking similar actions have contributed to the matter reaching a crisis point. Frank Page, president of the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, told the Post that…
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