Litton elected SBC president in ballot runoff

In the press conference following his election as the 46th president of the Southern Baptist Convention, Ed Litton spoke of family, healing and conversations to come. All of those dealt not only with subjects such as racial reconciliation and sexual abuse, but a convention still divided over how to approach them.

Litton, pastor of Redemption Church in Saraland, Ala., defeated Georgia pastor Mike Stone in a runoff Tuesday June 15, receiving 6,834 votes (52.04 percent) to Stone’s 6,278 (47.81 percent). He succeeds North Carolina pastor J.D. Greear, who served an extra year due to the cancellation of the 2020 SBC annual meeting in Orlando.

“We are a family, and at times we may seem dysfunctional,” said Litton, a reference to tensions that roiled the SBC in the months leading up to the 2021 SBC annual meeting. “But we love each other. … This is a family, and sometimes families argue in a way that the neighbors get to see it, and that’s kind of what you [the media] have been witnessing. But the reality is, we’re going to leave this place focused. We’ll leave this place with a direction — and, I believe, a better direction — for the future.”

Stone, pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church in Blackshear, Ga., and a member of the Conservative Baptist Network’s steering council, received the most votes — 5,216 votes, or 37.48 percent — in the initial round of ballots, a four-way contest that included Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President R. Albert Mohler Jr. and Northwest Baptist Convention Executive Director Randy Adams. Litton received 4,630 votes (or 32.38 percent), while 3,764 ballots (26.32 percent) were cast for Mohler and 673 votes (4.71 percent) for Adams.

The announcement came at 6:52 p.m., nearly four-and-a-half hours after messengers reconvened from lunch for the afternoon session within the main hall of the Nashville Music City Center. The crowd — the largest for an annual meeting in a quarter-century — occupied every seat, with standing space stretching the length of a city block, often several rows deep. Numerous messengers sat on the floor.

“It is a tremendous honor that Great Commission Baptists would put their trust and dependence upon me for this very important role in our fellowship and our convention of churches,” Litton said.

Several questions centered on the division within the Southern Baptist family and ways Litton may address it. He becomes president as the SBC is growing more diverse and, as such, when more voices are speaking out on gospel issues. The beginning point for such conversations, he said, was humility. That was key to a series of meetings he and others had with Black pastors in the Mobile area to foster more understanding and fellowship, leading to a statement on racial reconciliation.

“We’re to humble ourselves, to listen, to ask God for grace and listen to what people are actually saying, to seek agreement … even if we don’t see eye to eye,” he said.

Asked how the SBC should move forward on allegations of mishandling sexual abuse claims, Litton advocated for an independent investigation of the recent allegations against the Executive Committee by former Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission President Russell Moore.

In his nomination speech, former SBC President Fred Luter called Litton a leader who could stop Southern Baptists from fighting each other “in the barracks.”

The election capped an extended campaign that technically began in November 2019 when Mohler announced his intention to accept a nomination for president at the 2020 annual meeting. Litton, Stone and Adams all announced their intentions to accept nominations within days of each other in January of this year.

— Scott Barkley is national correspondent for Baptist Press.