The walls may be closing in on Ed Litton as his scandals mount, the most notorious one being sermongate. After being caught with partialism on his church‘s website, Ed Litton’s sermon of Romans one drew attention when he stated that the bible whispers about sexual sin, but this line would not be the only similarity shared with JD Greear’s infamous sermon on homosexuality. But then it was unearthed that Ed Litton has done this before, several times. At the same time, Ed Litton would scrub YouTube of his sermon archive. Plagiarizing sermons is not merely a taboo among clergy, it is stealing, not just from other people but those who pay his wages with the understanding that he’s putting in the work on Sunday.
29 “Is not My word like fire?” declares the Lord, “and like a hammer which shatters a rock? 30 Therefore behold, I am against the prophets,” declares the Lord, “who steal My words from each other.
Jeremiah 23:30 NASB
Even the leftwing media is picking up this story, especially as more sermons drop. So this story has definitely become bigger than one would have initially thought, but is sermongate big enough to topple Ed Litton? I posit two reasons it is not:
There is no real impeachment mechanism
The Southern Baptist Convention does not exactly have airtight bylaws to address scandal such as this. One would think that the Conservative Resurgence would have ammended the constitution to include matters of theological decay as grounds for impeachment. But alas the one year term of a President was likely considered reason enough to not include such mechanism. The SBC constitution states in Article V:
In case of death or disability of the president, the vice presidents shall automatically succeed to the office of president in the order of their election.
Disability should likely not be construed as disqualified. Therefore, there is no real mechanism in the SBC to remove a president. Ed Litton will have to go voluntarily.
The Conservative Resurgence 2.0 must remain dead
With Ed Litton in control of his destiny, perhaps internal pressure would dissuade him from maintaining a post he is unqualified for. But what pressure from elite circles is he getting. Kevin Ezell, Al Mohler, Danny Akin, and JD Greear are all silent or vocally supportive of Litton’s integrity. They do not seem to care that their tolerance of a fake pastor such as Ed Litton exposes their hypocrisy. At the expense of this exposure the Conservative Resurgence 2.0 must remain dead. Southern Baptist elites handily routed the Conservative Baptist Network. Yet the symbolic victory that the CBN championed was the election of Lee Brand as First Vice President.
Should Ed Litton resign, the Conservative Baptist Network will have inadvertently won control of the convention. The elites do not want that. The same people who accused the Conservative Baptist Network of wantonly seeking power are propping up a fake pastor in order to cling to it. That is the game that is being played.
