Dr. Richard Land: September 2008 Archives

Yesterday evening, Sept. 25, I had the honor and privilege of speaking at a protest rally in the heart of New York City across the street from Grand Central Station.

People representing more than 60 organizations as diverse as the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, the Guardian Angels, the Institute for Religion and Democracy, the Women's Freedom Movement of Pakistan, and the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission gathered together in common cause to protest Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's invitation to be the guest of honor at a dinner at the Grand Hyatt Hotel adjacent to Grand Central Station.

The sponsoring organizations inviting Ahmadinejad to an Iftar dinner to break the Ramadan fast were the American Friends Service Committee, the Mennonite Central Committee, the Quaker United Nations Office, Religions for Peace, World Council of Churches and the United Nations Liaison Office. These religious leaders billed this travesty honoring "His Excellency" as "a conversation about the role of religions and tackling global challenges and building peaceful societies."

To paraphrase an oft-quoted saying, you can put lipstick on a murderous dictator by calling him "Excellency," but he is still a murderous tyrant.

I am truly at a loss to explain why so many representatives of historic "peace" churches are so anxious to meet with a man who so routinely speaks of "annihilation" and "destruction" of both the United States and Israel.

Ahmadinejad is a vicious Anti-Semite who is a violent persecutor of non-Muslims in his own country. Recently leaked documents from the Ahmadinejad regime speak of plans to "eliminate" the nation's 300,000 Bahá'ís.

Muslims are hardly immune from oppression and violence if they dare to question Ahmadinejad and the ruling mullahs. Hundreds of Muslim activists and dissidents have been arrested and sentenced to long prison terms for daring to question the ruling regime.

Internationally, Ahmadinejad's Iran is the epicenter of world terrorism and anti-Semitism. I have often wondered what it would have been like to live in the 1930s and to see Hitler and the Nazis for what they were when millions of people remained blind and duped to the perilous threat they posed. Now I know.

As I watched Ahmadinejad spew forth his corrosive and cancerous anti-Semitism before the United Nations this week, I could not help but observe that he was directly channeling the demonic spirits of Hilter, Goebbels, and Himmler. The people honoring Ahmadinejad at the Hyatt's Iftar dinner are channeling the spirit of Neville Chamberlain and the other "useful idiots," as Lenin described them, who were the enablers who allowed Hitler and his minions to lead humanity into a dark abyss of barbarism in the last century.

Are we going to allow it to happen again? Have we truly learned nothing from history?

My parents always taught me, never, by my silence, to be mistaken to be in agreement with hateful or prejudiced speech or action. I am grateful that my fellow Americans and I were not silent last night--we recognized evil and called it what it was and we did so loudly enough for the unwitting dupes inside to hear us.

Last February, the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission's (ERLC) Research Institute was having its semi-annual meeting. During that meeting, the research fellows (scholars from various academic disciplines) concluded that American society was bedeviled by serious problems that ultimately could only be successfully addressed by a widespread spiritual revival.

The eventual result of those discussions was the 40/40 Prayer Vigil. The ERLC has partnered with Southern Baptists' North American Mission Board to promote the 40/40 Prayer Vigil for Spiritual Revival and National Renewal.

We fervently believe that the only real hope for our country is a spiritual revival and renewal that must begin with people of faith getting on their knees before God and seeking personal repentance, revival and renewal. The Prayer Vigil starts today, Sept. 24 and continues for 40 days, culminating in a 40 hour prayer vigil beginning Friday, Oct. 31 through Sunday, Nov. 2, the last weekend before the Presidential election (Tuesday, Nov. 4).

The Prayer Vigil's first focus is on "Personal Revival" with daily Scripture passages and prayer points on hunger for God and for personal repentance. The second focus is on "Church Revival," and the third is on "Revival Among Church Leadership."

Next, the vigil's focus shifts to prayer for "National Revival" and "National Renewal."

