Q&A: Richard Land | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

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Christianity Today, August, 2007 |

Q&A: Richard Land

The president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission talks about his new book, The Divided States of America?

Interview by Collin Hansen | posted 7/30/2007 08:26AM

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Do evangelicals treat some political issues as black-and-white that should be categorized as gray?

God may not have a position on the precise nature of the tax burden on the American people. But I believe he does have quite a specific position when it comes to his institution, holy matrimony. Now, I think there are some tax policies that work better than others in terms of results. The Bush tax cuts have produced more revenue for the government than Clinton's tax increases did. So the question has to be asked: Which economic system works? Do you really want to help poor people or just stick it to rich people?

How can evangelicals improve at translating Scriptural principles into law?

When Martin Luther King Jr. was in the Birmingham jail, he wrote that he was in that jail because he refused to obey an unjust law. It's an unjust law because it doesn't coincide with the moral law of God. To me that's making a moral argument.

It's more important now than it was in Lincoln's time or King's time. We live in a culture when more people are disconnected from any adequate understanding of biblical teaching.

You say that we are a nation blessed by God. Doesn't that lead to a destructive national pride?

A blessing by its definition is unmerited and undeserved. We can't take any credit for it. It certainly should be no occasion for pride. In fact, it's an occasion to obligation.

You write that we shouldn't work for legislation that proclaims America is a Christian nation. Why not?

For one thing, that reading of history is inaccurate. Having said that, we can win the argument I'm making. We can convince a significant majority of the American people to support government accommodation of religion and principled pluralism. You're not going to convince the American people to give a privileged position to Christianity.

Related elsewhere:

The Divided States of America? is available from ChristianBook.com and other retailers.

Richard Land heads the SBC's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, which highlighted his book on its site and radio program.

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August 2007, Vol. 51, No. 8

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Jan Thomas

Posted: July 30, 2007 4:09 PM

My goodness! Mr. Disgusted Reader lumps a whole bunch of folks in a category that seems to be 180 degrees away from what most of us believe. I would have been privileged to have had Martin Luther King as my pastor then--and now. Many SBC churches are pastored by African-American pastors and many are either multi-cultural or black. Mr. Reader needs to get off his high horse and visit a good SBC church sometime.

chas pike

Posted: July 30, 2007 2:00 PM

dickie land hands us this statement:" Now, I think there are some tax policies that work better than others in terms of results. The Bush tax cuts have produced more revenue for the government than Clinton's tax increases did. So the question has to be asked: Which economic system works?" i scratch my head at this. i am no clinton apologist, but hadn't he balanced the books and all but eliminated the national debt? how did georgie b's tax cuts to the wealthy give the government more money to spend? look at the debt, look at all the money borrowed from our great grand chlidren that he is pouring into iraq. dickie, you my friend are not getting enough oxygen.

Raymond Takashi Swenson

Posted: July 30, 2007 1:13 PM

One of the political views expressed by some American Christians that is not in fact based on the Bible is their flat out opposition to political candidates who belong to minority religions. The New Testament shows that the Church grew up in a political environment where the rulers were not Christian, and that, looking forward to the eventual return of Christ to reign over all the earth, Christians did not seek political power or object to it being exercised by those who were not of their religious community. Objecting to a candidate of moral integrity solely on the ground that he or she is a Jew, a Mormon, a Buddhist or a Muslim has no precedent or charter in scripture. Those who claim that such prejudice is an obligation of Christians are blaming God for their own intolerance. They are following the Ku Klux Klan in preaching a Christian tribalism, not the loving message of the Savior who taught that the Good Samaritan fulfilled all the law and the prophets.