The president of the Southern Baptist Convention, the highest office in the denomination, has been embroiled for several months now in a scandal of epic proportions. Ed Litton, who also pastors Redemption Church in Saraland, Alabama, has been exposed as a serial plagiarist of whom even Al Mohler, president of the denomination’s most prestigious seminary, has referred to as a poor example for his students.

After Litton was elected the president in June it soon became common public knowledge that he had parroted his presidential predecessor, JD Greear, in many of his sermons at his church. The similarities between the vast majority of Litton’s and Greear’s sermons on the book of Romans were so obvious that to deny that this was blatant plagiarism would be more difficult than denying that the sky is blue.

During the 2021 Annual Meeting, messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention narrowly elected Litton to the presidency by only a few hundred votes against his conservative challenger, Mike Stone. Among those messengers was a man named Brian Owens.

Recently, Owens took to Twitter to express his apologies and to publicly repent for his emotional vote for Litton. His vote, he said, was “actually more out of the fear of man, than out of fear of God.” All we can say is that this is great. Hopefully, more will follow suit. Below is his thread.