In speech to Southern Baptists, Pence warns of GOP shift but stops short of direct Trump criticism

INDIANAPOLIS — Before an audience of 400-plus Southern Baptists, former Vice President Mike Pence on Tuesday raised warnings about the shifting direction of the Republican Party but stopped short of denouncing a far-right religious movement rising amid former President Donald Trump’s candidacy for president in November.

"There’s also a very healthy debate within my party about whether we’re going to stay on the course…traditional moral values, a right to life, an affirmation of religious liberty or whether we’re going to start to move in a different direction," Pence said during a luncheon organized by the Southern Baptist Convention's public policy arm, the Nashville-based Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.

Pence warned against a "different direction" and spoke to the importance of the GOP emphasizing certain traditional policy positions such as fiscal conservatism and defense spending. Many in the room nodded and murmured in agreement with Pence's analysis.

During a panel moderated by Brent Leatherwood, the commission's president, Pence focused on victories for the anti-abortion movement and condemning President Joe Biden. He backed a number of policy positions that appeal to many religious conservatives.

But he avoided commenting on Trump’s candidacy or the former president’s recent guilty verdict in a Manhattan hush money trial, which other leading Southern Baptist voices have criticized.

Pence’s remarks about his time serving in the Trump administration were mostly noncombatant.

For example, he highlighted the administration’s appointment of three U.S. Supreme Court Justices who helped “send Roe v. Wade to the ash heap of history,” Pence said.

Still, there was a notable contrast between Pence and Trump — including on the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

After Leatherwood thanked Pence for "standing up and doing the right thing" on Jan. 6, 2021, many in the audience applauded and gave Pence a standing ovation.

"I'll always believe by God’s grace that on that tragic day we did our duty," Pence said.

By contrast, Trump increasingly has worked to portray those who attacked the Capitol as victims or hostages and has paid tribute to them at the start of rallies and speeches.

On Monday, Al Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, doubled down on his criticism of Trump’s conviction in an address to a crowd of 750-plus mostly Southern Baptists during an event organized by the Danbury Institute.

The institute is led those in an opposition conservative faction that have sought to pull the SBC further to the right. The same event on Monday featured a prerecorded video message from Trump.

Trump urged those attending not to sit on the sidelines.

"We have to defend religious liberty, free speech, innocent life, and the heritage and traditions that built America into the greatest nation in the history of the world," he said.

"You just can’t vote Democrat, they’re against religion, they’re against your religion in particular," Trump said. "You cannot vote for Democrats, and you have to get out and vote."

Monday’s event reflected a rising sentiment among conservative Christians that America was founded as a Christian nation, an idea often associated with the Christian nationalism movement.

Savannah Kuchar of USA Today contributed to this report.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: SBC speech: Mike Pence warns of shift in Republican Party