In the midst of a plagiarism scandal perpetrated by the newly-elected Southern Baptist president, Ed Litton, a former SBTS professor, Russell Fuller–who was fired from his position for rejecting aberrant theology and movements–is now calling on Litton to resign his post.
If you’ve been following the scandal–dubbed the Sermongate Scandal–you’re probably aware that Litton has been facing calls from a number of people in the denomination to resign his post. Last week, Litton joined the SBC This Week podcast, a podcast put on by the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, to discuss this scandal where he doubled down insisting he’d really done nothing wrong.
After the story broke that Litton’s Romans 1 sermon was nearly identical in content to–down to the illustrations and points–both Litton and Greear released a statement claiming that Ed had permission to do so. What neither of these men stated at the time, however, was that Ed had “borrowed” the entire sermon series from Greear. As a matter of fact, it has since been revealed that Litton has been plagiarizing JD Greear’s sermons as far back as 2013-2015–and that even JD Greear hired a professional sermon-writing organization to, in his own words, “make me look good.”
While many are calling on Litton to resign, some of the most influential voices in the denomination have remained silent. Despite the fact that these same people denounced plagiarism as “evil” and “despicable” several years ago, now that it has been exposed as a systemic fraud within the denomination, these same men have been silent. That would include Al Mohler and other top-level leaders.
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The current petition, which is endorsed by Fuller, has at the time of this writing reached well over 300 signatures and growing. In a Facebook post, Fuller writes, “Ed Litton should resign as president of the SBC and as pastor of his local church.”
Fuller accuses Litton of preaching and teaching heresies, including an anti-Trinitarian heresy known as partialism (which we reported on prior to his election), and says that “such deceit reproaches the church and the SBC.”
You can sign the petition at this link.