Southern Baptist Ethicist Russell Moore Says Churches May Apply for SBA Loans

(RNS) — Russell Moore, the Southern Baptist Convention’s top ethicist, said he saw no problem with churches applying for government loans as part of the coronavirus relief legislation enacted last month.

That legislation provides $350 billion for the Small Business Administration to extend loans to small businesses — and in a government reversal, churches and other houses of worship — facing financial difficulties as a result of the coronavirus shutdown.

The loans can be used to pay staff salaries — including for pastors —  and utility bills and are forgivable, meaning that houses of worship won’t have to pay all the money back if they keep their staff.

Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission for the Southern Baptist Convention, said he saw no First Amendment or church-state entanglement associated with the loans.

In part, he said, that’s because banks would be issuing the loans, not the government.

“I would have a definite issue if you had government aid or government funding of any church,” Moore said. “What’s happening here is a guaranteeing and a backing up of a loan that the government has an interest in because they want to keep the flow of lending going and they want to keep the economy afloat.”

The Southern Baptist Convention is the nation’s largest Protestant denomination with some 47,000 churches.

Still, Moore said in a…