Politics play such a large role in our culture, especially when worldviews clash. Because of this, it is important for Christians to be aware of what is going on and to be involved in the process, so that we can be a voice of truth in the public sphere.

This week on Family Policy Matters, host Traci DeVette Griggs welcomes Brent Leatherwood, President of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), to discuss his work and the ERLC’s legislative priorities in the near future.

• Subscribe to our podcast so you can hear our interviews every week.
• Tune in to one of the radio stations that carry Family Policy Matters (see the list below).
• Click below to listen online.

Spotify • Apple Podcasts • iHeart Radio • Audacy • Amazon Music

Family Policy Matters
A Biblical Voice in National Politics (with Brent Leatherwood)

TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: Thanks for joining us this week for Family Policy Matters. The start of 2025 brings some big changes, especially to the political landscape in the United States. As this new year begins, there are many reasons to be hopeful, including on the public policy front. To take a look forward at what we might expect in the new year, we’re joined today by Brent Leatherwood, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. Brent Leatherwood, welcome to Family Policy Matters.

BRENT LEATHERWOOD: Traci, it’s great to be with you again.

TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: Well, to be totally transparent, I do serve on the Board of Trustees for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, often called the ERLC. So, clearly, I love the work of the ERLC, and I’m a huge fan of Brent’s. Give us a little bit of history about the ERLC, why it was created, and where you get your funding.

BRENT LEATHERWOOD: So, the ERLC is an organization that has been around for over 100 years. It wasn’t always called the ERLC. In prior iterations, it was called the Christian Life Commission. That’s how some of your listeners may remember it, but it has always served as an arm of the Southern Baptist Convention that has spoke into the public square about pressing issues of the day. And in this version of the organization, the ERLC, we serve as the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention. So we come alongside our churches, the pastors of our churches, to equip them and to help them understand some of the matters that are being debated out in the public square, and then from that service that we render to our churches, we go into the public square and talk with our nation’s lawmakers about these matters and what scripture has to say to these issues, what our churches have to say about how these issues might be affecting people in their congregations. And that’s how we accomplish our work. We are funded by the sacrificial giving of Southern Baptists, 95 over 95% of our budget comes through the cooperative giving mechanism known as the cooperative program within the SBC, and we are so incredibly grateful for it. We’re the smallest entity within the convention. A lot of folks are often very surprised to learn that we don’t have this huge staff. But while we may have a small staff, we have a mighty staff that is committed to living out our faith in the public square so that other people of faith can do the same.

TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: Our listeners might remember some of your the predecessors of the ERLC, Richard Land, Russell Moore, they’ve always had a voice. So why is it important, do you think, that the largest Protestant denomination have a voice in affecting public policy in our nation?

BRENT LEATHERWOOD: Part of the answer, I would say, is also found within your question. We are the largest Protestant denomination of churches in the country, and because of that, we have a unique ability to help lawmakers understand the ramifications or the consequences of issues that they might be looking at, proposals they might be debating, and how that might affect things such as life and religious liberty and marriage and family and human dignity, which that’s actually the four lanes that the ERLC traditionally has spoken into. And so, I think it’s very important. And lawmakers, they actually want to hear that sort of feedback. When you have 13 million individuals across the country identifying as Southern Baptist and that are a part of over 45,000 congregations, lawmakers, they actually want to hear from the folks that they represent. And that doesn’t mean they’re going to agree all the time, or they’re going to do things exactly the way that we would prefer. But a part of being in a representative democracy like ours is obviously hearing from the people, and I think the Southern Baptist Convention is a part of that, an important part of that.

TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: Do you think people need to be Southern Baptist to follow your work and support the efforts of the ERLC? Is it solely for Southern Baptists?

BRENT LEATHERWOOD: Well, we are obviously, we are rooted in Scripture. We are reflective of the principles contained within the Baptist faith and message, which is the statement of faith within the Southern Baptist Convention, and then we’re obviously responsive to actions taken by messengers at the Southern Baptist annual meeting, which occurs every year in June. So we are, we are a distinctively Baptist, Southern Baptist organization. But, you know, some of the principles that we articulate about the sanctity of life or the real value of religious liberty, those, of course, are supported by a broad swath of Americans, and so we actually see ourselves as a coalition partner with so many and we have folks that support our work that aren’t just Southern Baptist, and we’re thankful for that, but at the end of the day, we try to tell folks that we bring a distinctly Baptist view of things to our work.

TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: Well, I mean, speaking of those issues that many of us as Christians agree on, the gender ideology question that we’ve been wrestling with for the last two administrations, in particular, what has the ERLC’s role in that?

