Posts on Southern Baptist Convention

After last week's election, the Christian Coalition announced that one of its primary goals for the short-term future was seeing that the 20 states that do not currently ban gays from getting married do so and that those states that do allow marriage put an end to the practice.  

Presumably, the first step in that battle will take place in West Virginia. The Family Policy Council of West Virginia is already threatening the Governor that if he doesn't call a special legislative session to put an amendment on the ballot, he'll face the wrath of the voters and now the West Virginia Convention of Southern Baptists has joined the call:

The resolution, adopted at the 38th meeting of the West Virginia Convention of Southern Baptists, passed unanimously.

"As citizens of West Virginia, we avail ourselves of the opportunity to affirm the historic, legal, and reasonable definition of marriage by supporting and promoting a marriage amendment to the state constitution," the resolution states. "... [W]e will strongly encourage Christians throughout West Virginia to engage in the civic process in defense of marriage and in support of the government's leadership in defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman (Romans 13)."

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The resolution commits to praying regularly for the governor, legislators and judges. It also makes it clear that West Virginia Southern Baptists believe "same-sex unions are not the same as opposite-sex couples."

"[T]o believe otherwise is to ignore the uniqueness of each gender's design and undermines marriage (Genesis 2:18)," the resolution reads. "The break down or weakening of the institution of marriage has devastating moral, spiritual, economic, and social effects on the whole of society. Marriage protects children by giving them an opportunity to grow up in the ideal environment: with a married mom and dad. Knowingly depriving children of that opportunity exposes our children to a great social experiment that is in no one's best interest."

As the Baptist Press article "West Virginia does not have a petition process allowing citizens to gather signatures and place a constitutional amendment on the ballot" so any such amendment must first pass through the state House and Senate, both of which are controlled by Democrats.   But seeing as passing anti-gay amendments seems to be the only thing the Right has been having any success with in recent years, it is probably safe to assume that West Virginia leaders are going to be coming under increasing pressure to put one on the ballot there as well.

It seems as if the Southern Baptist Convention is having a bit of an internal disagreement about whether or not the use of birth control is acceptable.  Dr. Thomas White of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary says its not and that those who use it are selfish and committing murder: 

The Southern Baptist Convention is reacting after News 8 showed a message from a Southern Baptist preacher teaching Fort Worth seminary students that the birth control pill equals murder.

In a controversial sermon to students at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Dr. Thomas White, acting as the student services vice president this month, preached that birth control is murder and called attempts at family planning selfish.

"Some of you are involved in that exact same sin," he said.

But Richard Land disagrees, kind of:

"I don't believe prudent planning is rebellion against God's will as long as couples accept God may cause them to have unplanned pregnancies anyway," said Richard Land.

But, Land said he ultimately agrees with Dr. White on the subject of the birth control pill.

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"The Southern Baptist Convention is not opposed to the use of birth control within marriage as long as the methods used do not cause the fertilized egg to abort and as long as the methods used do not bar having children altogether unless there's a medical reason the couple should not have children," he said.

The most interesting angle of this kerfuffle is found in a video report from WFAA in Dallas regarding the issue in which Dwight McKissick of Cornerstone Baptist Church decries White's views as "fundamentalist run amok" and declares that the seminary is "degenerating into a Baptist fundamentalist indoctrination camp." 

That would be the same Dwight McKissick who recently appeared in this anti-gay Family Research Council video in which he proclaimed that efforts to liken gay rights to the civil rights struggle are "insulting, demeaning, and offensive" and called it racist to "compare my skin with their sin." He's also the one who, at the FRC Values Voter Summit back in 2006, declared that the gay rights movement had come "from the pit of hell itself" and suggested that the Anti-Christ was gay.

When you are being pejoratively decried as a radical fundamentalist by ... well, another radical fundamentalist, maybe you've gone too far.  

Just yesterday we were noting the strange disconnect among the Religious Right between the idea that it is perfectly okay for Sarah Palin to be Vice President when she could not, in many religious denominations, serve in the capacity of a priest or pastor.  

