The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission is the public policy agency of the Southern Baptist Convention. It is headed by Richard Land and is headquartered in Nashville, TN with an office in Washington, DC.
The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. is the social and moral issues agency of the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest non-catholic denomination in the United States, with over 16 million members in over 43,000 independent churches.
Formerly known as the Christian Life Commission, the agency has been led since inception by Dr. Richard Land. The Commission was founded in 1988 after the Southern Baptist Convention started reducing its involvement in the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty over divisions regarding the meaning of separation of church and state and the role of Baptist organisations in partisan politics.
The stated vision of the ERLC is an American society that affirms and practices Judeo-Christian values rooted in biblical authority. The stated mission of the ERLC is to awaken, inform, energize, equip, and mobilize Christians to be the catalysts for the Biblically-based transformation of their families, churches, communities, and the nation.
The agency has many ministries to carry out its stated missions including: voter-registration efforts; For Faith & Family, which produces radio programs and a monthly magazine; the Psalm 139 Project, which donates sonogram machines to crisis pregnancy centres; and a think-tank, the Research Institute.
The ERLC has offices in Nashville, Tennessee and Washington, D.C.
ERLC is involved in lobbying. Its legislative achievements include The Sudan Peace Act, The Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA), and The North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004.
Famous quotes containing the words ethics, religious, liberty and/or commission:
“If you take away ideology, you are left with a case by case ethics which in practise ends up as me first, me only, and in rampant greed.”
—Richard Nelson (b. 1950)
“It’s almost impossible to deal with a crazy man, except that he does have religious beliefs, and the world of Islam will be damaged if a fanatic like him should commit murder in the name of religion against 60 innocent people.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“When complaints are freely heard, deeply considered and speedily reformed, then is the utmost bound of civil liberty attained that wise men look for.”
—John Milton (1608–1674)
“A sense of humour keen enough to show a man his own absurdities as well as those of other people will keep a man from the commission of all sins, or nearly all, save those that are worth committing.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)