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Juicy Ecumenism – The Institute on Religion & Democracy's Blog

Juicy Ecumenism – The Institute on Religion & Democracy's Blog

Tag Archives: Richard Land

The Evangelical Immigration Table Continues to Perplex

20 Thursday Jun 2013

Posted by Bart Gingerich in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

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#iwasastranger, Barton Gingerich, Breitbart, Christian Post, Eric Metaxas, evangelical, Evangelical Immigration Table, George Soros, Immigration, Immigration reform, Napp Nazworth, National Immigration Forum, Richard Land, Samuel Rodriguez

evangelical_immigration_table_21 (1)

by Barton Gingerich (@bjgingerich)

In a Christian Post article today, a spokesperson for the Evangelical Immigration Table (EIT) fired off a defensive volley against a recent slew of critical reports from Breitbart News. Breitbart has reported that EIT is part of the National Immigration Forum (NIF), which receives generous grants from George Soros and other leftist foundations.  “No funding from George Soros has been used by the Evangelical Immigration Table,” reported the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference’s Sammy Rodriguez.

The Christian Post article reports that funds specifically for the EIT came from Republican hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Walmart, and “other leading Christian business owners,” according to Rodriguez.

Also today the National Immigration Forum released a carefully-worded statement: “Recently, some have accused the Table of receiving financial support from George Soros through the Forum. We wish to be absolutely clear on this point: These rumors are untrue. None of the funding the Forum receives from the Open Society Foundation goes to the work of the Evangelical Immigration Table. In fact, over the course of 2012 and 2013, approximately 10 percent of the Forum’s overall revenue has been from the Open Society Foundation.”

Breitbart has reported that EIT does not exist as a legal entity. Its work is “facilitated” by the National Immigration Forum.  It is essentially part of the NIF.  Its $250,000 ad campaign for immigration legislative advocacy was reportedly contracted by NIF.

NIF’s statement denies that Soros specifically designated funding for EIT, which Breitbart did not claim.  But EIT is an initiative of NIF, which most certainly DOES receive funding from Soros and similar philanthropies.

And who are NIF’s backers? Publicly available information shows that Soros’  Foundation to Promote an Open Society gave more than half of NIF’s total funding in 2010, $1.75 million. The NIF has received $3,807,152 from Soros since 2009 and a total of $5,107,152 over the decade from 2001 to 2011.

NIF’s statement today says Open Society provided about 10% of the NIF’s budget in 2012 and 2013 but does not indicate what the amount was or what is NIF’s overall budget, which possibly has increased.  The liberal Ford Foundation donated $250,000 to NIF in 2011, $500,000 in 2010, and $300,000 in 2009. Other donors of the left gave generous support: the Carnegie Corporation donated $500,000 in 2011 and the Tides Foundation $60,000 in 2010.

Many evangelicals are suspicious of this political alliance with George Soros and similar philanthropies.  Yesterday, noted evangelical commentator Eric Metaxas withdrew his name from the Evangelical Immigration Table, citing the Soros connection.

Richard Land’s Southern Baptist Quarter Century

20 Thursday Jun 2013

Posted by Institute on Religion and Democracy in News

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Baptist, Criswell College, Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, evangelical, Mark Tooley, Richard Land, Southern Baptist Convention


(Photo Credit: Southern Baptist Theological Seminary)

By Mark Tooley

After twenty-five years Richard Land has retired as president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC). Representing the public policy voice of America’s largest Protestant body, he was a consistently faithful voice on matters of Christian moral witness such as abortion, marriage, and religious liberty. He also defended traditional Christian teaching on just war and capital punishment and avoided the unqualified support for the welfare state common in some Evangelical and Catholic circles.

More broadly, Land has been a long-time leader within American religious social conservatism and is the latest to retire of the now receding generation that emerged in the 1970s to comprise the “Religious Right.”

Land took the helm of what was then called the Christian Life Commission in 1988 as part of the conservative ascendancy in the Southern Baptist Convention. He was a friend of Judge Paul Pressler and Rev. Paige Patterson, the chief organizers of that resurgence. At this point conservatives outnumbered liberals on that commission by 20 to 11, but Land was elected unanimously. Previously he had worked for Texas Republican Governor Bill Clements and as a professor at Criswell College. He had studied as an undergraduate at Princeton under Methodist ethicist Paul Ramsey, attended New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and got his doctorate in philosophy at Oxford.

