Land: Abortion, Schaeffer drove evangelical involvement
- Dec 15, 2005
ERLC President Richard Land said at a recent conference at Princeton University that abortion, as well as the influence of the late theologian and author Francis Schaeffer, helped drive evangelicals and others into the political process and establish them as an important part of the American conservative coalition.
Speaking at a three-day conference on the history and future of the American conservative movement, the Princeton graduate said the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision and the massive number of abortions that followed, combined with Schaeffer’s arguments for Christian participation in public life, provided the impetus that changed the political landscape.
“Abortion is the issue that was the driving force for the vast numbers of cultural conservatives coming into the political process and doing so mainly through the Republican Party,” Land told participants during a Dec. 3 panel discussion on religion, culture and conservatism. “Roe v. Wade changed everything.”
Schaeffer’s influence from 1973 to ’80 was “enormous,” Land said. He “is a person of singular significance in helping to understand the rise of cultural conservatism,” Land said of the author of such books as The God Who Is There and How Should We Then Live? “He helped us to jettison a deep strain of pietism which had led us to believe that we shouldn’t be involved with the world and with public policy. . . . ”
Schaeffer “had an enormous impact on a whole generation of those of us who became leaders of the social conservative movement,” Land said, “and he was enormously responsible for shaping many of our seminary presidents and many of our seminary professors in Southern Baptist life and in evangelical life across the board.”
The great shift for Southern Baptists and other evangelicals took place between the 1976 and ’80 elections, Land said. Between those two elections, many Baptists abandoned Democratic President Jimmy Carter for Republican Ronald Reagan. Polls by Lou Harris found 66 percent of white Baptists voted for Carter in 1976, but 64 percent of white Baptists voted for Reagan four years later, Land told the audience.
By 1980, abortions had reached more than 1.5 million a year, Land pointed out. The one-third shift by Baptists could be attributed, Land said, to “Jimmy Carter portraying himself as an evangelical and then being strongly pro-choice in his policies, and Ronald Reagan being strongly pro-life in his policies.”
Land agreed with fellow panelist William Bennett, a talk radio host and former secretary of Education, who said the reaction by religious conservatives had to do “with scale,” the huge number of abortions that were performed in the post-_Roe_ years.
The scale after Roe “just horrified and caused extreme angst among traditional Catholics and evangelicals,” Land said. Evangelicals’ idea abortion was a Catholic issue changed “with the scale of Roe v. Wade,” he said.
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