Brent Leatherwood, previous exec supervisor of the Tennessee Republican Celebration, has actually been tapped to replace Democrat Russell Moore as chief ethicist of the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest Protestant religion.
Having twice voted 80+ percent for Donald Trump, evangelicals and also Southern Baptists are the biggest accurately conservative voting bloc in America.
Will rank-and-file Southern Baptists discover in Leatherwood an advocate that will represent their ethical sentences to policymakers as Moore did for the little section of modern Baptists?
As head of the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Payment, Moore repeatedly located Autonomous chatting points to incorporate right into his own, from casualness regarding the open southern border to suspicion of patriotism to recognition of same-sex attraction. Moore additionally said that evangelicals who vote for Trump have to refute every little thing they think as Christians to do so.
However undoubtedly Leatherwood, 4 years a paid GOP operative, will give voice to the long-disenfranchised conservatives who fill Baptist churches. One would assume so, but when Leatherwood introduced himself as the religion’s new principal ethicist, he struck a different note: “I will claim it’s not my role to bind any person’s conscience in regards to exactly how to vote.”
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Bind consciences? By “bind consciences” does he indicate “educate principles”? Did Leatherwood bind or educate consciences in between 2012 and 2016 in Tennessee when he motivated candidates to make moral arguments to voters as the rationale for voting Republican instead of Democrat?
For 4 years, Leatherwood made partial ethical arguments free from the anxiety of violating principles. But now, as ethical rep as well as guide to greater than 14 million Christians, he feels he must secure consciences from some kind of “binding” he believes moral quality on the policies pushed by political celebrations might impose?
The two stances seem intransigent and also the more current one unreasonable, and also they are if one anticipates Leatherwood to prioritize ethical righteousness no matter that pays him. Yet Leatherwood’s stance fits perfectly with elite SBC top priorities of the last 10 approximately years– among which is the redemption of Christian elect Democrats.
SBC elites long back welcomed superstar New york city City priest Timothy Keller’s pursuit to get to blue neighborhoods– college-educated, Democrat-voting denizens of the country’s cities as well as blue territories gathered around universities and also …
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