The ERLC Podcast

How the ERLC works in D.C. for Southern Baptist churches

January 23, 2025

Today, we’re kicking off a new series focusing on how we work in Washington, D.C., for Southern Baptist churches. Welcome to The ERLC Podcast where our goal is to help you think biblically about today’s cultural issues.

The ERLC operates out of two locations—Nashville, as our home base, and Capitol Hill, where we’ve had a permanent presence for 31 years. Our work in D.C. is focused on making the voice of Southern Baptists heard in the public policy space. We do this by regularly working with lawmakers, coalition partners, and like-minded organizations to increase our influence and maintain the stance of our SBC churches, shape the cultural debates of the day, provide pastors with information they need, and equip the SBC to stand for truth in their communities. 

On today’s episode, we’re talking with Brent Leatherwood, president of the ERLC, Hannah Daniel, ERLC’s director of public policy, and Allison Cantrell, senior policy associate for the ERLC, to get a better idea of the important work your ERLC does in the public square.

Episode Transcript: How the ERLC works in D.C. for Southern Baptist churches

Narration:

Welcome to the ERLC podcast, where our goal is to help you think biblically about today’s cultural issues. I’m your host, Lindsay Nicolet, and today we’re kicking off a new series focusing on how we work in Washington D.C. for Southern Baptist churches.

The ERLC operates out of two locations, Nashville as our home base and Capitol Hill, where we’ve had a permanent presence for 31 years. Our work in D.C. is focused on making the voice of Southern Baptists heard in the public policy space. We do this by regularly working with lawmakers, coalition partners, and like-minded organizations to increase our influence and maintain the stance of our SBC churches, shape the cultural debates of the day, provide pastors with the information they need, and equip the SBC to stand for truth in their communities. 

To get a better idea of the important work your ERLC does in the public square, we’re talking with Brent Leatherwood, president of the ERLC, Hannah Daniel ERLC’s, director of public policy, and Allison Cantrell, senior policy associate.

In 1994 under the leadership of Richard Land, the ERLC, formerly known as the Christian Life Commission, opened the Leland House on Capitol Hill in an effort to expand the ERLC’s advocacy work on behalf of Southern Baptists in our nation’s capital. Here’s Brent Leatherwood to share more about this historic moment and why it matters for Southern Baptists.

The ERLC’s work in D.C. goes back to 1994

Brent Leatherwood:

The ERLC has a dual mandate, so we exist like all of our national entities to first and foremost serve our churches, but then we also have a more public facing role, which is to go into the public square and help policy makers think through, understand the ramifications for various proposals and bills that they are conceiving or debating. And that second part, it chiefly takes us to our nation’s capital in Washington D.C., and that’s why under the leadership of Dr. Richard Land, we established our Leland house office, which is our  Washington office. It’s located just a little bit behind the US Senate, and the reason we felt that that was an appropriate move for us to make is because, well, we were spending a lot of time in Washington and because so much of our work centers on federal policy and on the debates that are happening on Capitol Hill, and of course it’s not just about reaching Congress from our office in Washington, we can very easily get over to the White House and to other parts of the executive branch for important meetings and conversations that we need to be a part of about issues related to life, and religious liberty, marriage and family, and human dignity.

And so our Leland House has just been an essential part of this organization. We provide a lot of good research and analysis about laws that are, I think, important for Southern Baptists or at least important for them to know about as we undertake our work. And it’s very beneficial for us organizationally for us to maintain that presence in Washington D.C.

Leland House on Capitol Hill is home to the ERLC’s work in D.C.

Narration:

Our presence in D.C. allows our staff at the Leland House to serve our SBC churches in practical ways at the federal level by addressing a broad set of issues that are of concern to Southern Baptists. Here are Allison Cantrell and Hannah Daniel to talk more about how they do this work on behalf of SBC churches and pastors.

Allison Cantrell:

I think one of the most helpful ways that the ERLC serves our churches on the federal level is that we get to do all of the nitty gritty policy work so that pastors and staff can just focus on serving their people. What that looks like is reading every government funding draft bill texts, reviewing the NDAA, which is the National Defense Authorization Act, and communicating Southern Baptist priorities to lawmakers and to their staff. A lot of that is really technical work that you do need to have policy experience to do, but it’s also really time consuming work that isn’t central to the mission of our local churches and our pastors.

