SBC Leaders Are Fighting for the “Religious Freedom” to Defame Pastors & Church Members

The First Amendment does not protect defamation. But if SBC leaders win at the Supreme Court, not only will that change, but centuries of Baptist belief on church polity will be overturned as well.

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NOTE: This essay may seem a bit inside baseball, but it isn’t. It pertains to a possible perversion of the First Amendment, now before the Supreme Court at the behest of Baptist leaders who’ve blatantly lied under oath. The effect? To give them — and religious leaders of countless other denominations — a legal exemption from defamation law.

And the inside baseball part? It would also turn the nation’s largest Protestant denomination into a top-down, quasi-Catholic structure, instead of the bottom-up delegated ministry of local churches that Baptist belief requires and that the law has long recognized. This would upend Baptist doctrine, which is exactly what the First Amendment must protect. It would also make your church legally and financially liable for a slip-and-fall at a church you’ve never heard of.

Along with more than 50 other SBC leaders, I have signed an amicus brief opposing this gross perversion of …