Ted Kennedy and Richard Land Team Up Again!

For the second time in the past few weeks, Richard Land has found himself on the same side of the aisle as Senator Ted Kennedy.

Melissa Rogers has the story HERE...

"[On March 29, 2007,] Senators Kennedy, Graham, Salazar, and Menendez and Representatives Gutierrez and Flake joined leading conservative evangelical voices for comprehensive immigration reform. Dr. Richard Land, President of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, and Reverend Samuel Rodriguez, President of the National Hispanic Leadership Conference, along with forty other Hispanic evangelicals, issued an “Evangelical Call to Action on Comprehensive Immigration Reform.”

There is even a video of Land and Kennedy via Faith in Public Life. Check it out.

Kudos to Dick Land. First he teams up with Kennedy, the "liberal" National Council of Churches, and the same-sex endorsing Religious Action Center for Reform Judaism. Now, just a few weeks later Land is getting his picture taken with Ted Kennedy AGAIN!

Merely a decade or two ago, Roger Moran and other Southern Baptist fundamentalists were giving moderate ethics and religious liberty leaders hell for participating in coalitions with groups such as Americans United and People for the American Way. Let's not forget that these same leaders regularly were involved in coalitions with VERY conservative organizations as well.

Heck, just a few months ago 2nd Vice President of the Southern Baptist Convention, Wiley Drake, was moaning and groaning because Rick Warren invited Barack Obama to speak at his AIDS Conference. I believe good ole Wiley dubbed Obama, "THE ENEMY."

I'm curious - are the Roger Morans of the Southern Baptist Convention slightly bothered that Richard Land is regularly partnering with that Massachusetts liberal Ted Kennedy?

Perhaps Southern Baptists have realized that working with liberals and their organizations to further a specific goal is not so bad after all....

Bill Leonard's Message for Southern Baptists and Moderates

A recent article in the St. Louis Dispatch profiled troublemaking Missouri Baptist layman, Roger Moran. Recently, according to the article, Moran declared that the Missouri Baptist Convention is on the "brink of civil war."

In years past, Moran targeted true "moderate" Baptists with his guilt-by-association tactics. Now, he's after a so-called "new generation of moderates" within Southern Baptist life who are part of the Emerging Church Movement. Moran has described the emerging church as "one of the most dangerous and deceptive movements to infiltrate the ranks of Southern Baptist life."

Without a doubt, Moran has escalated his war against "moderates" or in this case, non-fundamentalists. However, what stuck out most about this article was a quote from Dr. Bill Leonard, the Dean of the Wake Forest University Divinity School....

"The Southern Baptist Convention is growing increasingly terrified that they've spent all this time recreating the denomination in this (conservative) image, and now nobody cares," he said. "Young seminarians are challenging them on issues and saying, 'Your vision of reality is not ours.'"

Let's be honest, Leonard's statement is completely true for Southern Baptist fundamentalists and partially true for moderates.

Like in Southern Baptist life, moderate leaders are greying. Nonetheless, the "old guard" in moderate Baptist life is genuinely reaching out to the younger generation. This is quite apparent when one attends worship services and break-out sessions as the annual CBF General Assembly. Last summer, a break-out session was even held on the Emergent Church.

But moderate leaders are undoubtedly concerned about the future of Baptist life. From my experience, many seminarians who attend schools partnered with the CBF are infected with the disease of apathy. These seminarians are apathetic towards the CBF structure. They don't really care that "blood" was shed in the SBC Controversy. Some are enamored with all things emergent but could care less about their Baptist Heritage.

And that my friends is unfortunate - very very very unfortunate.

Will the next generation of moderate leaders be authentically Baptist or just nominally Baptist?

Will we remember the contributions of James Dunn, Foy Valentine, and Cecil Sherman?

Or will our Baptist heroes be forgotten?

Leonard's quote is definitely relevant for moderates and fundamentalists alike....



HT: Wade Burleson: Fellow Southern Baptists Are Not The Enemy