Behind the scenes of how the ERLC works in D.C.

Hannah Daniel:

I think too, so much of this work that’s happening in D.C. that’s impacting public policy and laws that have such profound impacts on our churches and in our communities, it’s happening behind the scenes. And part of what we’re able to do is make sure that the voices and the convictions of Southern Baptists are heard in these spaces by developing relationships and making sure that we have a presence where decisions are being made and that we’re able to express why we think certain things are important or why the Bible leads us to have certain convictions. And so we’re able to relay the convictions of our churches to lawmakers and to those who are making decisions. And I think oftentimes the idea of policy can feel really far away and it can feel like something that is just kind of up in the air and doesn’t have a real tangible impact.

So so many of these policy issues that we’re working on are not these distant far away issues. They are the things that are directly impacting our churches and the people in our churches every single day. For example, we’re working on protecting the religious liberty of churches and their ability to hire in accordance with their beliefs or to protect their tax exempt status. Other things are making sure that those who are in our churches are able to adopt and making that more affordable and accessible, helping those in our churches who are rallying around vulnerable women, helping them choose life. We’re working on things like protecting women’s sports, making sure that sex specific spaces like bathrooms and locker rooms are protected for the kids in our youth groups who are playing on sports teams and in locker rooms. And we want those kinds of spaces to be protected for women. One of the other things we’re working on is trying to make sure that we are banning harmful gender transition procedures for children and making sure that taxpayer funding is not going towards things like that.

Policy priorities focused on life, religious liberty, marriage and family, and human dignity

Narration:

The ERLC’s work focused on the categories of life, religious liberty, marriage and family, and human dignity is grounded in scripture. Guided by the Baptist faith and message and informed by resolutions passed at each year’s SBC annual meeting, we’ve identified top public policy priorities that can be found in our annual federal public policy agenda and have sent President Trump a list of items we’d like him to address immediately. Here’s Brent to share more about his hopes for the next few weeks.

Brent Leatherwood:

What my hope is is that in these initial few weeks, first 100 days or first six months of the Trump administration, that we can get back to where we were in terms of executive policy when President Trump left office. That’s one of the signals that we have sent to the Trump transition team as they’re preparing to take office, which is that they should strive to get us back to where we were. And that should be our kind of baseline for moving forward, and particularly in areas related to life to marriage and family, beating back all that’s been done under the Biden administration in terms of gender and sexuality, kind of uprooting those sorts of executive orders. That’s what we are hoping. So if we can just get back to where we were when President Trump left office, that I think would be, honestly, that’d be a win.

This is easily one of the times of the year that I look forward to the most with our work at the ERLC because our federal public policy agenda, there is so much that goes into it, so much research, reading, understanding the nature of the proposals that might be coming about in Congress, and we really put it all together in this asset that we deliver both to our churches, but all across Capitol Hill and to the White House. It falls in kind of our four main lanes, life, religious liberty, marriage and family, and human dignity. And essentially what we try and do is cherry pick proposals that are out there, that we want to champion, that we think represent the broad consensus of views across the Southern Baptist Convention. And then we also find ones that we find the most troublesome, the ones that we think very much need to be opposed by lawmakers.

And we put that all together to essentially create what I hope is really a roadmap for flourishing for American citizens.

Brent Leatherwood

And we put that all together to essentially create what I hope is really a roadmap for flourishing for American citizens. And this is also exciting because it’s also at the beginning of a new presidential administration. So it highlights opportunities for policies that we believe can be put into law. It highlights opportunities for executive actions from the White House, and it also goes over into areas where we are active on the legal front in front of the Supreme Court and federal courts. So this is a document that honestly the entire team really helps put together, and it’s one of the ones I’m honestly most proud of. Some of the highlights, I would say, really right at the top in the life section. We talk about protecting the Hyde Amendment, which is a policy that Congress puts in place for spending bills to make sure that taxpayer resources cannot go towards abortion.

