Rod Martin of Florida publicly announced his resignation from the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee board of trustees Oct. 27. He is the 14th to resign since September. An updated report about the previous resignations can be found in this Oct. 27 article by The Baptist Paper.
Along with sending his letter to outgoing EC president Ronnie Floyd, Martin released it to The Christian Post. Self-described as a “pan-denominational Christian media source,” The Christian Post website was launched in 2004. Richard Land, former leader of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, serves as executive editor.
Martin has garnered headlines since losing a re-election bid for his seat as chair of the EC’s committee on convention events and strategic planning in June. He also has been outspoken in the recent EC debate over waiving attorney-client privilege in the Sexual Abuse Task Force investigation of the EC’s handling of sexual abuse cases and how survivors were treated in the past 20 years.
‘Strongly worded counsel’
In his resignation letter, Martin indicated he preferred not to resign, “but it is now forced upon me by legal counsel for several of the nonprofit and for-profit entities on whose boards I serve.”
“It is their strongly worded counsel that the legal ramifications of my continuance on a board which has deliberately chosen to breach its legal and fiduciary duties poses an unacceptable risk to those entities which they and I serve,” he wrote. “I support the investigation, for the reasons you stated prior to the Annual Meeting. It is necessary to find any wrongdoing that may have occurred, as well as to clear the names of the innocent.
“But I also wish to make clear, as I have done in open and executive sessions, the needless foolishness of the specific course chosen,” he continued. “As we were advised by counsel, the Executive Committee had multiple paths by which it could comply with the will of the messengers while also fulfilling its legal obligations. The ‘either-or’ presented to us was political, not real.”
Martin also refers back to Russell Moore’s resignation as president of ERLC in May and alludes to the leaked letters firestorm in early June.
Founder and CEO of The Martin Organization, Martin is “a technology entrepreneur, futurist, hedge fund manager, thought leader and activist,” according to his RodMartin.org website. He also serves on the steering committee of the newly formed Conservative Baptist Network.
To hear more from Martin about CBN and other topics, watch this TAB Media Special Report interview from August.
Editor’s Note — To read about previous EC board member resignations and what that means related to state representation on the board, click here.