As we noted then, this was especially obvious when it came to Southern Baptist leaders who are well-known for their belief that women must submit to their husbands and notoriously opposed to female pastors  … but even we are amazed at how deeply this opposition apparently runs:

Smiling women on the cover of a slick magazine. Sold from under the counter. Must request it from store clerk.

That’s not something a buyer would typically find in a Christian bookstore. Not unless it’s one of the more than 100 Lifeway Christian Bookstores across the United States, including about six in metro Atlanta.

Gospel Today, the Fayetteville-published magazine, was pulled off the racks by the bookstores’ owner, the Southern Baptist Convention. The problem? The five smiling women on the cover are women of the cloth — church pastors.

Southern Baptist polity says that’s a role reserved for men.

Teresa Hairston, owner of Gospel Today, whose glossy pages feature upbeat articles about health, living, music and ministry, said she discovered by e-mail that the September/October issue of the magazine had been demoted to the realm of the risque.

“It’s really kind of sad when you have people like [Gov.] Sarah Palin and [Sen.] Hillary Clinton providing encouragement and being role models for women around the world that we have such a divergent opinion about women who are able to be leaders in the church,” Hairston said. “I was pretty shocked.”

Chris Turner, a spokesman for Lifeway Resources, which runs the stores for the Southern Baptist Convention, said, “It is contrary to what we believe.”

Adelle M. Banks of the Religion News Service had an interesting article the other day looking at the issue of why Religious Right leaders who tend to think that wives should submit to their husbands and that women can't be church leaders are nonetheless gung-ho about Sarah Palin's VP candidacy: 

There may never be a female pastor leading Tony Perkins' Southern Baptist congregation in Louisiana, but there could be a woman taking over the vice president's mansion in Washington.

And as Perkins sees it, there's no contradiction there whatsoever.

"It's not a spiritual role," said Perkins, president of the Family Research Council and a church elder, who calls Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin a "brilliant pick" for the Republican ticket.

"An elected official is not a spiritual leader -- and that's what the Scripture speaks to."

As Richard Land explains, "where the New Testament is silent, we're silent. Where the New Testament speaks, we're under its authority." And, as such, Palin is allowed to serve as Vice President because the Bible doesn't say she can't.  But if her husband decides he doesn't want her to be VP, then she can't: 

Land's wife works as a psychotherapist, but he said he couldn't see himself as "first dude" (a term used by Palin's husband). Still, he thinks decisions about roles are up to each husband and wife -- including Sarah and Todd Palin.

"The only thing that would disqualify Gov. Palin from being governor or vice president, in my opinion, would be if her husband didn't want her to do it," he said.

This issues seems to be especially difficult for Southern Baptist leaders like Land who, after all, are the primary proponents of the idea that wives must submit to their husbands, which is why we end up getting confusing pieces like this from Al Mohler:

When Gov. Palin was announced as Sen. John McCain's choice as running mate I was elated about her pro-life commitments and political philosophy, and I remain so. I also told The Wall Street Journal that, if I were her pastor, I would be concerned about how she could balance these responsibilities and what this would mean for her family and her roles as wife and mother. The news that broke over the weekend would make me only more concerned. But my concern would be for her and for her family -- not for the nation.

I am doing my best to be honest -- and not hypocritical -- about how I see this new situation. I could not imagine this in my own family, nor, I am confident, could the vast majority of those conservative Christians who are celebrating the nomination of Gov. Palin as Vice President. I have full confidence that my wife Mary can lead and run anything, from General Motors to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Nevertheless, I also know that I, along with our children, would find our worlds turned upside down. Beyond this, I believe that she would be less happy, less fulfilled, and less strategically deployed. She runs a program that influences the lives of hundreds of women and serves on the board of directors of our local crisis pregnancy center, but her most significant impact will be on the lives of two children who cannot imagine life without her -- and without her active engagement and motherly love.

