Dr. Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission will be participating in “Religious Politics, Political Religion,” a panel discussion sponsored by the Goethe-Institut New York and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, Washington, D.C., October 19. The panel is part of the Goethe-Institut’s focus on U.S.–European relations under the banner of Trans Atlantic: Common Concerns–Different Views.
Princeton and Oxford-educated, Dr. Richard Land has served as President of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission since 1988. Land has represented evangelicals before Congress and U.S. presidents and as a commissioner on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. In 2005 Time named Land one of “The Twenty-five Most Influential Evangelicals” in America. His radio program, For Faith & Family, has an estimated 1.5 million listeners. A renowned scholar, Land has worked as a pastor, theologian, and public policy maker.
Addressing the complicated and often controversial relationship between religion and politics, the “Religious Politics, Political Religion” panel will go a step further by also examining this relationship’s influence on American and European societies. The Goethe-Institut prefaces the discussion by stating, “In the last several years, especially throughout the U.S., religion has become a political weapon used both by the left and right to gain footing in the political arena, but neither side has been instrumental in restoring a balance between religion and politics.”
The panel exploring this controversial issue will be moderated by Dr. Mark Silk. He is the director of the Trinity College Program on Public Values, which comprises both the Greenberg Center and a new Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture. Dr. Land will be joined by Tom Buhrow, bureau chief and correspondent for ARD German Television. The two experts will shed light on the challenges of finding balance between religion and politics.
The panel will take place at 7:30 p.m. at the Goethe-Institut New York at 1014 Fifth Avenue. Admission is $10. For more information, please call 212-439-8700.
The Southern Baptist Convention is America’s largest non-Catholic denomination with more than 16.3 million members in 43,024 churches nationwide. The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission is the SBC’s ethics, religious liberty and public policy agency with offices in Nashville, Tennessee, and Washington, D.C.