So we, each year we want to make sure and press those before the budget and appropriation process gets started. We are also asking that Congress actually take the next step, the next logical step, and just codify the Hyde Amendment into law so that we don’t have to continually advocate for the Hyde Amendment and these other pro-life spending riders to be put in place. At the same time, there’s a proposal out there called the Life from Conception Act, which will recognize what we all know to be true. Our pre-born neighbors are worthy of respect and protection by the federal government, so we’re hoping that that one will come around at the same time. Moving into some other areas, there are a number of different executive orders that were put in place, very harmful executive orders related to abortion, abortion travel, religious liberty, and gender and sexuality that we’re highlighting for the Trump Administration to roll back as soon as they get into office.

And one area in particular, I’d point out in religious liberty, we have seen a number of attempts in legislative proposals that have been put forth in Congress to actually work around what’s known as the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. RFRA was passed back during the Clinton administration. It had bipartisan support. It was an area that has long seen a broad consensus of support on Capitol Hill, no matter what policy it is, whether it’s on something like life or family. When we are having these sorts of interactions with elected officials or their staff, we want to make sure that people are actually seeing Jesus in our work. That’s truly the way that we view ourselves. As a second Corinthians five ambassador for Christ, that is our first and foremost responsibility as believers, is to walk into these offices and realize that obviously we’re reflecting the wishes of our churches. But more important even than that is we are reflecting our savior and a savior that wants a relationship with the person who’s sitting across the table from us. And I continually remind the team that that is why we’re here more than any other reason, and we want to be faithful to that calling. And anytime that we get feedback that we’re helping an individual come to know Christ a little bit more, that’s the real win for this team.

Narration:

For the past two years, the ERLC’s team in D.C. has been working with a divided Congress and a Democratic White House. One of the most exciting aspects of the hundred 19th Congress and the Trump Administration will be working with what’s referred to as a trifecta where one political party controls the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the White House. Here’s Hannah to walk us through how that impacts the ERLC’s advocacy work.

Hannah Daniel:

This is a really exciting moment for our public policy work as we have a new administration and a new Congress, where we are going to have what they call a Republican trifecta, where Republicans have control of both chambers of Congress as well as the presidency. So this is a real opportunity for progress to be made on many of the issues that we care about. So with the new administration, some of the things that our top priorities for us really are asking them to roll back some of the harmful actions that the Biden Administration took on things like abortion and religious liberty and gender and conscience throughout the Biden Administration. They took many different actions that expanded abortion were harmful to religious liberty, pushed gender ideology, and lessened conscience protections. And so right off the bat, our first asks to the Trump administration really are to undo so many of these harmful actions that were taken.

And then we’re also asking them to reinstate things like the Mexico City Policy, which prohibits taxpayer dollars from going to abortion providers overseas. We also want them to roll back things that have made the abortion pill even more accessible in people’s mailboxes. We also want them to reinstate more robust conscience protections for medical providers and others. This year, Congress is going to be doing something pretty unique called reconciliation. This is a process which allows Congress to pass a Republican only bill. They don’t need any Democratic votes to support it. It’s a pretty wonky process that allows them to do this, but typically you get to do one, maybe two of these. And so this allows Republicans to pass all kinds of different things that they might not be able to get democratic support on. Another piece of this is that they are going to be really reopening up America’s tax code.

So our top priority for Congress this year is asking them to fully defund Planned Parenthood.

Hannah Daniel

And so we have several different issues that we are going to be asking them to prioritize in these negotiations. So our top priority for Congress this year is asking them to fully defund Planned Parenthood. We do not think that any abortion provider should be receiving taxpayer dollars. And while things like the Hyde Amendment prohibit taxpayer dollars from going directly to fund abortions, those funds can still go to abortion providers, allowing them to use other forms of funding for abortions. And so what we want to see is a full and complete defunding of Planned Parenthood from the federal government, and instead say, let’s reallocate those dollars to better supporting moms, children and families, especially as Congress is thinking about our tax code. Again, there’s things we could do with the child tax credit, with the adoption tax credit, we could better support pregnancy resource centers, and we can eliminate marriage penalties.

