They’re Right, There is No “Drift.” The Last Three SBC Presidents Purposely Moved the Convention to the Left.
I’ve been a Southern Baptist since I was three years old. My parents decided they needed to raise their child in church, so we landed in a Southern Baptist one. I spent my teenage summers attending the Oklahoma Baptists’ Falls Creek Youth Camp. When I was 17, God called me into ministry, and there was no question that my ministry would be in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). By God’s grace, I have spent five years in vocational ministry as a youth pastor.
While I’ve been around the SBC my entire life, I know I’m still very new to working in ministry and as a pastor. Yet one concern I already have regarding the future context of my work as an SBC pastor is this: Will the SBC, as I know and love it, be a denomination I can faithfully minister in without compromising on core theological commitments over the next few decades?
That question is not so quickly answered right now; the future of the SBC truly hangs in the balance. So, as a relatively new Southern Baptist pastor, here is what I’m seeing and what causes this concern.
The Liberal Shift Over the Last Six Years
I never really paid attention to SBC politics growing up; granted, I was in grade school and high school during the final ripples of the Conservative Resurgence. I did, however, start paying attention in 2018 when J.D. Greear was elected SBC President. Based on what I witnessed from 2018 to now, there has been a horrendous liberal shift. I don’t think it was just a “drift;” it was a shift—it was intentional. This shift began with Greear’s presidency and continued under Ed Litton and Bart Barber’s presidential terms. From 2018 to 2024, these three presidents facilitated and promoted an increasingly progressive direction in the SBC.
I recently cataloged this liberal shift in a Twitter thread, which you can find here. The thread clearly struck a chord, so I wanted to turn it into an article that serves as both a one-stop summary and a longer-lasting reference point. What follows here tracks the same progression of my original thread and expands on it by providing examples of the theological, cultural, and political liberalism that gained a foothold in the SBC under Greear, Litton, and Barber.
Compromise on Transgender Pronouns
I first noticed the liberal shift during Greear’s presidency when he said everyone had to be charitable to the LGBTQ community and that the way to go about this was to use their preferred pronouns. He made his case by relying on the profoundly unbiblical teachings of Preston Sprinkle, who calls the idea “pronoun hospitality.” Regardless of how Greear and Sprinkle attempt to portray it, Christians should never practice “pronoun hospitality” because it is bearing false witness and is a clear violation of the Ninth Commandment (Exodus 20:16).
Now, roughly four years later, he somewhat retracted his words. However, he still hedges and caveats his argument, saying it was about his desire to “keep that conversation moving along” and that he would “use the [transgender] child’s self-referential pronouns.”
Ultimately, Greear’s “walk back” on his earlier statements wasn’t much of an apology. He didn’t repent for abusing his authority and leadership in the church and the SBC, nor did he reject Preston Sprinkle’s unbiblical teachings. Greear’s original teaching and his “clarification” are part of a larger pattern within his ministry: Greear appears far more apologetic to the LGBTQ community than to his brethren in Christ for his poor words. I do find it interesting that “comforting” the lost in their anti-Christian ideology was a common trend of Greear’s public commentary on numerous controversial topics during his presidency.
Worldly Positions on Abortion, Black Lives Matter, and CRT
Further evidence for Greear’s liberalizing direction is evidenced by his public commentary on both abortion and Black Lives Matter (BLM). These two issues make for an enlightening juxtaposition.
- Here is a clip where he states that abortion clinic workers are currently in his church and are welcome there.
- In 2020, Greear claimed in an SBC presidential address that “Black Lives Matter is a gospel issue.”
These statements beg the question: Why is Black Lives Matter a “gospel issue,” but the lives of the preborn are not? Or, even if Greear would say that abortion is a “gospel issue,” he uses a different degree of tone and urgency when addressing reluctant Black Lives Matter supporters than he does when addressing fully-committed baby butchers. Why don’t “Baby Lives Matter?” Babies’ lives, mind you, that those abortion workers they welcome into their church are guilty of actively murdering. On Sunday, these murderers come and watch a large production service, where Greear twists and turns every which way to make them feel welcome. Then, on Monday, those same workers lead women into rooms where abortionists rip their children limb from limb.
So again, how is supporting an anti-family, Marxist movement a gospel issue, but the murder of children is not? Should we assume it’s because God “whispers” about abortion?
