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.