The Southern Baptist Convention's North American Mission Board and Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission have announced a 40 Day Prayer Vigil for Spiritual Revival and National Renewal. Set to begin in late September, it is timed to conclude - wouldn't you know it - right on Election Day:

The 40/40 Prayer Vigil is set to begin Wednesday, Sept. 24, and conclude on the Sunday morning, Nov. 2, before Election Day. According to the website for the vigil, iLiveValues.com/prayer, the vigil begins with 37 days of daily prayer and concludes with a recommended 40 hours of around-the-clock intercession during the final three days of the initiative.

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It is not happenstance that the vigil ends just days before Election Day, the two Southern Baptist leaders confirmed.

"As Election Day approaches, we as Christians know we need to be committed to praying for the outcome and for those who will be elected to lead us," Hammond said. "But milestone moments like this in our history should remind us of the importance of asking God for spiritual awakening in our land."

"As Christians, we need God to give us wisdom as we select the next president of the United States," Land said. "People must realize that government at every level is a lagging social indicator," he added. "True and lasting change in our nation will come from spiritual renewal in the hearts of America's citizens, not from government programs."

As the AP reports:

Southern Baptists are organizing a nationwide prayer campaign to accompany their values-voter registration drive, seeking spiritual renewal for families and churches, and God's favor for public officials who are guided by the Bible.

The 40/40 Prayer Vigil for Spiritual Revival and National Renewal will run from Sept. 24 through Nov. 2, two days before the general election.

The daily prayers include requests for God's guidance in voting, for the election of more "godly Christians," for God to "help churches find ways to help Christians get to the polls" and for public officials to be protected "from the attacks of Satan."

The effort is a companion program to the iVoteValues registration campaign, which began in 2004 and is jointly led this year by Southern Baptists, the largest Protestant group in the country, and the Family Research Council, a conservative Washington-based advocacy group.

If any Religious Right commentators were still bashful in knocking Barack Obama’s Christianity, James Dobson’s decision to attack Barack Obama on theological grounds is like a permission slip for them to come out of the woodwork.

“When you enter into that conversation, you open your theology and your policies up to scrutiny,” claimed Family Research Council President Tony Perkins. “And that's what Dr. Dobson did.” Rick Scarborough—who is revamping his “Patriot Pastor” church rallies—said he “was appalled by the Senator's remarks … [T]he presumptive Democratic nominee is no friend of Bible-believing Christians.”

Mike Huckabee, who once came to the defense of Jeremiah Wright but now is working for both Fox News and John McCain, also joined the amen corner, accusing Obama of “reinterpret[ing]” religion and claiming that “what Barack Obama has done is to drive his campaign into a sink hole by saying some things regarding religion that I think will make people who are religious very uncomfortable.”

And Baptist Press, the media outlet of the Southern Baptist Convention, also promoted Dobson’s attack. BP’s executive editor Will Hall wrote that the senator “disrespected a portion of the Word of God simply because it does not fit his worldview” on the issue of homosexuality. “Obama's misappropriation of Scripture to fit his political perspective is more grave than its implications for a presidential election,” he added, calling the supposed scandal “biblical in proportion.”

Published next to the report on Dobson’s comments and Hall’s piling-on, Baptist Press also featured the words of Richard Land, the Southern Baptist Convention’s political spokesman:

"I think to go into the particular beliefs of a particular faith and to try to grill a candidate on that is an intrusion into his personal faith," Land said. "I think what we want to know in a campaign is how that person's faith impacts them.

Wait a minute—it sounds like Land is defending Obama and repudiating the “intrusion” of James Dobson! Indeed, Land said it was fine for candidates to talk about faith and their values, but that “they shouldn't either be asked to be or volunteer to be a spokesperson for their faith tradition, in other words talking about the particulars of their faith.”

Of course, there’s a catch: Land was speaking nearly three weeks before Dobson made his comments.

When Dobson attacked Land’s favored presidential candidate Fred Thompson—even saying he didn’t “think he’s a Christian”—Land called Dobson’s words “harsh and unwarranted.” Will Land hold Dobson to the “intrusion” standard this time?

And what about Obama’s statement that the U.S. is “no longer just a Christian nation,” which Dobson and his lieutenant also attacked? Land said at the above event that he “was, as a Baptist, somewhat appalled by John McCain’s assertion that the Constitution created America as a Christian nation.” Will he say he’s “appalled” by the Focus on the Family version?

