How the Southern Baptist Convention became a powerful force in the fight against abortion

Before the Southern Baptist Convention became one of the most influential religious groups in the fight against abortion, it took the opposite position.

But a conservative movement led to a seismic shift in the convention’s public policy arm, leading to a marriage on the issue between Southern Baptists and the GOP.

That public policy arm, the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, which is based in Nashville and Washington, held Republican Party's feet to the fire on the abortion issue as a representative of the country’s largest Protestant denomination. The advocacy directly affected the recent overturning of Roe v. Wade and the elimination of the constitutional right to an abortion.

“This is a moment where a lot of that work has led to and contributed to reaching this monumental day,” ERLC acting President Brent Leatherwood said in an interview the day the U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

“It is a monumental day and it’s a day that so many have prayed for and worked toward and now it’s here,” said Leatherwood, former executive director of the Tennessee Republican Party.

The ERLC’s contribution included submitting public comments on proposed rules, building coalitions with other conservative groups, filing amicus briefs in U.S. Supreme Court cases, and voicing support for conservative nominees for Supreme Court justices.

Ultimately, Roe v. Wade was overturned because a 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court. But getting there required Republican presidents to nominate conservative justices and Republican majorities in the U.S. Senate to confirm those justices.

The ERLC, among other groups, played a critical role in that effort to elect anti-abortion presidents and Congress members, and ensure those officials kept their promises.

“We tried to get Roe v. Wade done away with quickly. But it was clear that wasn’t going to happen,” Richard Land, president of the ERLC from 1988-2013 who transformed the organization’s advocacy on abortion, said in an interview. “So, we were forced into an incremental approach.”

Conservative long game: Overturning Roe v. Wade a triumph of decadeslong push by conservative legal movement

‘A sea change’

Land’s incremental approach started with a dramatic shift in the SBC.

Many Southern Baptists conditionally supported abortion, such as in cases of rape or to protect the health of the mother, right before and after the Roe decision in 1973, according to Biblical Recorder. Delegates at the 1971 SBC annual meeting approved a resolution that said, "We call upon Southern Baptists to work for legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion."

That sentiment changed in the late 1970s when the new Conservative Resurgence movement in the SBC started at about the same time Republicans and then-U.S. presidential candidate Ronald Reagan sought to “use abortion as a wedge issue,” said Susan Shaw, professor of women, gender and sexuality studies at Oregon State University.

“Following Roe, you had this reaction in the SBC that, for me, is about the control of women and about male power. And that intertwined with Republican politics,” said Shaw, a former Southern Baptist who still writes about the SBC for outlets like Baptist News Global and The Conversation.

Southern Baptists say their “complementarian” framework see male and female as equal, but that God has assigned different roles to each gender.

More conservative views on gender, abortion and sexuality, among deeper theological beliefs, were solidified during the Conservative Resurgence when a faction further to the right assumed and maintained leadership roles throughout the SBC for two decades.

One of those individuals in those leadership roles was Land. “When I was elected, it was a sea change," he said. "Everybody on both sides understood that I was the first overtly Conservative Resurgence leader to be elected to an entity head."

In many ways, Land said his appointment to the ERLC, formerly named the Christian Life Commission until 1997, was the agency’s way of catching up with the rest of the convention.

After the Conservative Resurgence and Reagan’s presidential election in 1980 — which Land said was supported by 64% of white Baptists according to polls at the time, a deviation from their support for Democrat Jimmy Carter, who supported abortion rights, in 1976 — voting delegates at SBC annual meetings began passing resolutions expressing their increasing opposition to abortion, according to Shaw in a recent analysis.

“The pro-life issue will be front-and-center,” Land said he told the Christian Life Commission trustees when he interviewed for the job.

Soon after his appointment, Land and his staff re-wrote literature on abortion circulated in Southern Baptist churches. They also worked to schedule a “Sanctity of Human Life Sunday” on the denominational calendar, according to Jerry Sutton’s book, “A Matter of Conviction: A History of Southern Baptist Engagement with the Culture,” which chronicles the life of the ERLC up until 2006.

Building on relationships established at the local level with anti-abortion Catholics, Land tightened partnerships with nationally known Catholics, such as Cardinal John O’Connor, who Land accompanied at a March for Life in Washington D.C.

To engage the public, Land started a regiment of television and radio interviews, boosting national fame he was already receiving for speaking at events like the Convention of the Concerned Women for America, according to Sutton’s book.

During the 1990s, Land already developed a habit of meeting with the nation’s most influential Republicans on the issue of abortion, such as with President George H.W. Bush in 1990 and House Speaker Newt Gingrich in 1998.

“We had continued what had been going on,” Land said about the commission before him and the access it already had to top officials. “We just did it from a different perspective.”