According to Jerry Sutton’s 2008 book, A Matter of Conviction, the “commission had resolved that the new executive director would be an “avowed inerrantist, a staunch pro-lifer and a believer in capital punishment.” Upon his nomination, Land was presented as a “man who believes this Book.” While many religious traditionalists veered left, gaining wider social acceptance, Land has remained faithful to the original vision for which he was hired.

By comparison to Land’s conservatism across twenty-five years, his predecessor of twenty-seven years was Foy Valentine, who had joined with the United Methodist Board of Church and Society and other Protestant liberals in 1973 to help found the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights. Land lauded Valentine for his early civil rights advocacy while also recalling he was “wrong as you could be on a lot of other issues.” Valentine was an active member of the ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State, helping hire its current chief Barry Lynn. Valentine also, as Land pointed out, “tried to play on anti-Catholic bigotry” in resisting Sanctity of Human Life Sunday.

Land’s admiration of the better parts of Valentine’s legacy didn’t stop with mere praise. From the start, Land also emphasized racial reconciliation, inviting his predecessor back for a Conference on Race. In 1995, Land championed the Southern Baptist apology for past support of slavery and segregation. He also supported a 2003 Southern Baptist Convention resolution to “lament and renounce statements and actions by previous Conventions and previous denominational leadership that offered support to the abortion culture.”

Interestingly, Land also restored to his commission’s office a portrait of an early twentieth century predecessor who had helped create the commission to advocate for temperance. Valentine had kept the painting hidden in the basement. Like the United Methodist lobby in Washington, the Southern Baptist public policy witness was originally rooted in the Prohibition movement, which politicized many Protestant denominations. As those churches, especially the Methodists, became more liberal, their lobbies disavowed temperance and focused on wider Social Gospel causes.

Like many religious conservatives, Land emerged during the Cold War and has seen Evangelicals as key to a national security coalition affirming America’s unique global role. After 9/11 he joined Chuck Colson and other religious conservatives in affirming traditional just war principles, which critics derided for justifying the Iraq War. In 2003 Land articulated a providential understanding of American responsibility that he has often repeated:

If not for the United States, religious liberty would not be an issue of concern for most countries or the United Nations. . . . The only reason anybody in the world goes to bed at night with any degree of freedom and dignity is because of the United States of America and its citizens’ willingness to stand up not only for their own rights and liberty but for the lives, dignity, and liberty of others. . . . It is a universal, inherent longing of the human heart that, given the opportunity, people want freedom and the right to follow their conscience. . . . If we lose our will to stand for that, a lot more is at peril than just the freedom of Americans.

In his 2007 book, The Divided States of America, Land explained America is “exceptional . . . not because we made it that way [but] . . . because we experienced God’s undeserved blessings upon this nation.” He urged an exceptionalism based on “obligation, responsibility, sacrifice, and service—not of pride, privilege, and prejudice,” premised on the “biblical principle: To whom much is given, much is required.”

Land’s final year included some bumps. His commission reproved him in 2012 for a radio broadcast accusing the Obama Administration of racially exploiting Trayvon Martin’s death, which it called “hurtful, irresponsible, insensitive.” And it regretted Land’s “poor judgment” in quoting other authors on air without full attribution, asking that Land end his radio program, which he did. Land has also excited controversy with some conservatives by joining other evangelicals through the Evangelical Immigration Table to advocate legalization for illegal immigrants.

Upon his retirement Land is becoming President of Southern Evangelical Seminary in Charlotte, NC. His successor at the helm of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission is Russell Moore, former dean of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY. Twenty five years younger than Land, and prolific on social media, he represents a new generation of evangelical Southern Baptists not shaped by the church and culture battles of the 1980s.

In his good-bye to the Southern Baptist Convention in Houston on June 11, Land declared: “We’re not going to be thermometers that reflect the temperature in society. We’re going to be thermostats that dictate the spiritual temperature in our society.” For his steadfast defiance of eroding popular culture and adamant defense of traditional Christian ethics, especially on marriage and sanctity of life, across a quarter century, evangelicals and all cultural traditionalists can be grateful to Land.

This article originally appeared on First Things and was republished with permission.

