Southern Baptists play key role in civic debate, Land tells trustees
- Sep 19, 2006 -
NASHVILLE—The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission enjoyed an “eventful year,” President Richard Land told the group’s board of trustees Sept. 12, noting significant developments that Land said should please religious conservatives.
He said the confirmation of two new strict-constructionist, original-intent Supreme Court justices was greatly aided and assisted by social issues groups in Washington, including the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.
“People in Washington, D.C., understand that the difference between the ERLC and other social groups is that we have boots on the ground,” Land said. “We have churches in virtually every community in the U.S., and we have people in those churches who are deeply concerned about these issues and who are already activated on these issues and who are just waiting to be pointed in the right direction.”
He said there was wisdom in having the SBC entity’s main office in Nashville, not in D.C. “You need to have an anchor outside the Beltway,” Land said. “The beltway is surrounded on all sides by reality. Washington is an exciting place in many ways, but it is not the real world,” he suggested.
“With Southern Baptists providing pressure, the ground has shifted in an important direction and to our advantage when it comes to the Supreme Court of the United States,” Land told the trustees meeting in Nashville for their annual two-day meeting.
“The fact we now have John Roberts as chief justice is an enormous shift in our direction,” he continued, noting a welcome sign was Roberts’ assertion during his confirmation hearings that as a justice on the high court the constitution is his client and that he promised to do what the Constitution says.
“His humility as opposed to judicial hubris is sorely needed in our federal judiciary,” he added. Land said it is a positive that Roberts is 33 years younger than the man he succeeded as chief justice—William Rehnquist.
Land also praised the nomination and confirmation of Justice Samuel Alito, noting the jurist replaced Sandra Day O’Connor—a swing vote—on the court.
While there is not a conservative majority on the court, Land said the Supreme Court is a decidedly more favorable place for conservatives with four right-leaning justices, four liberal justices, and one swing vote, Anthony Kennedy. “Yet Justice Kennedy swings the wrong way on many issues that are important to people in this room, the moral and social issues,” Land lamented.
Land said when the nation’s highest court hears the case involving the partial birth abortion ban, he is hopeful the court will find the ban constitutional, especially since the last time such a case came before the court, it was O’Connor voting to allow the late-term abortions to continue and Kennedy indicated his support of the ban. Yet Land doesn’t expect Kennedy to support “more severe restrictions on abortion.”
Land said conservatives are within “striking distance” of being able to make significant changes on the court, noting there are two left-leaning justices who may leave the court in the near term. “These are changes that will undo a half century of judicial activism in the U.S.,” he added.
Land acknowledged complaints by religious and other social conservatives that the Bush administration is not pushing conservatives’ agenda hard enough. Land’s response: “We should not make the perfect the enemy of the good.
“Have we gotten all we wanted over the last few years? No. But we have made significant gains,” Land said, adding that some of the gains “will take the liberals a long time to undo.”
The future looks bright, he suggested, noting, “We are living in century that is increasingly in America a century of religion.” He noted a survey, conducted by Gallup and analyzed by Baylor University’s Institute for Studies of Religion, recently reported in USA Today, which underscored the fact that one’s view of God informs one’s values and politics.
Not only the survey’s findings, but also the story’s prominent placement in the paper is telling, Land said. “It is rare that any story about religion makes it to the section above the fold on the front page in a large circulation newspaper,” he explained.
“One’s view of God has an impact on one’s values,” he said, recounting the Gallup survey findings. Americans’ religious pursuits are “not a hobby.” “We are living in a country that is becoming more religious rather than less,” he added.
“I see many more signs to be encouraged than I do signs to be discouraged,” Land said, citing as an example his selection for membership on the Council on Foreign Relations.
Land said the council, a nonpartisan think tank that seeks to better understand the world and the foreign policy choices facing the United States and other governments, is seeking to broaden its scope by having more evangelicals involved in its deliberations.
SBC President Frank Page spoke to trustees Sept. 11 during a private dinner on the eve of the board’s meetings. Page affirmed the work of the ERLC and stressed the importance of a vibrant Cooperative Program. Page, who was elected president during the 2006 Southern Baptist Convention in Greensboro, N.C., is pastor of First Baptist Church of Taylors, S.C.
Former SBC President Paige Patterson addressed ERLC trustees during their Sept. 12 evening meeting.
“It is the responsibility of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission on behalf of Southern Baptists to assist our people in learning the ways of God,” Patterson said, looking to Isaiah 55:8-9.
Patterson said the ERLC had made a “monumental difference in Southern Baptist churches on the subject of race,” noting the denomination had a “spotted history” on the issue of race relations. He said racism still exists and that the “job is not fully done,” but the ERLC “has been the primary player in reversing the tide of racism in our churches.”
The entity has also stood as “champions of life,” said Patterson, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Ft. Worth, Texas. Patterson said that under Land’s leadership “life of the innocent” is given the attention it deserves.
The ERLC led the way on embryonic stem cell harvesting, he said, noting many people don’t understand the issue and the ERLC helped Baptists get a grasp on the immorality of the issue.
Patterson also commended the ERLC for its emphasis on Christian citizenship, calling the group’s iVoteValues.com initiative a “fresh breath of air.”
