WASHINGTON — The lawyer representing the North American Mission Board (an entity of the Southern Baptist Convention) in its lawsuit with Will McRaney, the former executive director of the Baptist Convention of Maryland/Delaware, has revealed in an April 2024 social media post his criticism of Trump voters.
Matthew T. Martens, a partner with the most liberal of the 20 largest law firms in the country, posted on X (formerly known as Twitter): “Bunch of people trying to convince Christians to still vote Trump: ‘You have the liberty to choose between the lesser evil.’”
He added a reference to Romans 3:8 (“you may not ‘do evil that good may come of it'”) and a quote by Charles Spurgeon (‘”Of two evils, choose neither.'”), to argue that Christians cannot vote for Trump.
However, four years earlier in a Facebook post, Martens appeared to expose his own choice between two supposed evils, admitting, “I’m voting Biden *because* I’m pro-life.”
When recently confronted about the obvious hypocrisy, Martens backpedaled, saying in April 2024 that the August 2020 statement was made “when I was thinking through how I should vote to best end abortion. I ultimately changed my mind from what I said in that post, said as much on FB, and did not vote Biden.”
Martens law firm is Wilmer-Cutler-Pickering-Hale and Dorr, which was cited as the “most-liberal among the nation’s largest law firms” by law360.com.
The attorney group also was named “Visionary National Legal Partner” of the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce.
He has ties to the scandal-prone The Gospel Coalition, a Reformed network of churches, and to the embattled Russell Moore, who stepped down in 2021 as head of the SBC’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission after investigations into his divisiveness, including his bashing of Trump voters.