Press Release: IRD Commends Richard Land’s Defense of Marriage, Religious Liberty at SBC

13 Thursday Jun 2013

Posted by Institute on Religion and Democracy in News

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Baptist, Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, Mark Tooley, Richard Land, Russell Moore

Institute on Religion and Democracy Cross

(Photo credit: Institute on Religion and Democracy)

June 13, 2013
Contact:  Jeff Walton 202-682-4131, 202-413-5639 cell

 

“Land’s reliable and strong voice on these issues was too rare in the denominational world and will be much missed.”
-IRD President Mark Tooley

 

Washington, DC—Southern Baptists gathered in Houston for their annual convention heard an address from the outgoing head of the denomination’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. Richard Land was joined by his successor, Russell Moore, in giving a report from the denomination’s public policy arm.

During the address, Land encouraged Baptists to work towards revival and tackle a host of moral issues. Listing sanctity of life, the sanctity of marriage “as defined by God” and pornography as major concerns, Land saw a nation in peril from “self-inflicted wounds” more damaging than external enemies.

Calling upon Baptists to recommit themselves, Land declared: “We’re not going to be thermometers that reflect the temperature in society. We’re going to be thermostats that dictate the spiritual temperature in our society.”

IRD President Mark Tooley commented:

“Richard Land across 25 years stalwartly extolled traditional Christian teachings about defending vulnerable human life, traditional marriage, religious liberty and the divinely ordained duty of government to defend the nation from aggression.

“Land’s reliable and strong voice on these issues was too rare in the denominational world and will be much missed.  God bless him in his next vocation.

“His successor Russell Moore will also be a forceful, articulate voice on these issues speaking for and to a new generation. As the largest Protestant body in the U.S., Southern Baptists have a special opportunity and duty for leadership in American religion and wider society.”

www.TheIRD.org

###

Land Passes Baton to Moore in Final Address at Southern Baptist Convention

12 Wednesday Jun 2013

Posted by jeffreywalton in News

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

abortion, comprehensive immigration reform, Dr. Russell Moore, ERLC, Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, Evangelical Immigration Table, Immigration, Immigration reform, Institute on Religion and Democracy, Jeff Walton, marriage, National Immigration Forum, Pornography, religious liberty, Richard Land, Russell Moore, Southern Baptist, Southern Baptist Convention, Southern Baptists

Russell Moore (right), the new president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission explains that the ERLC will support principles, rather than specific legislation. President Emeritus Richard Land (left) led the commission for 25 years. (Photo credit: Illinois Baptist Briefing)

Russell Moore (right), the new president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission explains that the ERLC will support principles, rather than specific legislation on immigration. President Emeritus Richard Land (left) led the commission for 25 years. (Photo credit: Illinois Baptist Briefing)

By Jeff Walton (@JeffreyHWalton)

In a spirited farewell, the outgoing head of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) called on Baptists to work towards revival and tackle a host of moral issues. Addressing officials at the annual gathering of the Southern Baptist Convention in Houston on Tuesday, Richard Land offered his final report as leader of the public policy office, fielded questions on immigration and watched as his successor, Russell Moore, set out his vision for the Southern Baptist public policy body.

“Unfortunately, we live in a target-rich environment when it comes to the moral issues we face as Christians,” Land warned. Listing sanctity of life, the sanctity of marriage “as defined by God” and pornography as major concerns, Land saw a nation in peril from “self-inflicted wounds” more damaging than external enemies.

“I believe that the devil has figured out that the greatest weapon in his arsenal to destroy families and destroy lives in 21st century America is hard core internet pornography,” Land diagnosed. “It is time that we quit playing like ostriches with our heads in the sand, that we understand and that we put on the whole armor of God to protect against the fiery darts of the evil one.”

Assessing America’s ills as “God-sized problems [that] can only be solved by God,” Land called for a “Christ-centered, life changing revival.” America’s future depends “not on what the lost people do, but what the saved people do,” according to Land, determining that “if we get right with God, lost people notice.”

The outgoing Southern Baptist official asserted the primacy of revival, the necessity of “getting right with God.”

“The salt of the law can change behaviors, but only the salt of the Gospel can change beliefs,” Land pronounced.

Calling upon Baptists to recommit themselves, Land declared: “We’re not going to be thermometers that reflect the temperature in society. We’re going to be thermostats that dictate the spiritual temperature in our society.”

