It’s not every day that a high-profile Southern Baptist pastor calls out the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) for being little more than a sanctimonious public relations firm. But that’s precisely what happened when Willy Rice, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church, pulled no punches in his recent interview with the Center for Baptist Leadership.

Rice, a former SBC presidential candidate who has demonstrated himself to be a man of integrity following a scandal that he has said opened his eyes to the reality behind the deep state pulling the strings in the SBC. He now says that the ERLC’s recent attempts at damage control—namely, opposing Planned Parenthood—are as absurd as a cheating husband thinking that flowers from Walgreens will erase years of infidelity and gambling away the family fortune.

In his words: “It kind of reminds me of the guy… who cheats on his wife and he’s been caught in three or four affairs and he blew the family inheritance on gambling. And so he thinks he’s going to stop at Walgreens and buy flowers on the way home and make it all right. I mean, you just want to go, brother, you’re way beyond Walgreens here. You’ve got a mess and it’s got to be cleaned up.”

Ouch. That’s not just criticism—that’s a full-scale indictment. And he’s right.

What the ERLC has become is an exercise in institutional arrogance. For years, they’ve cultivated an air of superiority, looking down their noses at rank-and-file Baptists as if the ERLC’s moral compass spins at a higher altitude. And yet, as Rice rightly points out, the confidence of Southern Baptists in the ERLC is “shook” and “has been lost.”

But don’t worry, the ERLC’s solution is to embark on a PR tour, cozying up to senators and pretending they’re still relevant. A little public opposition to Planned Parenthood here, a scripted statement there—maybe that will make Baptists forget the decade of division they’ve wrought.

Opposing Planned Parenthood is not the issue here. Every faithful Southern Baptist, every Christian with two brain cells to rub together, is against that baby-murdering machine. The issue is that the ERLC’s opposition comes across not as a conviction but as damage control. It’s not courage, it’s calculus. And it’s certainly not integrity.

It’s an image campaign.

Referencing the near referendum to eliminate the ERLC at last year’s annual meeting, Rice noted that if 40% of the members at Calvary Baptist Church voted to fire him, he wouldn’t go home and spike the ball. He’d recognize that he’s got a major problem. Yet, somehow, when almost half of the SBC voted to defund the ERLC, the organization went into celebratory mode. You’d think they just won a landslide victory.

This is the delusion of an organization that has lost touch with its base and thinks that a few high-profile photo-ops will fix a decade of betrayal and elitism.

Rice called it like it is, the ERLC has alienated Baptists for years. It’s been a divisive entity, giving off an air of intellectual snobbery while dismissing the legitimate concerns of regular, church-going Southern Baptists. It’s as if the ERLC has forgotten who funds their salaries… average Baptists who expect integrity and faithfulness to the word of God, not cocktail parties on Capitol Hill.

Willy Rice is not alone in his assessment. The frustration with the ERLC has been simmering for years, and Rice simply voiced what many pastors and lay people have been feeling. The SBC doesn’t need an organization that measures its success by how many photo-ops it can squeeze into a congressional calendar. It needs leaders who stand firm on biblical principles without trying to impress the Washington elite.

The bottom line is that Rice’s call for the eradication of the ERLC is not a knee-jerk reaction. It’s the result of a long history of arrogance and misplaced priorities. He’s calling on the ERLC to read the writing on the wall and realize that they’re not indispensable. In fact, they’re more like an albatross around the neck of the SBC.

The house is on fire, as Rice said, but instead of grabbing buckets, the ERLC is lighting candles and congratulating itself on how pretty the flames look. And the longer they refuse to acknowledge the problem, the more the SBC risks burning down with it.

It’s time to stop pretending that a few politically convenient statements will undo the damage they’ve done to their own credibility. Willy Rice is right, and we’ve been saying it for well over a decade. It’s time to face reality and hold the ERLC accountable.