Well, we’re not going to hold our breath. Land has been trying to rally the Right to John McCain, even as some complain about McCain’s faith talk. "I'd rather have a third-rate fireman than a first-class arsonist,” Land said recently of the two candidates.

Not surprisingly, the Right’s reaction to last week’s ruling by the California Supreme Court in favor of equal marriage rights for gays and lesbians was swift and negative.

Former Rep. Ernest Istook, now of the Heritage Foundation, evoked Nazi metaphors to blame those who supported civil unions as a compromise: “By trying to appease homosexual rights activists, those who have refused to stand up for traditional marriage helped to create this court ruling.  They are the Neville Chamberlains of the cultural wars.”

Barrett Duke of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission said he was "saddened for the people of California" but "especially for the children of that state."

"The California Supreme Court ruling not only overruled the very clear will of the people, it also proposes to overrule God's design," Duke said. "These judges may think they know more about marriage than the rest of us, but I am confident they don't know more about marriage than God. Marriage is the union of one man and one woman. Children need that environment to give them their best chance to fulfill their great potential. That's not only my opinion and the opinion of most of the people in this country, it's God's opinion, and His opinion overrules the opinion of any judges.

Indeed, the Right emphasized this “activist judges” angle; Gary Bauer, attacking the “four unelected robed radicals,” wrote:

It was an egregious exercise in judicial activism – of judges wielding raw political power to redefine our most basic values. But that is how the Left has succeeded. It cannot achieve its goals through the democratic process via the elected legislatures, so it ignores the people and goes to the courts, where it relies on political activists cloaked in black who answer to no one. The Left succeeds by using the most undemocratic methods possible.

Of course, Bauer may not realize that, while appointed at first, justices on California’s Supreme Court face voters at the next general election; each of the justices in the majority for this case has been retained by voters at least once. Bauer is probably aware, though, that the “elected legislature” in California passed marriage equality in 2005 and 2007, only to have it vetoed both times by Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Nevertheless, right-wing activists hoped the decision would energize opponents of gay rights into action. “The good news is that I believe this will re-ignite the debate over a federal constitutional amendment,” according to Concerned Women for America’s Matt Barber. Jan LaRue called on Californians to recall members of the state’s Supreme Court in the way they recalled the governor several years ago. “Are you going to sit by and do nothing while four black-robed despots take away your right to govern yourselves?”

Meanwhile, the effort to put on a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage on the California ballot continues—now, apparently, with more funding.

And, in spite of a beleaguered GOP’s effort to keep a low profile on social wedge issues during this election cycle, the Right is hoping the decision will push John McCain to “speak out more strongly in support of defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman,” as Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council put it.

Ben Stein’s anti-evolution attack film, “Expelled,” has finally arrived, grossing $3 million over the weekend, thanks to a church-based roll-out by the marketers that brought you “The Passion of the Christ.” Critics have savaged the documentary—which claims widespread persecution of creationists in academia and warns of a direct link between the theory of evolution and the Holocaust—as a dishonest work of propaganda, but, not surprisingly, the movie has a lot of fans among the Religious Right.

“Expelled” has been promoted heavily in right-wing media this month. Stein appeared on Focus on the Family radio, where the movie received the “enthusiastic” endorsement of James Dobson. Producer Mark Mathis appeared on WallBuilders Live, the radio show of premier church-state integrationist David Barton, to discuss “the persecution of the many by an elite few.” Rush Limbaugh exuberantly promoted it on his show; apparently, the movie taught him that “Darwinism, of course, does not permit for the existence of a supreme being, a higher power, or a God.”

Stein was also interviewed by the American Family Association’s OneNewsNow, while executive producer Logan Craft hit WorldNetDaily. Baptist Press, the official outlet of the Southern Baptist Convention, featured an op-ed by Stein and a series of articles pushing the film. The producers gave a private screening to Brent Bozell of the far-right Media Research Center. (He loved it.)