Land and Moore fielded two questions from the floor between their addresses, both praising Land’s advocacy on a host of issues including abortion, marriage and religious liberty but also calling into question their advocacy on immigration reform, which went unmentioned in either official’s prepared address.

In the first question, Alabama Baptist State Convention President the Rev. John Killian noted reports on atheist billionaire George Soros’ funding the National Immigration Forum, of which the Evangelical Immigration Table is a project. Asked if the ERLC would participate in any political project “directly or indirectly funded” by Soros, Land did not directly address Soros’ funding and ERLC participation in the Evangelical Immigration Table. Instead, the outgoing Southern Baptist official responded that the ERLC was following instruction from a 2009 resolution “to pursue immigration policies that would find a pathway toward legal status for those who are here in an undocumented status with appropriate fines and penalties.”

“That is the kind of legislation we have been supporting and will continue to support because we believe that is what the majority of Southern Baptists want us to support,” Land explained, adding that such a policy “is not amnesty.”

Land described amnesty as “what Jimmy Carter gave the draft dodgers who went to Canada instead of serving in Vietnam” allowing them to return without penalty.

In the second question, South Carolina State Senator Lee Bright, who also serves on the ERLC, asked Moore if the ERLC was going to actively support “the 1,000 page immigration bill” under debate in the U.S. Senate.

“We are going to support principles, we are not going to support specific pieces of legislation,” Moore responded. “What we support is a just and compassionate approach to dealing with the millions of people in American society right now who are invisible, seeking a better future for their families. We also want to maintain the rule of law and the security of our borders.”

Interjecting, Land added that the present bill, if it is to pass, “will get a lot stronger on border security because it has to get through the House of Representatives.”

“They are being robbed, raped and brutalized,” Land said of the immigrants from whom he heard during his recent visit to New Orleans, where he reported immigrants would not go to the police to report crimes for fear of deportation.

“We need to give them an opportunity to come forward, pay a penalty, undergo a probationary period, learn English and if they want to stay here come under the protection of our laws,” Land summarized.

Moore praised his predecessor early in his own address, declaring that “no one stood more courageously toe to toe with the spirit of the abortion culture – the spirit of death — than Richard Land.”

A future generation may be asked if the Gospel applies to human clones, or if an artificially intelligent human cyborg could be baptized, or asked how we should deal with a Sunday School teacher who rents out her womb to an infertile family, Moore forecast.  Baptists, he predicted, may be asked “what does discipleship in action look like for the post-operative transsexual who comes to Christ and wonders ‘what does repentance look like for me?’”

Moore also predicted that future Christians may have to address questions that their forefathers did, but recent generations have not, such as “how to plant a church or preach the word when the government demands to see a license for a state-approved gospel.”

Moore promised the ERLC would push back against a world full of fallenness and injustice, where “too many children are disposed of as medical waste, languish in orphanages and foster care systems and live in the wreckage of a divorce culture robbing them of mother, father and home.” Moore also warned of lingering racism and identified challenges to religious liberty.

“We will stand with our chaplains – who show right honor to the authorities – but when they are told that they cannot pray in Jesus’ name, have the courage to stand up and say to Caesar ‘sir, I wasn’t talking to you, sir.’”

Charging that a government bureaucracy did not invent marriage and a government bureaucracy cannot reinvent marriage, Moore promised the ERLC would strive to model a healthy marriage culture.

Placing the ERLC mission in context, Moore observed that “our enemies are not persons of flesh and blood; our enemies are invisible principalities and powers in the air around us.”

“We follow a Christ who did not come into the world to condemn the word but so that through him the world might be saved,” Moore declared. “Even our harshest critic is a person whom we are seeking to see reconciled to God by the blood of Christ.”

“Satan is not afraid of culture warriors or values voters: Satan is afraid of a crucified Galilean who has a great deal of trouble staying dead for very long,” Moore determined, adding that Christians “have no reason to be fearful, sullen or mean. We are not the losers of history.”

“The worst thing that could possibly happen to us has already happened: we’re dead, we were crucified at the place of the skull under the wrath of God,” Moore declared. “The best thing that could possibly happen has happened: we are alive in Christ and our future is seated at the right hand of God and he’s feeling fine. Since Jesus is marching onward and since the gates of hell cannot hold him back, why would we be panicked or concerned about the Supreme Court?”

“Let’s target the right enemy and let us overcome,” Moore advised. “Not because we are a majority or a righteous remnant, but because we are blood covered sinners who know that if the Gospel can change us, it can change anyone.”

Boy Scouts Forced to Choose Sides in the Culture War

22 Wednesday May 2013

Posted by Institute on Religion and Democracy in News

≈ 22 Comments

Tags

Albert Mohler, Baptist, Boy Scouts of America, evangelical, Luder Whitlock, Lutheran, Mark Tooley, Presbyterian, Richard Land, same-sex, Thomas Oden

Boy Scouts of America

(Photo credit: First Things)

By Mark Tooley (@MarkDTooley)

A group of mostly Protestant and evangelical church leaders, representing churches with over 20 million members, are asking the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) National Council meeting this week to retain the current BSA stance on sexuality. The May 22-24 meeting will consider a proposal to prohibit “discrimination” based on “sexual orientation or preference,” while leaving in place the current prohibition on openly homosexual Scout leaders.

Signers of the appeal to BSA include Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention, Lutheran Church Missouri Synod President Matthew Harrison, Assemblies of God General Superintendent George Wood, Church of God General (Cleveland, TN) Overseer Mark Williams, and Archbishop Robert Duncan of the Anglican Church in North America, as well as theologians like Southern Baptist Albert Mohler, United Methodist Thomas Oden, and Presbyterian Luder Whitlock.

Here is their statement, which attracted about fifty prominent signers:

“We strongly support the Boy Scouts of America current prohibition on open homosexuality and retaining it without revision. Nearly 70 percent of BSA troops are hosted by churches and religious institutions. Upholding traditional morality is vital for sustaining this partnership, for protecting Scout members, and for ensuring BSA has a strong future. A proposal from the BSA board to prohibit “discrimination” based on “sexual orientation or preference” for BSA members potentially would open the Scouts to a wide range of open sexual expressions. In our current culture, it is more important than ever for our churches to protect and provide moral nurture for young people and for the Scouts. We implore members of the upcoming BSA Council to affirm the BSA’s present policy, which the U.S. Supreme Court has affirmed, and which has served BSA well.”

In his own preamble to the statement, Rev. Harrison of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod warned the “proposed change will highlight sexuality, which has not been and should not be a matter of focus for Scouts.” And he suspects “it will make it more challenging to care for young people struggling with same-sex attraction and perhaps open our churches to legal action.” He also said the policy would supersede pastoral authority in churches with Scout units and could cause a “crisis of conscience for our church leaders, pastors, parents and congregations.” Harrison noted that “for more than a century, scouting has sought to uphold moral values at a level greater than that of general society,” and the “capitulation now to societal pressures would mar the long and honorable history of the Boy Scouts to honor the natural law of God, which at least for now, is still reflected in the current scouting membership policy.”

Richard Land, in his own separate May 15 letter to the Boy Scout leadership, warned that the proposed new policy would “cause many Southern Baptist churches, as well as many churches from other denominations, to withdraw their sponsorship rather than compromise their convictions.” He also said he was “perplexed” that the BSA “would abandon a century-old membership policy” less than a year after a 2 year study reaffirmed that policy “remains in the best interest of Scouting.”

In their own statement, the National Catholic Committee on Scouting cited Roman Catholicism’s teaching on chastity, and said the Church “reserves the right to seek to place those who live by its teachings in leadership positions that serve our youth, as well as the right to continue to call our young people to live by the teachings of our faith and by moral truth which can be known by all.”

Catholics are the third largest religious group involved in Scouting. Mormons are the most numerous, and their church effectively abstained from a public stance on the proposed new policy. United Methodists are the second most numerous, and their leaders in February asked BSA to defer any shift in policy until participating churches could review in a “thoughtful and prayerful manner.”

If the BSA National Council changes the membership policy, it will almost certainly create tensions between BSA and many of its participating religious congregations. Some may withdraw from BSA altogether and support religiously-based alternatives to Scouting. Meanwhile, many critics will not relent until BSA altogether abandons any restrictions on open sexual expression for members and leaders. The days of BSA as a culturally unifying icon are over, and BSA sadly will have to choose sides in the culture wars.

This blog post originally appeared on the First Things website as an article.

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