'Their ears definitely perk up'

The 2000s marked an uptick in the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission’s legislative advocacy in Washington D.C.

Land relocated a staff member to the nation’s capital with the expressed intention of influencing public policy, and the ERLC began filing more amicus briefs in Supreme Court cases related to abortion, according to “A Matter of Conviction.” One example was a Supreme Court case on a late-term abortion procedure, which conservatives called “partial-birth abortions.”

When the Supreme Court didn’t ban late-term abortions, the ERLC and other organizations supported a law banning the procedure that Congress passed. President George W. Bush signed the law on Nov. 5, 2003, in a ceremony that Land was present for.

Aside from the abortion issue, Land developed a close relationship with the George W. Bush administration, serving on the president’s U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

Both formal advocacy, such as filing amicus briefs or public comments for proposed rules, or the more informal cultivation of relationships with top officials are effective because Southern Baptists are “a large voting bloc,” Shaw said. “The ERLC is the voice in Washington, and they are speaking for 14 million Southern Baptists.”

The size of the SBC is something the commission’s public policy director, Chelsea Sobolik, said she emphasizes to lawmakers. “Their ears definitely perk up,” Sobolik said in a recent interview. Sobolik announced Tuesday she is leaving the ERLC for a position at Lifeline Child, an Alabama-based organization focused on adoption and pregnancy counseling.

The anti-abortion advocacy that Land modeled continued after he left the ERLC and was succeeded by Russell Moore. Moore resigned from the ERLC last year and the organization has yet to name a permanent replacement. 

Russell Moore leaves ERLC: Russell Moore, head of Southern Baptist public policy arm, leaving ERLC for Christianity Today

The ERLC has focused its anti-abortion advocacy toward at least 15 bills and laws since 2000, according to ministry reports provided to the SBC. Some of those bills are almost annually proposed but don’t end up passing. Another law, the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits the use of federal funds for abortion care, requires annual renewal.

The ERLC has also campaigned against proposed contraception mandates from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services during the administration of President Barack Obama, and against federal funding for Planned Parenthood.

At this point, the reputation of the ERLC in D.C. is less like a salesperson and more like a confidant. For abortion-related legislation, Sobolik said members of Congress regularly call her to ask for guidance on language in the bill.

Leatherwood said he recently met with a U.S. senator and representatives of a few other conservative groups in a more exclusive setting to discuss “pro-family proposals.” The senator told the group he invited them because they are “good faith actors,” Leatherwood recalled, declining to name the senator. 

The ERLC is seen by lawmakers as having less of a political agenda compared to other anti-abortion groups, said Land, Leatherwood and Sobolik. That’s largely because the ERLC receives most of its funding from the SBC Cooperative Program, or the convention’s budget for affiliated ministries, instead of individual donors.

“It gives us a degree of freedom that those organizations sometimes don’t have because they had to be sensitive to individual big donors and not offending some individual big donors upon which they are dependent,” Land said.

One ERLC initiative relies on external donations, the Psalm 139 Project, which provides ultrasound machines to pregnancy resource centers.

“A lot of those (anti-abortion) organizations tend to look like lobbying organizations or PACs (political action committee),” Leatherwood said. “Our work, we truly consider to be a ministry.”

Attacks from both sides

The idea of the ERLC as a ministry “gives them a sense of religious authority,” Shaw said. “I think they give Baptist politicians a lot of theological cover for doing these things.”

That’s also a reason why the organization recently came under attack from some within Southern Baptist ranks who are unhappy with the commission’s anti-abortion advocacy. Last month, voting delegates at the SBC annual meeting in Anaheim introduced a motion to “defund” the ERLC due to disagreements about abortion.

The defund supporters are more conservative Southern Baptists who identify as abortion “abolitionists,” believing in the strictest and most immediate abortion restrictions and that women who have abortions should face criminal charges. The group considers the ERLC too “incrementalist” because its leaders support banning abortions through a step-by-step process.

Ultimately, a majority of SBC voting delegates voted during the annual meeting against defunding the ERLC. But the drama was surprising, especially to outsiders who see the ERLC as part of the machinery restricting women’s rights.

“In light of that, they seem moderate and reasonable. But from where I stand, there’s nothing moderate or reasonable about any of it,” Shaw said.

Land said that’s always been the predicament for the ERLC since the moment he steered it toward a strong anti-abortion direction.  

Land said he would tell his staff, “If we do our job right, sooner or later, we’re going to make everybody mad. If we don’t make them mad on one issue, we’ll make them mad on the next issue.”

Liam Adams covers religion for The Tennessean. Reach him at ladams@tennessean.com or on Twitter @liamsadams.