“Baptists don’t vote Republican, and they don’t vote Democratic,” he continued. “They vote godly, biblical values,” stressed Patterson, who was awarded the ERLC’s Distinguished Service Award in 2005.
Patterson also saluted the ERLC for its work on behalf of Southern Baptists in the nation’s capital. He said even more needs to be done internationally about the “abuse of women and children by sex trafficking,” and he stressed that Baptists must continue to be “ardent spokesmen for religious liberty” around the world.
Patterson went on to say there are issues much closer to home with which Southern Baptists also must contend: “There are things happening in our beloved convention today that are most unfortunate. There is—more than ought to be—a failure of integrity in our pulpits.”
While refusing to say the failure is epidemic—because the vast majority of men in the pulpits of the denomination are “men of integrity”—these situations are characterized by an “absolute failure of basic integrity,” he said.
What is true in the pulpit is also true in the pew, Patterson continued. “Our churches are in a postmodern stance where integrity is no longer really important. I believe the time has come for the ERLC to lead our churches into a new commitment to what is usually described as the Christian virtues,” he said, also expressing concern at the “massive number of firings of ministers” that is “largely a misuse of congregationalism.”
Admitting some may need to be fired, Patterson said being a pastor of a local church is now the toughest assignment in all of history. “It’s worse than being a high school football coach on the high plains of Texas,” he said with a knowing grin.
Congregationalism has not been clearly defined, but has been incorrectly defined as monthly business meetings where everybody has the right to say whatever he wants to say, Patterson said.
“Because we have encouraged the rugged individualism rather than a Spirit-filled and Spirit-led congregation, we are now reaping the results,” he continued, noting 21st century technology allows dissatisfied church members to attack the pastor with impunity by launching a blog, an online digest.
“We have lost our way on integrity,” he said, adding, “We need to make clear to our people, and the seminaries need to join you in this, what congregationalism means and what it doesn’t mean.”
In closing, Patterson turned his attention toward ERLC President Land, saying, “Never was there a man made for a job like Richard Land was for this job.” He noted Land took charge of what was then the Christian Life Commission “at a very tough time” and that Land is now the most-tenured of any active national SBC entity executive.
Land is the perfect combination to head the ERLC, Patterson said. “He was a historian, a theologian, a keen student of political science, an ethicist who grew up in very humble circumstances in south Houston, and yet went to Princeton and got a degree, went to New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, and then the ultimate in achievements in the academic world, the D.Phil from Oxford. He is an exegete of Scripture; he is a top preacher of the Word; and he has the courage to stand alone,” he explained.
“You could not have put together that combination, no matter how smart you are. It took a sovereign, omnipotent God to figure out how to do that and to bring him to [Southern Baptists] at just the right time. It is most remarkable what God has done,” Patterson stated.
In other business, trustees:
- elected Hal Lane of Greenwood, S.C., as chairman of the ERLC’s Board of Trustees and Jim Brown of Olive Branch, Miss., as vice-chairman. Penna Dexter of Plano, Texas, was elected secretary of the board. Lane, now in his second stint as an ERLC (CLC) trustee, said his earlier service was during “some of the most tumultuous history of the Southern Baptist Convention and of this commission’s history as well.” Lane’s first service as trustee began in 1986, during the period when the convention’s “conservative resurgence” helped move the leadership of what is now the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission back to the right. Lane was on the search committee that brought Richard Land to head the commission.
- named President George W. Bush as the 2006 recipient of the John Leland Religious Liberty Award. The issue of soul freedom is a passionate conviction of Bush, Land said. George W. Bush’s second inaugural address was a hymn to religious freedom, Land added, saying the president was a “champion of soul freedom as enshrined in the First Amendment of the Constitution.” Bush hasn’t kept his feelings on this issue to himself. Land said the president personally raised this issue with the leaders of China and Russia.
- awarded Ted Stone the ERLC’s Richard D. Land Distinguished Service Award. Land said he was shocked at Ted Stone’s sudden death July 16 during his fourth walk across America. While Ted’s younger life was ravaged by the use of illicit drugs, he was an “absolutely tireless witness to the power of the Gospel to overcome drug addiction.” “Stone single-handedly raised the Southern Baptist Convention’s consciousness on this issue,” Land said.
- conducted a mortgage note burning for the ERLC’s offices in Washington, D.C. The property, purchased in the early 1990s, has a book value of approximately 900,000 dollars. The ERLC’s Washington operations are quartered in a converted row house, just two blocks from the U.S. Senate office building.
- affirmed a project to research and write the ERLC’s history. “This is a heroic story that needs to be told,” Land told trustees. Jerry Sutton, author of the Baptist Reformation and pastor of Two Rivers Baptist Church in Nashville, has indicated his willingness to pen the work.
- expressed strong opposition to the use of beverage alcohol by unanimously adopting a trustee-initiated motion in which trustees individually indicated they do not “partake” of alcohol.
- signed off on a $3.125 million budget for the ERLC’s 2006-2007 fiscal year, a .5 percent decrease from last year’s budget. The commission forecasts declining product sales and advertising revenue in the upcoming budget year.
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