A seemingly uncontroversial bill introduced by the late Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.), former chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has stuck a wedge between a powerful conservative religious group and the Department of Justice.

The bill, the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, passed the House in a 405-2 vote in December but faces an uncertain future in the Senate. The bill marks a rare instance of the Bush administration opposing a major conservative religious group over legal policy.

The Southern Baptist Convention , one of the most influential religious groups in conservative politics, has championed the legislation, pitting it against not only Justice but the conservative Heritage Foundation .

The Convention wields considerable force in Republican politics. There are about 16 million Southern Baptists, making it the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, according to the Convention.  

Barrett Duke, vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, told The Hill that his organization “stand[s] 100 percent behind this bill.”

He said the Lantos measure would provide federal assistance to state and local law enforcement officials trying to curb a practice so entrenched and widespread that it is sometimes called the “world’s oldest profession.”

The Department of Justice, however, has raised a slew of objections. In a 13-page letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian Benczkowski cited concerns with 27 sections of the legislation.

He also shared those concerns with the chairmen and ranking Republicans of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and their House counterparts.

The bill would “substantially compromise the Department of Justice’s successful anti-trafficking strategy and its effective implementations,” Deputy Assistant Attorney General Laurence Rothenberg said in a statement.

“The federal government should not be diverted from its core anti-trafficking mission against crimes involving force, fraud, or coercion and child victims. States are better situated to combat adult prostitution.”

Policy experts at Heritage charge that it would overextend federal law enforcement by tasking it with policing small local crime.

They’re also concerned about the trend of federalizing more and more areas of the law, which they argue contributes to the expansion of big government.

Brian Walsh and Andrew M. Grossman of Heritage wrote in a legal memo that the bill “trivialize[s] the seriousness of actual human trafficking by equating it with run-of-the-mill sex crimes — such as pimping, pandering and prostitution — that are neither international nor interstate in nature.”

“Saddling federal authorities with the enormous job of fighting local sex crimes would divert them from their own anti-trafficking efforts,” they wrote.