Finally, prayer is offered regarding "Wisdom for Public Officials," and "Wisdom to Elect the Best Officials."

Then each of the prayer subjects of the previous 37 days are recapitulated in the 40 hour prayer vigil which concludes the 40/40 Prayer Vigil for Spiritual Revival and National Renewal. All the prayer vigil materials are also available in Spanish.

Go to ilivevalues.com/prayer and check it out. Join us in praying for personal revival and renewal as well as revival and renewal in America.

In preparation for a speech on religion and public policy, I was recently reviewing sections of former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's The Mighty and the Almighty (2006).

Secretary Albright makes some truly important points in her volume. The whole effort is tremendously enhanced, however, by her startling transparency in acknowledging that she and most of the people in the diplomatic classes had completely underestimated the importance of religion as a potent force in societies around the world.

In the course of reviewing sections of The Mighty and the Almighty, I noticed something that I had forgotten: the author of the book's introduction. The introduction contains this passage:

"Does this mean that policy-makers should try to keep religion walled off from public life? As Madeleine Albright argues, the answer to that question is a resounding no. Not only shouldn't we do that, we couldn't succeed if we tried. Religious convictions, if they are convictions, can't be pulled on and off like a pair of boots. We walk with them wherever we go. The skeptics and atheists side by side with the devout. A president or secretary of state must make decisions with regard both to his or her own religious convictions and to the impact of those decisions on people of different faiths."

Guess who penned those words--William Jefferson Clinton, the 42nd president of the United States. This passage reminded me of how enthusiastic then President Clinton was about Stephen Carter's The Culture of Disbelief, which was published in 1994. President Clinton came back from vacation on Martha's Vineyard and declared that everyone should read Carter's book and said, "What we have in this country is freedom for religion, not freedom from religion." Amen.

In the wake of Gov. Sarah Palin's selection as the Republican vice presidential nominee, there has been considerable "speculation" about why Evangelicals in general, and Southern Baptists in particular, have responded so favorably to her candidacy. As Sally Quinn reasoned in the Washington Post, if Southern Baptists are opposed to a woman being the pastor of a local church, why would they support a woman as vice president? Aren't they being inconsistent, if not hypocritical?

Now we have David Gushee (a self-identified "moderate evangelical") discussing the "Palin Predicament," which he described as "how can the theological vision that women are subservient to men jibe with a Palin vice presidency?" (USA Today, 9/15/08).

As a Southern Baptist, a conservative Evangelical, and a member of both the committee that formulated the Southern Baptists' confessional statement on "The Family" in 1998 and the committee that revised the denomination's confession of faith (The Baptist Faith and Message) in 2000, I feel compelled to respond.

First, the Southern Baptist confessional statement does not state that "women are to be subservient to men." Southern Baptists are clear that men and women "are of equal worth before God, since both are created in God's image."

Most Southern Baptists do believe that while husband and wife are equal, that in a marriage the wife is to voluntarily place herself under "the servant leadership of her husband." They also believe that "While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture."

Why do they believe these things? They believe this is the clear teaching of the New Testament, which they take as authoritative for faith and practice in the home and the church.

In the Apostle Paul's letter to the Ephesian Christians, he states clearly that husbands are to love their wives with the sacrificial love with which Jesus loved the church and gave Himself for it (Eph. 5:25). This was a radical doctrinal teaching in a first-century world where women had virtually no rights. In fact, one of the most extraordinary things about the New Testament is the prominent role accorded to women in its pages. As stated earlier, the Apostle Paul tells the wife to place herself under her husband's servant leadership.

Similarly, in the first of his pastoral epistles (how things are to be done in the church) to Timothy, his son in the faith, the Apostle Paul instructs that "a woman is not to usurp authority over the man" (1 Tim. 2:12). As have adherents to many other Christian faith traditions, most Southern Baptists have understood this to mean that women are not to be pastors of local churches, since the pastoral office is a position of authority. Consequently, the Baptist Faith and Message declares that "While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture."

