The Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) is really nothing more than a pandering bridge-builder between the professing Church and the Pagan culture. At every opportunity, the ERLC seeks some kind of common ground — friendship, if you will — between the world and Christianity. Essentially, the ERLC is on a never-ending image campaign that attempts to appease the world by speaking nuance into the consciences of a world in rebellion to God.
This year, the ERLC was scheduled to hold a gospel conference. Its theme was “Gospel Courage: Truth and Justice in a Divided World.” Seems like a noble topic for the Church, especially since the Great Commission of the Church is to go out into the world and make disciples. Yet, the ERLC — like any progressive outfit that never seeks to let a good crisis go to waste — has dropped the gospel-themed conference in favor of a #metoo cry-party.
According to the ERLC website, the new conference, themed “Caring Well: Equipping the Church to Confront the Abuse Crisis,” will feature such topics as, “sexual abuse and the Southern Baptist Convention,” “listening to survivors,” “lament,” “mental health,” and a host of other topics related to the feminist #metoo movement. You know, because the gospel is all about empowering women, enacting an egalitarian ecclesiological system, and giving women a platform to preach from the pulpit.
The conference will feature gospel preachers such as Voddie Baucham, Paul Washer, John MacArthur, Steve Lawson … no, wait. Just kidding. It’s not going to feature any gospel preachers at all. It’s going to feature a host of social justice warriors, including the charismatic prophetess and false visionary, Beth Moore, ex-lesbian and woke poetress, Jackie Hill Perry, sex-abuse victim who campaigns for people not to trust the Church or Christianity, Rachael Denhollander, and various secular psychologists and social justice advocates.
The theme change of the conference comes in response to the article released by the Houston Chronicle which detailed 380 alleged as well as convicted sex-abuse cases in the Southern Baptist Convention over a period of 20 years. To put this in perspective, during the same time, the Roman Catholic Church has roughly the same number of allegations in one state, in one year — and these allegations are all regarding underage children. Sex abuse has become so normalized in the Catholic Church that of-age abuse allegations are rarely reported on.
Does this mean that legitimate sexual abuse in the SBC is not a problem? No. But it does mean that the progressivism is standing on the backs of victims to advance its feminist ideology and that Southern Baptists are buying it, and complicit. The conference has nothing to do with theologically and ecclesiastically dealing with the problem. The conference is designed to garner sympathy and effect a paradigm shift towards egalitarianism in the Southern Baptist Convention. They will still call it complementarianism, but it will be redefined to look nothing like what the Bible teaches.
In the Church over the past two years, the #metoo movement has morphed into the #churchtoo movement. The movement is not rooted in biblical or theological principles. The movement hijacks not only real and serious sexual abuse situations, but false and unsubstantiated claims as well to launch a feminist, egalitarian agenda and change the biblical, complementarian ecclesiology of churches — and Southern Baptists are funding this change.