Would Greear ever say, “I know we have members of the KKK here in our church…” and bend over backward to make them feel loved and understood? Would Greear speak in such a “winsome” welcoming way from the pulpit at Summit to members of the “Alt-Right” the same way he did to Planned Parenthood workers? You know the answer to that question as well as I do. He would never.
Why? Because he is “winsome” to the Left but “hostile” to the Right. In fact, Greear accused Southern Baptists of making “racists” and “neo confederates” more comfortable in our pews than “people of color” despite the fact he had no evidence to support this claim: “But we should mourn when closet racists and neo confederates feel more at home in our churches than do many of our people of color.”
In short, Greear wants abortion clinic workers to feel comfortable in the SBC but not racists. Which is odd, to say the least, because doesn’t everyone need the gospel? How does murder become less heinous than racism in Greear’s theological framework? Because Greear uses unequal weights and measures on social and political issues. His scales are not set by God’s Word but by the worldly zeitgeist.
After three years of Greear making DEI appointments across the SBC, the 2021 presidential election became a battle between a condemnation of CRT in the SBC versus a total embrace. Ed Litton, who was well-known for his “racial reconciliation” efforts, narrowly won in a runoff against Mike Stone after Stone was brutally slandered by men like Griffin Gulledge and others who amplified a lie about his interaction with an abuse survivor. The selection of Litton after Greear was an omen of how the SBC would continue to shift to the Left. It sent the message that we, as the SBC, wanted to continue to chase after a CRT-lite approach to racial issues rather than a biblical approach.
Sure enough, Litton then brought forth efforts to push a “Christianized” version of CRT with Tony Evans, rebranding it as “Kingdom Race Theory” (KRT). This is problematic because Evans, arguably, only created KRT because he viewed CRT as filled with “bad actors.” Evans agreed with the principle of CRT but decided that it needed to be renamed and refocused. The problem, however, isn’t just the bad actors; it is the fact that it adds to the gospel we preach and makes the gospel of Jesus Christ not enough.
One enduring oddity from Litton’s presidency is his refusal to seek what is traditionally an all-but-guaranteed second presidential term. After the end of his first year, Litton announced he would not run again, as is customary, but rather step away to continue his focus on “racial reconciliation.” However, the whole story of his tenure as SBC President suggests his pursuit of racial reconciliation work was far from his sole motive. Why?
Because within the first few weeks of his presidency, he became the poster child of one of the biggest plagiarism scandals in the modern SBC. And who was right there with him in the thick of this scandal?
J.D. Greear.
Whispering about Homosexuality and Pulpit Plagiarism
Litton was elected on June 7, 2021. On June 21, it was discovered that “Ed Litton preached a sermon Romans 1 at the start of 2020, and in the sermon he said that the Bible ‘whispers’ about sexual sin. This is the same thing J.D. Greear had said to his church when he preached on Romans 1—a chapter of the Bible that very loudly condemns sexual immorality, especially homosexuality.”
During the sermon that Litton plagiarized, Greear used Jennifer Wilkin’s words to say we need to “whisper about what God whispers.”
I would share the link to Litton’s sermon; however, it has been deleted. Why? Because people began noticing that Litton plagiarized Greear’s sermon. After getting caught, Litton deleted over 140 sermons off his church website after the scandal was made public. You can read a detailed accounting of the depth of this disqualifying scandal here.
Did Litton apologize? No. He tried to brush it off as if it were no big deal. Is this really what the SBC stands for? Unapologetic and unrepentant pulpit plagiarism?
Sadly, it apparently does in many corners of the SBC mega-church world. As the news of the plagiarism unfolded, we learned that many prominent SBC church leaders used the software and sermon-writing service Docent.
While Litton never took responsibility for his underhanded plagiarism, his decision not to seek re-election was all but an admission. Still, at the 2022 SBC Annual Meeting in Anaheim, California, each time a remark or a resolution on “pastoral integrity” or “plagiarism” was brought up, Litton would claim it was out of order and shut down the messenger.
Remarkably, the plagiarism wasn’t the worst part of the scandal. No, the more troubling aspect, and one that the cultured SBC elites want so desperately for us to overlook, is the egregious, unbiblical downplaying of the sin of homosexuality by both Greear and Litton.