There’s all kinds of things and levers that we have to pull within the tax code that can allow us to better come alongside moms and families and encourage them to choose life and to help them once they do so. In addition to some of those things, we think there are real opportunities to make progress in combating gender ideology, stopping taxpayer funding from going towards so-called gender transition surgeries. We also think there’s a lot of opportunities around protecting women’s sports. That’s something that Congress has indicated will be a top priority for them. We also are anticipating a vote on the Born Alive Survivors Protection Act in the coming days. So there’s a lot of opportunities for progress to be made on issues of life, religious liberty, gender, family. We are really excited about this year and the progress that can be made on so many issues of importance to Southern Baptists.

A day in the life at Leland House in D.C.

Narration:

The work of our D.C. office often changes depending on what steps Congress is taking, arguments happening at the Supreme Court or issues the White House is prioritizing. Wherever the action is, the ERLC’s D.C. team is on the ground, making sure to speak out on policies Southern Baptists Care most about. Here are Hannah and Allison, to give you a better glimpse into a day in the life of working at the Leland House and how that leads to wins for Southern Baptists.

Hannah Daniel:

One thing that I love about our work in D.C. is that each day is incredibly different. There is never a shortage of things to do or things happening in the city. And so a lot of times our days begin at the Leland House, which is our office right on Capitol Hill, just a few steps away from the Capitol building. It gives us a great vantage point to be able to meet with members of Congress and their staff. So often we are running back and forth from our office over to the Capitol building to meet with staff and members of Congress, helping them understand the views of Southern Baptists on all kinds of different issues. And so let’s say for example, they’re considering a piece of legislation that we have real concerns with. What will happen is that our team will take a look at that legislation, make sure we understand what it’s doing, why we have concerns about it, and then we might draft a letter or we might write an article and then we want to share whatever it is that we’ve written with lawmakers with their staff, those who are actually going to be making the decisions on do we pass this bill or not.

So we might meet with them and help them understand why we have concerns with this or help them see that maybe we could do this other thing instead. Sometimes we do that work by ourselves. Other times we work with like-minded partners to kind of bolster our impact. I think we are often strongest when we’re able to work alongside partners that share our convictions on these issues. And so a lot of what we do each day really comes down to relationship building. We are able to build relationships with those on the ground here in D.C., build relationships with lawmakers, and that allows us to ultimately have influence, which is what we want to do. And so we’re able to invest in those relationships, not just in a way where we are hoping to gain something, but also invest in them as people. We ultimately are missionaries here in D.C. as how we view ourselves as representatives of the Southern Baptist Convention. We want to be helping those that we are encountering. We want to help them understand not just why we think certain things about certain issues, but we ultimately want them to understand the gospel. And we want them to come to faith in Christ if they don’t have that already. And so I think a big part of what we do is not just the sharing of information, but it’s also the convictions and the beliefs and the gospel that undergirds all of that.

One example of the ERLC’s work leading to policy change

Allison Cantrell:

One recent example of the ERLC’s tangible results on the national stage relates to the National Defense Authorization Act, otherwise referred to as the NDAA. In August, the ERLC sent a letter to lawmakers advocating for Southern Baptist values and priorities in the NDAA negotiations. As a result, one of the main wins that we saw in the 2025 and NDAA final product was for the first time language and federal law prohibiting the use of government funding to fund gender transitions for minors. This is a big win for Southern Baptists. We obviously don’t think the government should be funding gender transitions for anybody, but specifically helping to protect children from this harmful indoctrination we’re seeing everywhere in our culture today.

The ERLC team that works in D.C.

Narration:

Our D.C. team consists of professionals from various backgrounds. For example, Allison worked with Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida before choosing to work for the ERLC. Here she shares why she thought she could accomplish more for Southern Baptists on the federal level at a Southern Baptist entity.