BRENT LEATHERWOOD: A piece I wrote right around Christmas time, and it appeared in the Christian Post, I argued that I think 2024 marked a real, discernible shift in the way that Americans culturally are thinking through issues related to gender ideology. And I argue that’s a good thing. That’s a really helpful development, because gender ideology has sought to undermine notions that we all know to be true, obviously, for us Christians from Scripture going back to the beginning of Genesis, but even for secular Americans who just understand basic biology that we do have male and female so those biological realities were even like tried to be contended with by gender ideology. And we have seen a number of setbacks, people just taking a stand and saying this sort of craziness like this is all fiction, and we need to step back from the ledge, because so many elements within the transgender movement, supporters of that, they were just trying to upend parts of society and culture, and doing so in really intrusive ways. Whether it was through things such as women’s sports in college, bathrooms that children use in schools, or actually speaking of schools, elementary schools and education districts trying to transition children and then not tell their parents, basically injecting the state between parent and child and just really disastrous ways. And I think we’re pulling back from that now as a society. We’ve had court rulings, we’ve had individuals take brave stands, and then I actually argued in that piece that a part of the rationale for so many folks for voting for president Trump was his pledge to do something about this. Under the Biden administration, so many executive orders and executive actions were taken to further gender ideology and part of President Trump’s pitch to American voters is, I’m going to roll back those executive orders, those harmful executive orders on gender transitions, and using taxpayer money to pay for those transitions and these radical therapies that are out there that have shown to actually cause deep psychological and obviously physical harm to children. And so I think we have seen the high tide of this very progressive extremist ideology, and we’re turning back to reality and common sense.

TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: All right, it’s nice to hear that you’re hopeful about that. And if you wrote this back at Christmas, of course, you know the Biden administration withdrew a rule having to do with sports. And then, of course a federal court ruled against more expansive rule. And so it seems that you are right.

BRENT LEATHERWOOD: There’s actually a lot of work still left to do. Well, the more recent developments that you’re specifically referring to, Traci, have to do with Title IX of the 1972 Education Amendments. And, generally, Title IX, it’s accepted by everyone as being a part of the US Code that ensures that there are equal educational opportunities for male and females. Well, the Biden administration was essentially trying to rewrite and reinterpret Title IX through so many of these executive orders to get transgender ideology injected into the Department of Education and how it facilitates educational opportunities around the country. So, we were one of a coalition of conservative groups calling attention to this, opposing it, and saying that the Biden administration is wrong for doing it. And thankfully, a federal judge agreed with our views.

TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: Give us an overview. What are some other things that you are going to be spending some time on in 2025?

BRENT LEATHERWOOD: Obviously, with a new presidential administration, there’s opportunities, and there’s going to be some votes on pro-life priorities in Congress next week that we’ll be drawing attention to. And I think a couple of the main priorities for us. One, funding. Federal funding is back in the news again. A budget will be decided on, and then appropriations debates will take place. We want to make sure that the Hyde Amendment, which prevents federal taxpayer dollars from being used to get and procure an abortion, we want to make sure that’s back in place, because if federal taxpayer dollars are used for an abortion, that violates the consciences of millions of pro-life Americans. So, we want to make sure that that’s back in place. At the same time, we actually want it to be permanently in place. So, there are a couple of proposals to codify the Hyde Amendment and other pro-life riders into law. We would love to see that happen. There’s another piece of legislation called the Life From Conception Act that would ensure that American law respects the fact that our pre-born neighbors are worthy of protection. So we would love to see that and then moving on from life, RFRA, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, that has come under assault in in recent years. There’s been a number of proposals in Congress to either work around RFRA or to undermine it. We’ve asked the administration, and we’re also asking congressional leaders to one, protect RFRA and then B make sure that there are no proposals that come up with those sort of workarounds included in them. And maybe related to that, there’s a bill that’s traditionally been carried by Senator Tim Scott from South Carolina, called the Child Welfare Inclusion Act, and it makes sure that religious organizations that work in the foster and adoption space can continue operating based on their deeply held convictions, so that a child is placed in a household that is consistent with the faith that guides that organization. There’s been a number of challenges in recent years on those grounds, and that’s something that we’re going to be placing a priority on as well.

TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: Well, where can our listeners go to find out more about the ERLC and take advantage of the great resources you have on your website?

BRENT LEATHERWOOD: Probably the best place I’d point you to is ERLC.com. We are available on all the traditional social media channels as well, so you can follow work there on kind of a day-to-day basis, but we put all of our resources available, whether they’re created for pastors or for policy makers, on our website, and we invite folks to utilize those and learn more about these issues that we’re contending with in the public square.

TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: All right, so thank you. Brent Leatherwood, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, thanks for being with us today on Family Policy Matters.

– END –