The truth is that God doesn’t “whisper” about sin. And He certainly doesn’t whisper about homosexuality. Look more closely at Romans 1:24-27:
“Therefore God delivered them over in the desires of their hearts to sexual impurity, so that their bodies were degraded among themselves. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served what has been created instead of the Creator, who is praised forever. Amen. For this reason God delivered them over to disgraceful passions. Their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. The men in the same way also left natural relations with women and were inflamed in their lust for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their persons the appropriate penalty for their error.”
This is not a “whisper” about sexual sin; this is a strong condemnation of rebellion against God. What does God say about the sexual perversion inherent in the LGBTQ community? Jude 1:7 makes it unmistakably clear: “Likewise, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns committed sexual immorality and perversions, and serve as an example by undergoing the punishment of eternal fire.”
That’s also not a whisper. It’s appropriate to use Greear’s words to say this is a “gospel issue.” This is far deeper than just even the plagiarism; Greear and Litton are deeply, biblically, in error on this subject and used their pulpits to push a Leftist narrative on LGBTQ sin and compromise. From Greear’s earlier statements about being “kind” for using preferred pronouns to now both Litton and Greear’s claims of “whispering” about these issues, it’s clear this was an intentional effort to liberalize the SBC on one of the most critical issues of our day. It reeks of a soft embrace of progressive Christianity, trying to make sin seem not as bad. In the same way that a woman has officiated every wedding on every sitcom for the past 25 years, it is a form of manipulation, and the real problem is that they are avoiding the sin of homosexuality.
To make matters worse, it has come to light that both Litton and Greear misapplied Jen Wilkin’s commentary (which is most likely the result of Docent sermon writers getting it wrong first). She confirmed this when Pastor Jeff Wright asked her earlier this year.
Not only was there plagiarism, theological liberalism, and coddling of the Spirit of the Age from Greear and Litton, but they didn’t even get the original category they were trying to apply (or misapply) right. But the bottom line is that they twisted God’s Word for their own liberalizing agenda. Or maybe it was for someone else’s agenda, one that had some decent money behind it (Megan Basham has a good book about this right now called Shepherds for Sale. Maybe you’ve heard of it).
Would it improve after four years of Greear at the head of the SBC? We could have elected Tom Ascol in 2022. Instead, we got Bart Barber.
Putting Out Fires By Starting His Own: The Bart Barber Years
Unfortunately, Bart Barber spent his two years as president pushing the Overton Window in the SBC along the same progressive path as Greear and Litton. Even before he took the helm, he defended Litton’s plagiarism (here).
Then, while he was the sitting president of the SBC, he made an out-of-state political campaign donation against his fellow brother in Christ and SBC pastor Dusty Deevers.
If “there is no drift in the SBC,” then why was Barber spending money to try and stop Deevers from getting elected in his Oklahoma State Senate race?
Mind you, this came after Barber made the following slanderous accusation towards Deevers, an accusation that he has yet to apologize for to this day.
This attack from Barber towards Deevers was over the fact that he is an abortion abolitionist and stands for equal protection and the justice of our preborn neighbors. Barber is openly outspoken against the abolitionist movement and claims that murderous mothers are the “real victims” of abortion. During this pushback, Barber made the accusation before Deevers ran for senate. This accusation gave Deevers’ Democratic opponent, Larry Bush, ammunition to use Barber’s own words in several smear campaigns against Deevers.
Of course, Democrats will use and twist the words of conservatives to make their campaigns sound more emotionally appealing. However, a direct quote from the SBC president has never been used like this against a fellow brother in Christ and fellow SBC pastor. After the campaign mailers were sent out, this was Barber’s response:
He says he doesn’t know who Deevers’ opponent was in the general election. He may not have known Larry Bush, but he did know about the election in general because he made a point to weigh in against Dusty. No drift, indeed.
Not only this, but Barber scolded the messengers during the Annual Meeting in New Orleans for celebrating the removal of Saddleback Church but then said nothing about any other churches that had been removed.
After the New Orleans Annual Meeting, Barber spent the rest of his presidency working against the Law Amendment, trying to make it seem “unnecessary,” even though roughly 1,200 SBC churches are currently in the same position as Saddleback in the SBC. Barber claimed that we have “clarity” already, even though the Convention had just voted to disfellowship a multi-generational church that had been disobedient to Scripture and going against the BF&M 2000 for over 40 years. How is that clear?
It has become evident now that a vote against the Amendment was a vote to keep women pastors in unbiblical positions. This was led by the SBC leadership and the past presidents—Greear, Litton, and several other former presidents.
