Despite opposition, Southern Baptist Ethics Arm backs Tennessee’s’s Red Flag Law.

Despite numerous pastors and church members stating that they do not support the move, the Southern Baptist Convention‘s’s social agenda firm backed down on its support for a so-called red flag legislation in Tennessee.

Brent Leatherwood, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, wrote a letter to state lawmakers last week in support of Tennessee Republican Governor Bill Lee’s’s proposed red flag law, which would give state officials more authority to seize firearms from people they deem to be in danger of harming themselves or others. The plan comes after a transgender person fatally shot three kids and three employees at The Covenant School in Nashville, which is home to three of Leatherwood’s’s personal kids.

The plan differs from a purple flag law, according to an explanation released by the ERLC on Friday, because basically police officers may” filament before the court to have handguns confiscated” and because people may only be” dispossessed of the weapons” after completing the entire court system. The fundamental criticism of red flag laws— that government officials can abuse the jurisdiction granted by the statutes to strip citizens of their means for self-defense— was not addressed by either explanation, and Second Amendment activists cited this issue in several recent reports on the Tennessee Red Flag request. The criticism is that the policies are generally unpopular among large majorities of Republicans and many independents.

The Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Christian church in the United States, adopted resolutions at its monthly sessions in 2018 and 2022, according to the ERLC’s’s explanation. While the latter urged lawmakers to” reduce the scourge of gun violence throughout our world” with” concrete steps ,” the former affirmed the denomination’s’s solidarity” with all those victimized by firearm violence.” Neither calls for the passage of any particular gun crime law or act, much less any plan that even remotely resembles a red flag legislation.

Especially after Tennessee House Republicans implied on Wednesday that they would match such a act, the ERLC continued to support the red flag law plan. Any dark flag law is not a starting point for House Republicans, according to the conference’s’s speech. ” Our conference is focused on finding ideas that preserve the Second Amendment right of law-abiding members and prevent serious individuals from harming the court.” We have always been willing to collaborate with Governor Lee on initiatives that fall within that purview.

As he backed the red flag legislation, Leatherwood cited the two proposals that Southern Baptist Convention visitors had passed on social media. In an apparent attempt to use the size of the church to support the red flag request, Leatherwood told legislators that” Southern Baptists comprise over one-fifth the people of Tennessee ,” according to a report from The Daily Wire that was released earlier this month.

In an audience with The Daily Wire, Creekside Fellowship Lead Pastor Drew Byers, whose faithful congregates in Castalian Springs, Tennessee, stated that the ERLC does not represent the majority of Southern Baptists’ views on weapons regulations. He argued that” after a transgender person shoots children at school, the ideology that needs to be condemned is not gun culture” and noted the organization’s’s relative silence on transgenderism as” more concerning.”

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He continued,” There are times when the ERLC does discuss plainly on some issues. However, I believe that they frequently advance the opinions of those within the company more than those in the chapel. Nobody from the ERLC has already gotten in touch with me to inquire about my opinion on something.

When Lee recently approved expenses banning female change techniques, hormone treatments, puberty blockers for adolescents, and sexually explicit bring shows in public or near children, Leatherwood and the ERLC don’t seem to have said anything. The Daily Wire contacted the ERLC to verify that they did not publicly assistance the proposals after being unable to locate any public comments or court papers in support of the laws.

The implication that ERLC is silent about the risks of trans ideology is” simply fake ,” according to Michael Guyer, a director of the organization, who made this statement on Thursday via social media. In order to express his priority over the dark flag proposition, he also referred to the two resolutions of the Southern Baptist Convention.

In recent years, Southern Baptist religious leaders have been constantly charged with supporting legislation proposals that go against the wishes and convictions of congregations. Three years ago, Russell Moore, a former chairman of the ERLC, suggested that officials encourage churchgoers to get vaccinated and don faces. In spite of the fact that Southern Baptists had formerly passed a resolution stating that” the death of preborn children is an act against society that must be punished equally under the law ,” Leatherwood endorsed in an article last year alongside several hundred pro-life activists that opposed an abortion bill in Louisiana that would have criminalized pregnancy for all parties involved.