“Expelled” is also featured by the late D. James Kennedy’s Coral Ridge Ministries, which offers its own product line equating Darwin and Hitler. While some “Expelled” cheerleaders express sympathy for the “Intelligent Design” advocates who have been “persecuted” supposedly (the National Center for Science Education has their realistic back-stories here), most on the Right seem to be especially enchanted by the film’s reliance on a half-baked linking of evolution to Nazism and Stalinism.

“Expelled,” wrote World magazine editor and faith-based initiatives architect Marvin Olasky, “rightly equates Darwinian stifling of free speech with the Communist attempt to enslave millions behind the Berlin Wall.”

The real question is: Did Darwinism bulwark Hitlerian hatred by providing a scientific rationale for killing those considered less fit in the struggle for survival?

The answer to that question is an unambiguous yes.

Richard Weikart of the “Intelligent Design” group, the Discovery Institute, defended the Darwin-Hitler connection as critical: “[W]hat is most objectionable about the Nazis' worldview? Isn't it that they had no respect for human life?” Weikart, who wrote a book entitled “From Darwin to Hitler,” added, “the Nazis' devaluing of human life derived from Darwinian ideology....”

Gary DeMar of American Vision was so inspired he branched out on his own, linking evolution to the fundamentalist polygamist cult that’s been in the news recently.

Given the worldview shift that has taken place in America, none of this is of any consequence. Evolutionary and atheistic assumptions are standard worldview thinking in every public school classroom in America. So then, why is it wrong with having forced sex with young girls? It’s evolution in action. …

The secularists should be proud of what these polygamists are doing. They are confirming the evolutionary thesis of Dawkins and his selfish gene hypothesis.

Mike Huckabee has not been shy about criticizing Washington’s Religious Right powerbrokers for failing to back his campaign, repeatedly accusing them of choosing “political expediency” over core values and questioning their reluctance to support a “true soldier for the cause” and exhorting them to be ‘‘Christian leaders, not Republican leaders.” 

But as The New Republic reported yesterday, all this bellyaching only seems to be alienating the Washington insiders even further:

Huck shouldn’t expect a flood of big-name endorsements any time soon. For one thing, the erstwhile minister has seriously cheesed off some leaders with his public complaints about their not showing him the love. They express bemusement at his sense of “entitlement” and find his whining about their not rushing to endorse him downright irritating. As Bauer notes, “I for one give no credence to the idea that, because somebody worships the same way I do, they automatically have a claim on my support."

Some leaders also worry (hope?) that, with Huck now being taken more seriously, his record and positions will draw greater scrutiny—and harsher criticism. “As he comes under more examination, there is a real possibility of there [emerging] misgivings about him on economic and foreign policy issues. So then those voters will go somewhere else,” says Bauer. Particularly on foreign policy, he stresses, “his instincts are not good."

In the past, Huckabee has had particularly harsh words for his fellow Southern Baptist Richard Land:

‘‘Richard Land swoons for Fred Thompson,’’ he said. ‘‘I don’t know what that’s about. For reasons I don’t fully understand, some of these Washington-based people forget why they are there. They make ‘electability’ their criterion. But I am a true soldier for the cause. If my own abandon me on the battlefield, it will have a chilling effect.’’

Apparently, the bad-blood between Huckabee and Land goes back to the days in the early 1990s when fundamentalists set out to take over the Southern Baptist Convention and Huckabee failed to side with them:

Only a handful of prominent SBC leaders have come out in Huckabee’s favor as well. While churches and non-profit religious institutions are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates, a handful of Southern Baptist pastors and leaders have offered personal endorsements of their colleague. Among them are former pastor and denominational executive Jimmy Draper and Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary President Danny Akin.

Perhaps the most obvious omission in Huckabee’s crowd of supporters is Richard Land, the head of the SBC’s social-concerns agency and a conservative veteran of the denomination’s struggle. While he has, in the recent past, spoken glowingly of former Tennessee senator Fred Thompson and negatively of former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, Land has had little to say about his fellow Southern Baptist’s candidacy.

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Paul Pressler, a retired Texas judge who is one of the two acknowledged masterminds of the conservative battle plan to wrest the SBC from moderates’ control, has also endorsed Thompson.

