We all need to be able to see crazy for what it is, and then call crazy out publicly so that crazy doesn’t become contagious. I find it very disconcerting just how many people actually agree with what you’re about to read. Feel free to watch the videos, but the world view of Mr. Land should scare the hell out of you. This isn’t just some crazy guy on the side of the road yelling gibberish; this is a person who holds a lot of power and sway within the Baptist church organization. Richard Land is the president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Ethnic Commission; listen to how he responds to Andrew Sullivan’s (correct) claim that evangelical Christians are too closely connected with Republicanism.
ANDREW SULLIVAN: Well, because, in fact the religious right is infinitely more powerful and controls the Republican Party in the way religious left has nothing– nothing like the power. And as you know, religious churches are key parts of political campaigns you can’t win the South Carolina primary without churches actually running the Republican candidate.
RICHARD LAND: The fuse– any fusion between evangelicalism and Republicanism pales in comparison to the point of anemia compared to the black church of the Democratic Party.
That’s scary as hell to me; what world is this guy living in? Earlier in the show – Sullivan makes his opening salvo regarding what he suggests is a problem with a growing interlock between Republicanism and Evangelical Christianism:
ANDREW SULLIVAN: Well, I– I my view is very similar to what Rabbi Wolpe has said, which is that I– I think our ability to be reasonable in politics and faithful in religion and to keep those two things separate has atrophied to the great disadvantage of– of religion, and what has happened since 1960 is that organized groups like Southern Baptist Council and other religious groups have, in fact, become self-consciously political, they have become fused with one political party, the Republican Party, a party who is– now has a majority and defined by a particular religious faith, evangelicalism or far right Catholic hierarchy, and that is making many people feel that faith and Jesus is about politics and power and partisanship, in ways it’s turning off an entire generation.
The biggest growth in any belief sector in this country in the last ten years has been atheism and the younger generations who see these religious people wielding political power, endorsing essentially political candidates, and fusing themselves with one political party, and picking fights deliberately the Cardinal prepared for this fight with Obama on political grounds. They see and I think they are mudding the real radical truth of Jesus, which is that we will gain power by giving it up, that we do not seek in the public sphere to have any power but to be powerless and Jesus was absolutely apolitical, anti-political, given the chance to be political. He is only on The Cross, because he refused politics.
Richard Land then later goes on to claim that Jesus would run for office…and he isn’t saying as a Democrat:
SALLY QUINN: –is very apt here, as Andrew was pointing out, I don’t think that if Jesus were running for office he would be up there, you know, waving the flag and saying I’m this and I’m that, vote for me because of this reason– religion.
ANDREW SULLIVAN: He was asked to run for office and refused.
RICHARD LAND: He would run for office. He would run for office.
SALLY QUINN: Right. Exactly, okay. But what– what I’m saying is that I– I think that this is not– this is not the way it should be, and that people of faith should not use their faith for cynical reasons.
Full transcript of CBS Face the Nation from today HERE.
You can see the entire video below:
