Southern Baptist leader blasts Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton for religious politicking

[Doondoo]

Recently President Jimmy Carter announced a new initiative to pull together moderate Baptist bodies under an informal umbrella group. President Bill Clinton endorsed the effort. Both men are Southern Baptists who are unhappy with the right-wing tilt of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC).

Asked to comment on the Carter project, Richard Land, president of the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, told The Washington Post, “I’m not going to question their motives. I just know that if I were them, I would be concerned about how it might appear to many people, the timing. Purportedly they’re going to hold a convention of several thousand people in Atlanta in early 2008, hosted by two former Democratic presidents, one of whom has a wife seeking the Democratic presidential nomination. Some would see that as an overtly political activity.”

Land’s hypocrisy is so audacious as to be breath-taking. Under Land and his fundamentalist cronies, the SBC has more or less become a Religious Right organization and an arm of the Republican Party. Land is so intertwined with the GOP that he is openly quoted in the media on internal Republican Party politics and handicaps candidates as if he were a ward boss.

Consider this example from today’s Washington Post: The newspaper ran a front-page story about presidential aspirants U.S. Sen. John McCain and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney fighting for the social conservative vote.

Land’s opinion was solicited, and he said, “Winability is a bigger issue in this campaign because of the Darth Vader-like specter of a Hillary Clinton presidency.” He went on to add that Christian conservatives “want the most socially conservative candidate they can find, who can win.”



http://blog.au.org/2007/02/13/land-of-hypocrisy-partisan-sbc-official-chides-carter-for-religious-politicking/

[ck4829]

1. Didn't Land give his blessing to the invasion of Iraq too?

[itsmesgd]

2. Speaking for myself, a South Georgia Baptist-raised LIBERAL

The SBC has become over the past ten plus years more of an extremist faction than the mainstream in religion and politics. More and more of the churches in the area have split from the SBC and are ashamed when they hear something like this. I laugh at several members of my family who like to give me grief because I say that I'm a liberal. We will have debates at family dinners (which is a big no-no) and the same aunts and uncles who say that they are conservative hold the same opinions and views as do I and many of us here on DU.
I still cringe when I see the Falwell's and Robertson's on television because they paint people with faith in a bad light. I hope that with the SBC's continued marginalization, a place will be seen for "regular" people with faith. For years being baptist and living in the south was the same to most outsiders as a southern baptist.

[BOSSHOG]

3. Wow, politicians being overtly political. Imagine!!

Yeah, land don't want the lemmings to get educated and thinking independently for Christ's sake. No he needs those minds closed and those hearts filled with hate and he needs that collection plate active. richard land and evil, ignorant bastards like him are domestic enemies of the constitution. Its really that simple. What else can you say about organizations which exist solely to destroy the constitution and replace it with a religious book.

[Missy M]

4. What does the "Darth Vader like-specter of a Hillary Clinton presidency" mean?

That is one ridiculous statement. I am so sick of all religious leaders trying to decide our political candidates and the agenda of this country. We have got to rid ourselves of this inter-twining of religion and state, only then will we get this country back on the right track. Some of these guys sound like American Ayatollahs.

[Jai4WKC08]

14. What it means is

If Hillary Clinton wins the Democratic nomination, the GOP can run a Morman lesbian who's had five abortions because she didn't like the eye-color she got from her cloned implantations, and the religious right will still send her money and turn out to vote.

[Missy M]

15. Well, that explains it.

:rofl:

[William769]

5. Sorry, but all I can do at that headline is

:rofl:

[Arkansas Granny]

6. PBS did a documentary called "The Jesus Factor" which outlined

how evangelicals, and the SBC, under Land's leadership, in particular, were instrumental in getting Bush elected. You can read the interview with Land here:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/jesus/interviews/land.html

[gulfcoastliberal]

7. The SBC "tilts" right? More like they form the far-right base of repukes!

They and the evangelical taliban more than just "tilt right". They are extremely right wing. They include the American Taliban "constructionists",whom wish toimplement biblical law and do away with a secular society.

I just love how we're "far left extremists" because we believe in worker rights, liberty and privacy, the bill of rights, are against illegal war, etc.

If the DLC maintains its stranglehold on dem policy - we'll be the party of Reagan soon. You see, obviously they also are courting these same far-right folks who would NEVER vote dem.

If the dems abandon unions, the working and middle classes, and go along with the failed neoliberal economics of the DLC well, we should just merge with the repukes.

Anyway it comes down to: repukes love & embrace their far-right members, their base. The DLC dominated dems shun dems devoted to restoring America to the great republic it was once. Far as they're concerned the traditional dem base and go f**k itself. Instead, they want republicans in the party -even courting the same fundies as the pukes. I live in the South and have yet to encounter a Baptist that would vot dem. Never.

[hobbit709]

8. Pot, meet kettle

[tanyev]

9. Breath-taking hypocrisy.

[brazos121200]

10. This is hilarious. Land has had ties with the Republican Party for years.

Land has addressed Republican members of the House where he has said "We want a wedding ring, we want a ceremony, we want a consummation of marriage" with the Republican party.

The Southern Baptist Convention and the GOP has been playing the American people for suckers for forty years, and they have been getting away with it.

<http://www.livingston.net/wilkyjr/link9.htm>

[TankLV]

11. Pot meet Kettle. The Hypocrisy is aparently lost on him, of all people...

One of the major - MAJOR - repuke WHORES says this kind of thing - and with a straight face!

clueless, simply clueless...

[Lars39]

12. Jimmy Carter renounced his Southern Baptist membership

quite a long time ago.

[gratuitous]

13. Gee Mr. Land

It almost sounds like you feel . . . I dunno, threatened, is that the right word? Threatened by the possibility that Southern Baptists, estranged from their community of faith by the overt politicking you've so assiduously sown in their denomination, might find a new home where they can be good Christians and conscientious citizens.

Is it possible that you don't wish to lose your inflated and exalted position? My, my, my. How very unseemly.