Privately, some close to Huckabee and familiar with Southern Baptist politics say that leaders like Land and Pressler simply don’t trust him because he refused to be a loyal foot-soldier during the SBC wars.

Maybe that explains it.  Or who knows, maybe there is some sort of conspiracy at work:

With all the noise leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention produce to warn against the threat gays allegedly pose to “traditional marriage,” it’s easy to forget their efforts to combat another purported threat: women. Recall that in 1998, the convention adopted a resolution calling for a woman to “submit herself graciously” to her husband and “to serve as his helper in managing the household,” just “as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ.” In 2000, the convention voted to say that women should not be allowed to serve as pastors.

And at this year’s convention, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary President Paige Patterson announced a new strategy: a “homemaking” major at the seminary. “Folks, if we do not do something to salvage the future of the home, both our denomination and our nation will be destroyed,” said Patterson, one of the leaders of the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention in the 1980s.

Now, Patterson is warning that the growing trend of college-educated women imperils the “male intelligentsia” (a concern he mentioned at the World Congress of Families in May), and that this “feminization” of society will lead to a France-ified America:

"Sixty percent of all your college and university students are now female. Somebody said, 'Well, you're opposed to that?' No, I'm thrilled to death that they're in upper-level education, as far as women are concerned," says Patterson. "But I think it is absolutely tragic that only 40 percent of the students are men. [W]hat that means is that increasingly, our country will not have a male intelligentsia," he stated.

Dr. Patterson says if that trend continues, the United States will eventually follow in the footsteps of France and England when it comes to social policies and politics.

While the conservative movement coalition of the economic right and social right has shown some small cracks in the last year, one bill in Congress has them singing the same tune: a proposal to expand the coverage of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). The Religious Right is complaining that the bill defines “children” beginning with birth, rather than conception. According to Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, making “unborn children” ineligible to sign up for insurance “is a calculated move to open the door to federal taxpayer-funded abortions.” (FRC’s David Christiansen clarified: “The federal dollars wouldn't necessarily be used to do the abortion, but it's freeing up states to perform these other services, including abortion, with their own state money.”)

Meanwhile, National Right to Life Committee asserted that the bill would lead to Medicare “rationing” and thus “involuntary euthanasia.” “They have attacked the sanctity of life both at the beginning and the latter stages of life,” cried Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention, speaking of “the Democratic leadership” in Congress.

In addition, the Religious Right warns that the bill renews funding for abstinence education, but doesn’t restrict it to abstinence-only programs. “They’re simply giving states more money to fund Planned Parenthood and the programs that teach our children to have sex,” complained Linda Klepacki of Focus on the Family. “Comprehensive sex education will once again have a monopoly on your school systems.”

Meanwhile, economic-right activists are warning that expanding SCHIP is “a step towards socialism.” In this, they find welcome support from Perkins, who – despite his warnings about abortion – wrote that the “[m]ost important” aspect of the bill is that “its expansion represents a direct attack on private insurance, pushing Americans closer to what many Democratic leaders have long advocated--government-run, taxpayer-funded, universal health care, managed with the same efficiency and customer care as your local DMV.”

Both the Heritage Foundation and Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform have trashed the bill. But as Robert Novak reports, they are having some trouble on the details, arguing with each other over right-wing amendments offered by Republicans.

While presumptive presidential candidate Fred Thompson is in hot water with some on the Right over his record in the 1990s on abortion and campaign finance reform, a contender for religious-right kingmaker is apparently lending his support to the actor and former senator. Southern Baptist leader Richard Land, increasingly preferred by reporters as a handicapper on GOP candidates’ efforts to woo the Religious Right, reportedly introduced Thompson at a critical speech before the elite Council for National Policy in May.

Land was a key figure in the right-wing takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention in the 1980s, and made abortion and homosexuality its political priorities as head of SBC’s Christian Life Commission, later the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the denomination’s lobbying arm. More recently, while still an outspoken advocate of far-right policy positions, Land spent more time establishing himself as a commentator on politics and religion.

