The year 2019 has been perhaps the best year for pro-lifers in the 45 years since Roe V Wade was imposed upon the public by an activist judiciary. State after state has passed legislation designed to abolish or severely limit the horrible practice of abortion. Utterly absent from the fight, however, are Southern Baptists. Their Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, which should be fighting for the right to life, has instead been focusing on aliens, bizarre conspiracy theories, and technology discussions.
More than a dozen states have passed laws in 2019 outlawing abortion to one degree or another. Alabama’s law is the strictest, creating what is effectively a total ban. Other states like Georgia, Kentuck, and Ohio have passed “heartbeat bills.” Other states, like Indiana and North Dakota, have passed laws making second trimester abortions nearly impossible.
A total list of these states include Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Ohio, and Utah. All of these states, with the exception of North Dakota and Mormon-run Utah, are states with a strong Southern Baptist presence. And yet, the ERLC has been virtually silent on the efforts to ban abortion in these states.
A quick search of the ERLC website or social media pages will reveal that the Southern Baptist Convention’s chief lobbying arm has made no contribution to these state bills, and only occasionally have offered a hat-tip in the form of an ex post facto affirmation from the organization. The ERLC has put in no real man-hours, press, influence, power, money, or attention on the fight to end abortion in the United States. Even their presence from the abortion fight in the Bible Belt states mentioned above is noticeably absent.
So how is the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and its leftist-progressive president, Russell Moore, spending their time and energy? In May, while the abortion debate was at its hottest before the summer recess of state legislatures, Moore did a post about space aliens and their implication for Christianity.
The ever-present yard gnome of the Southern Baptist Convention, Russell Moore, hasn’t only been focusing on pop-culture conspiracy theories, however. He’s also directed the influence and power of the ERLC to focus on artificial intelligence, a popular subject among conspiracy theorists online. Moore wrote about the subject on his personal website (which is paid for by ERLC funds) in April.
Just today, the ERLC featured an article on its website about virtual reality and the ethical implications of VR church. The article posed the “important” and “serious” intellectual questions about something that isn’t yet even a thing. It included lines like, “May the rise of VR spur each of us on to love and serve our communities, not only in Word but also in deed.”
And yet, the ERLC has not lifted so much as one of Moore’s limp wrists or dainty pinkies to oppose abortion. They are absolutely absent from the foxholes and trenches, while they seek to systematically undermine the party and people trying to end abortion in states overwhelmingly populated by Southern Baptists.