For Baptists, who make a strict distinction between the local church congregation and other denominational or parachurch ministries, such a statement would not preclude women "gifted for service" from serving in leadership positions in the denomination as opposed to the local church. For example, the Washington office of the SBC's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission was led for several years by a woman who served ably in that role.

These theological convictions about the limits on women in leadership in the home and the church have nothing to do with women serving in leadership roles in public service. Southern Baptists and other Evangelicals with similar beliefs do not go beyond where they believe the New Testament leads them. And where the New Testament is silent, so are they. They do not extrapolate from biblically dictated spiritual roles in the home and the local congregation to other roles in society.

Consequently, Southern Baptists and similarly inclined Evangelicals have no problem with a woman serving in a leadership role in public policy or business. There is no inconsistency or hypocrisy involved in taking such a position, and there is no belief in any inferiority of women whatsoever.

As far as the right to believe and practice such theological doctrines in their homes and churches (both voluntarily joined institutions), that is guaranteed by the First Amendment's "free exercise" protections.

And as for David Gushee's assertion that such beliefs are "archaic," it should be noted that ancient and archaic are not synonyms. Webster's defines archaic as "relating to, belonging to, or having the characteristics of an earlier and often more primitive time" and ancient as "having had an existence of many years existing from a long-past date or period" and "of early origin." To be ancient is not to be "primitive," or "out of date"--or wrong. You cannot judge the rightness or wrongness of an argument by its age.

Also, if Gushee, Quinn and the other critics knew more conservative Southern Baptists and Evangelicals, they would know that many of them have yearned for many years for an American Margaret Thatcher to serve a leadership role in American public life. As Lady Thatcher once said of her husband, "Denis is the head of our home. I run the country."

It is September 12, 2008, which means it has been seven years and one day since that infamous moment that is etched in every American's memory. We all know where we were and what we were doing when the terrorist attacks occurred.

Ever since, we have lived in a "post 9/11" world. In that "post 9/11" world our national government has ramped up its anti-terrorist activities exponentially. The result? We have not had another successful terrorist attack on Americans here in the homeland.

Are you surprised there has not been another successful attack on our civilian population? Frankly, I am. If someone had told me seven years ago that we would have gone this long without being hit again, I would have judged them naïve and hopelessly optimistic.

It is not because the bad guys have not been trying. The New York police commissioner explained yesterday that they have identified and thwarted at least six terrorist plots against New York City alone!

We have NOT been successfully attacked since 9/11, and a large measure of the credit must go to President George W. Bush.

And yet he is accorded relatively little credit, especially by the media. Nevertheless, President Bush's policies have put the terrorists on the defensive and have given us the ability to thwart a significant number of potentially deadly attacks.

The current issue of Foreign Policy (Sept/Oct 2008) has a cover photo of President Bush in a Stetson hat with the caption: "Lonesome Cowboy--Why you'll miss him when he's gone." Inside is David Frum's article "Bush's Legacy," which argues that historians will be far kinder to President Bush than present pundits.

I agree. And the first sentence in any historical assessment of George W. Bush's presidency will be "He kept the country safe from attack in the wake of the unprecedented deadly attacks on the American homeland on September 11, 2001."

If anyone has any remaining doubts about the national media's bias and preference for Sen. Barack Obama, I offer Charles Gibson's interview with Gov. Sarah Palin vs. Gibson's interview with Sen. Obama on July 23, 2008 as an excellent test...

Much has been made of the Democratic Party's new platform plank on abortion. Jim Wallis has hailed the new language as "an historic step forward." Is it? Well, Sen. Obama says that "words matter," so let's examine the actual words....

Sen. John McCain electrified the Republican base and millions of people of every political persuasion last Friday when he selected Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate. Why? First, because she is a reform-minded, no-nonsense, pro-life, pistol-packing...