By Will Hall, Baptist Message exeuctive editor
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (LBM) – The Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention continues to experience presidential controversies.
On Aug. 17, Willie McLaurin resigned as interim president and CEO of the national entity after a committee, looking into his background as part of his consideration as a candidate for the permanent position, found he had misrepresented his academic credentials.
McLaurin had served in the interim president role since February 2022 after serving as an SBC EC vice president since 2020.
He had followed Ronnie Floyd, who vacated 2021 in response to the SBC EC’s vote to renounce attorney-client privilege in an investigation into the alleged coverup by the SBC EC about sex abuse among SBC churches.
Floyd had replaced Frank Page who quit in 2018 because of an admitted “personal failing” described in news reports as a “morally inappropriate relationship.”
Meanwhile, Dan Summerlin, a retired Kentucky pastor who was announced, Sept. 18, as the candidate for the role of “transitional interim president and CEO,” unexpectedly withdrew his name from consideration on Sept. 19, only hours before it was anticipated he would be approved by SBC EC members. He cited his wife’s health for making the sudden decision.
Consequently, Jonathan Howe, the SBC EC vice president for communications, who by default as the only vice president on staff and a bylaw that requires a vice president to serve as interim in the absence of an elected president and CEO, has been named interim president.
He, too, has been embroiled in controversies after Baptist News Global identified him as a member of a congregation with ties to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, a group of moderate and liberal churches
who broke away from the SBC about issues such as the ordination of women as pastors. Also, his wife serves as a “minister” with their church, and women pastors was a heated issue debated during the 2023 SBC Annual Meeting.