Allison Cantrell:

The draw to work for the ERLC came from a few different factors. First, I loved my Southern Baptist Church and the SBC churches that I had grown up attending with my family. I was so deeply cared for and poured into by the pastors, the staff, and their families that any opportunity to get to serve them well, to give back in some small way to all the ways that they had exhibited generosity to me is one of the greatest honors that I can think of. And we at the ERLC get to care about the nitty gritty, less glamorous parts of public policy to free up pastors and churches so they don’t have to, things like government funding or tax policies that support God’s design for marriage. Working at the ERLC means that every policy issue we work on from predatory lending, to religious liberty, to protecting the lives of vulnerable children in the womb is deeply rooted in scripture and in the annual resolutions that Southern Baptists pass each year at our annual meeting.

I do think the ERLC’s work here in D.C. has a host of practical implications for people who aren’t policy nerds. No decision made in Washington fully stays in Washington. It always has an impact on your neighbors, your family, your church, and your community. And what we’re concerned with here at the ERLC in D.C. is how we can make those repercussions positive instead of negative. So as one example of this, recently, we listened to arguments for a Supreme Court case a few weeks ago called the United States versus Skrmetti. And this case touches on whether or not a state law in Tennessee can prohibit gender transitions for children. And we here in D.C. get to advocate for our churches by filing an amicus brief with the courts that articulate Southern Baptist beliefs in God’s design for gender and sexuality. And that’s a really niche skillset that our office provides in conjunction with our partners, but the resources we produce as well articulating what the bill does and why that matters are helpful for your churches too. For example, we will typically post explanations and summaries of noteworthy Supreme Court arguments and decisions. What the Supreme Court decides in that case could impact laws in every state, which trickle down and affect your school districts and your child’s experience playing on their football team. And that’s when a resource like our church guide God’s Good Design, a practical guide for answering gender confusion comes in handy because at its core, every major policy issue also has a real world theological component.

A look ahead to President Trump’s term

Narration:

As the ERLC looks ahead to the new Trump administration, our staff is dedicated to consistently voicing the beliefs of Southern Baptists before our lawmakers and our leaders. Here’s Hannah, with encouragement for the days ahead and a reminder about this important work.

Hannah Daniel:

We are encouraging the Trump administration to really see all of the progress that they made in their first term as a baseline for the second term. We want them day one first a hundred days to come in and re-implement so many of the great successes that they had of the first Trump Administration. But I don’t think we should stop there. There’s so much more we can do to protect life, to strengthen religious liberty, especially since the first Trump Administration. We’ve seen just the huge explosion of gender ideology and the way that that has found its way into every single corner of our society. And so I think there’s a lot of new things that the Trump Administration can do to combat that harmful gender ideology. When you’re thinking about public policy, you have to have the long view in mind. So many of these issues are going to take decades to see the results we want to see.

You can even think about the pro-life movement. It took 50 years to overturn Roe v. Wade. Had nothing happened, had advocates like the ERLC and others just given up along that route, we would never have gotten to the Dobbs decision, which undid Roe v. Wade. And so we have to be faithful in consistently representing the views of our churches even when we are not seeing an immediate success. One of my favorite quotes that I think about often when it comes to our work is that many victories are reserved for those who won’t go away. And so often I think about our work as just being people that won’t go away because we remain committed to these values and convictions that we hold as Southern Baptists, and we are going to encourage them over and over and over to do what is right. And even if that takes us years and years and years to see ultimate success from that, we are going to be faithful to show up and do that every day.

Narration:

As Southern Baptists, we want you to be confident that the ERLC is standing for our churches in Washington D.C. Our permanent presence in the nation’s capital ensures we are able to have your back when it comes to promoting a culture of life, protecting religious liberty, championing God’s good design for marriage and family, and honoring human dignity in all of our work. And central to the heart of our convention is the commitment to bringing the invitation of Jesus to those we encounter. Whether in the hallways of the Capitol or the pews of our churches. Come to me all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. We can trust him as we work to see biblical values protected in this nation. 

Thanks for listening to this episode of the ERLC podcast. Join us next time as we look at the ERLC’s work related to the executive branch of the government.

Listen to more episodes at erlc.com/podcast.

Recent Episodes

Already a listener? Leave a review!

Leave a Review