Now, at another critical moment for Thompson’s efforts to win over the Right, Land has reemerged to talk up the candidate in religious media. Land told David Brody of Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network that “it is Fred Thompson's race to lose.” Of the man he calls a “Southern-Fried Reagan,” Land said, “I have never seen anything like this grassroots swell for Thompson. I'm not speaking for Southern Baptists but I do believe I have my hand on the pulse of Southern Baptists and I think I know where the consensus is.”

And in World Magazine, Land emphasized the “red meat” appeal Thompson will have with primary voters. While anti-abortion activists complained to Land when he promised never to vote for Giuliani, he said, Thompson will end the frustration.

Land predicts the fussing will stop once the pro-life Thompson enters the race. He thinks evangelicals will flock to the Tennessee politician: "I think the Giuliani express will slow, stall, and go in reverse."

Just as Republican presidential candidate Sam Brownback is apologizing to fellow contender Mitt Romney for an aide’s e-mail attacking Mormonism, a Southern Baptist leader suggested Evangelicals would not vote for a Mormon. Leading a panel entitled “Mitt Romney: Should Evangelicals Vote for a Mormon President?” at a conference in Missouri, Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary president R. Phillip Roberts – author of “Mormonism Unmasked” – suggested that voting for a Mormon could be an act “disloyal” to Jesus Christ:

Roberts acknowledged that there is no "religious test" for any presidential candidate; they are free to hold whatever belief -- or non-belief -- they choose. At the same time, voters have every right and reason to allow their "substantive informed religious opinions to inform [their] voting habits" without being faulted for bigotry, he noted. …

"As believers and followers of Jesus Christ, a candidate's spiritual values are not the only criteria, by any means, for public office, but as voters, exercising our rights as citizens, to ignore altogether candidates' religious perspectives would be potentially unwise, irresponsible and possible disloyal to our allegiance to Jesus Christ, Lord of lords and King of kings."

Roberts also had a warning for Evangelical leaders who endorse Romney – such as members of the candidate’s new “Faith and Values Steering Committee,” unveiled last week: "When we endorse a candidate, that [endorsement] carries with it enormous implications, and if Mitt Romney is elected as president of the United States, there's a great [spiritual] responsibility on the part of those who have advocated his candidacy," said Roberts.

In February, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales unveiled what he called the First Freedom Project, to expand on the Justice Department’s “extensive record of achievement” in the area of “religious freedom laws.” Gonzales described the department’s work on religion as “a legacy of protection unequaled since the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.” Even more remarkable than that startling comparison, however, was Gonzales’s choice of venue: a meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee. According to the Baptist Press, Gonzales requested to speak at the meeting “because he knew he would be speaking to a receptive audience.” Indeed, the famously right-wing SBC has been a strong supporter of the Bush administration, including its judicial nominees.

The Religious Right saw the Justice Department’s new focus as a validation of its world-view of Christians being persecuted in the U.S.: “The fact that the Justice Department finds it necessary to launch such a project further confirms what we’ve been aware of for years: our nation’s First Liberty--religious freedom--is in serious danger because of decades of sustained attacks by the ACLU and its allies,” said Alan Sears, president of the Alliance Defense Fund.

Now the New York Times is reporting that the department’s emphasis on religious liberty is part of its controversial reorganization under the Bush Administration that has led to a diminished role for traditional civil rights enforcement based on racial discrimination and voter suppression, and a more ideological and politicized staff, such as Monica Goodling, a graduate of Pat Robertson’s law school.

The shift at the Justice Department has significantly altered the government’s civil rights mission, said Brian K. Landsberg, a law professor at the University of the Pacific and a former Justice Department lawyer under both Republican and Democratic administrations.

“Not until recently has anyone in the department considered religious discrimination such a high priority,” Professor Landsberg said. “No one had ever considered it to be of the same magnitude as race or national origin.” …

Some critics say that many of the Justice Department’s religious-oriented initiatives are outside its mandate from Congress. While statutes prohibit religious discrimination in areas like employment and housing, no laws address some of the issues in which the department has become involved.