More Signs of Liberalism in the SBC
Another thing I’ve noticed is that these men will make public statements against the horrific and satanic displays we see in the Olympics but then have nothing but crickets for the fact that a Southern Baptist pastor, Dwight McKissic, is part of the newly formed group known as “Evangelicals for Harris.”
Why speak publicly (through a donation) against the conservative Deevers and not the liberal McKissic? Both are Southern Baptist pastors, after all.
In fact, I don’t see any of these men (Greear, Litton, or Barber) speaking against what would be the most communistic and destructive president and vice president in this nation’s 245 years of existence. But I have seen many statements made about former President Trump.
But in the past few weeks, Megan Basham’s book has ripped the bandaid off, exposing these men’s and many others’ capitulation to a progressive agenda. Still, despite the bright light of accountability shining down from a New York Times bestseller, none of them have owned up to their direct quotes; instead, they have belittled, insulted, and let many others try to shame her for writing it.
In fact, men like Barber have been poisoning the well against Megan for quite some time now.
This behavior is sickening and not even remotely acceptable for a pastor or denominational leader.
As a young pastor just starting out—yes, I’m in a small church, and yes, I’m bi-vocational—I know that these men have no respect for men like me. And why would they? Evidently, they only care about what makes them popular with the “watching world.” So be it.
Which Way, SBC?
What does this mean for young pastors like myself, who love the SBC and want to fight for theological fidelity and conservative values in the face of our culture’s progressive onslaught? What hope can those who don’t want to compromise with the world, as our last three SBC presidents did, have for the future of the SBC? Why stay in the fight?
Yes, the past six years have seen a severe leftward shift in the SBC. There was so much more I could have mentioned here: the pro-CRT Resolution 9, the way that Russell Moore and his allies weaponized the abuse “crisis,” further examples of CRT on SBC seminary campuses, including anti-white racism from former SBTS provost Matt Hall, examples of radical Marxist climate change ideology pushed at SEBTS, rising and rampant egalitarianism, which has been all but approved of by Greear, Litton, and Barber, mounting evidence of severe financial mismanagement at many of our entities, and the embarrassing black spot the ERLC has become under Leatherwood’s leadership. But my mission here was to focus more specifically on our last three presidents and how they played a significant role in this liberal shift.
Despite all of this, a refreshing breeze is blowing from Charlotte, NC, coming from our newly elected President, Clint Pressley.
Pressley was boldly outspoken in favor of the Law Amendment and stood for biblical clarity on pastoral leadership in our constitution. He has also been outspoken against leftist groups like Evangelicals for Harris. He even subtly rebuked ERLC President Brent Leatherwood for his horrible statement on Biden’s withdrawal from the American presidential race.
Still, only time will tell if the “shift” is beginning to be corrected. Will we return to standing on the Bible or follow in the footsteps of United Methodists in a total capitulation to the godless world and utter apostasy?
For the young men coming into the SBC and for men who have been in the SBC for years and have grown weary, I say this: Stay the course, stay faithful, and keep fighting for the values that make the SBC what it was, is, and should be. However, don’t forget what the past three presidents have done through their words and deeds to weaken our theological commitments and all the embarrassment and compromises they have brought on and into the SBC.
It’s time that real conservatives stand up and speak against men like our last three presidents. It’s time to rebuke and reject their theological liberalism, their soft-pedaling of egalitarianism, their promotion of LGBT compromises, their push for CRT and DEI in the SBC, and their embrace of forms of progressive politics. It’s time to expose their lies, shady politics, and their attacks against brothers and sisters in Christ.
After the disaster that was the last six years of SBC leadership, we must ask: How is God being glorified by the Southern Baptist Convention at the national level? Why are these men who are called to be above reproach fighting for blatant sin to be ignored, slandering brothers and sisters, and then defending their wrong actions?
I might be a young pastor, but I do know this: We are called to a higher standard as pastors. These pastors and past SBC presidents need to repent of their actions and unbiblical stances.
No liberal drift, you say? You’re right. It wasn’t a drift; it was a shift. It was intentional. And it was executed by the hands of Greear, Litton, and Barber.
It’s time to turn the page on this “leadership” in the SBC. It’s time for courageous and uncompromising Baptist leadership for the 21st Century. That’s what this young pastor is excited about. I pray that you are, too.
