The Rev. Ed Litton, newly elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention, is known as a compassionate bridge builder who hopes to unify the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.
Litton won the election in a tight runoff in Nashville last week, fending off the Rev. Mike Stone, the senior pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church in Blackshear, Georgia, and the favorite of the most conservative members of the convention.
Litton won the close race during one of the most highly attended meetings in years and during a time when the nation is deeply divided politically and culturally.
“I was well-advised by former presidents that you have to be willing to lose because there is a chance you will,” said Litton, 61, in a telephone interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “But at the same time, I felt like the Lord told me I need to be willing to win. I really prepared for the last six months to do both. I prayed and asked the Lord for a clear understanding of where we are and where we need to go.”
Litton, the senior pastor of Redemption Church in Saraland, Alabama, just outside of Mobile, is known for his work around racial reconciliation, particularly following the 2014 police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, according to an article in The Washington Post.
“I looked in the faces of people who were deeply wounded and hurt,” he told the AJC. “Those wounds were real. They’re not past-100-year history or 15-year history, they’re 15-minute history. It broke my heart and changed how I viewed this issue. Southern Baptists are good people who need a path to deal with racial reconciliation with our brothers and sisters of color. They’re afraid of it as I was afraid and avoided it, but I’m not avoiding it anymore.”
Litton said he has not talked to Stone but is willing to do so.
“I do think there’s room for all of us,” he said. “We’re all conservatives. We believe the Word of God, but the heart has to have a desire to reach the nations together.”
Also part of what makes Litton a good leader, friends say, is that he has walked through the fires after the death of his first wife, Tammy, in a car accident 14 years ago. His current wife, Kathy Ferguson Litton, lost her husband, a Southern Baptist pastor, in a car accident as well.
He knows what it’s like to feel pain to find healing.
The Rev. Bryant Wright, a former SBC president and founder of the “Right From the Heart” ministry, has known Litton for years and is confident he can meet those challenges.
“He has a great Christian spirit that I think will be good for the convention in this time,” said Wright. “He’s a fine people person and I think he will be reaching out to all the people with different interests and concerns. Time will tell how people will respond from these divisions.”
The denomination has been divided over issues of sexual abuse, women in the pulpit and race, most recently critical race theory. CRT is a decades-old concept that seeks to show how systemic racism is ingrained in and influenced all aspects of society. Last year, several Southern Baptist seminary presidents called CRT incompatible with the Baptist Faith & Message, according to the Baptist Press.
Several Black pastors had threatened to leave the denomination if Stone or another candidate, R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, had prevailed. Mohler is one of the most vocal opponents of CRT in Southern Baptist circles.
The Rev. William Dwight McKissic Sr., senior pastor of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas, is one of the most influential African Americans in the convention.
He recently pulled his church out of one of the state’s two SBC-affiliated conventions and said he might leave the SBC. Now, it appears he is staying.
Had Mohler or Stone been elected, “it would have changed the trajectory” of the denomination.
“Litton represents to me the future in that he is strong on racial reconciliation,” McKissic said. “If the SBC is more mission-focused and racially inclusive, it’s going to look wonderful. If his appointment continues to move toward a road that is more diversified, it could have a bright future.”
The Rev. James Merritt, a former convention president, author and senior pastor of Cross Pointe Church in Duluth, agreed. He said Litton believes “there is a desperate need in our own denomination and culture for racial reconciliation. “ While he may be considered the more progressive of the candidates, Merritt said Litton is “very conservative. There’s no question about it and anyone who says otherwise is just not telling the truth.”
Litton, he added, is a “gentle spirit. He’s soft spoken and wants to build bridges. I believe Ed Litton is capable of building bridges with anybody who wants a bridge to be built. It takes two to build a bridge and he will find that common ground.”
While Litton acknowledges splits, he said he thinks Southern Baptists may seem to be more divided than they actually are.
“What’s really interesting is that people are swayed by various concerns and fears that they might have about the direction of convention, but we are a very conservative convention of churches,” he said. “We have settled our foundational issues from the standpoint of what is the source of our authority?”
He said people who fear the convention will swing toward liberalism are mistaken.
“I’m a conservative through and through,” he said. For instance, he doesn’t believe women should pastor churches, but he does believe women can lead in the church, serve in the church and be “respected and needed” in the church.
“My theology has not changed,” he said. “I’m conservative politically but I stopped bowing down to that. It’s not an idol in my life.”
The denomination, which has a network of more than 47,500 churches, was founded in 1845, and faces other issues, including a 14-year decline in membership and a recent decline in baptisms.
The denomination peaked at 16.3 million members in 2006 but was down to 14.1 million members in 2020, according to LifeWay Research’s latest Annual Church Profile.
Litton says the growth of Black, Asian and Latino churches in the convention will increase membership.
“And we have much to learn from our ethnic brothers and sisters, but that being said, I think that the decline will be stopped when our churches decide to get out of this bubble and get into the communities. That’s where you meet people who have needs. That’s where you meet people we can share the Gospel with,” join with people who may not look or think like you.
Anthea Butler, an associate professor of religious studies at the University of Pennsylvania, wonders whether Southern Baptists “can hold it together. They may not have lost Black congregations because Litton got elected, but they may lose some white ones.”
Southern Baptists in 2020
Number of churches: 47,592
Total members: about 14 million
Total baptisms: 123,160
Ethnic growth: Minority ethnic fellowships comprised 22.3% of the 51,538 Southern Baptist congregations included in the report regarding 2018, the most recent year studied.
Sources: LifeWay Research; Southern Baptist Convention, North American Mission Board
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