Russell Moore, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, speaks at the MLK50 conference in Memphis, Tennessee, April 3, 2018. | ERLC/Karen McCutcheon
Nearly two years after a motion to defund the Southern Baptist Convention’s Russell Moore-led Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission was rejected by messengers, a new report from a task force commissioned to study the denomination’s public policy arm has found it to be a major threat to the funding of the $15 billion Protestant Christian organization’s Cooperative Program.
The ERLC, which currently has an operating budget of $4.3 million, is funded through the SBC’s Cooperative Program, which also provides funding for the North American Mission Board, International Mission Board, and the six Southern Baptist seminaries in America — Southern, Southeastern, Midwestern, Southwestern, Golden Gate, and New Orleans.