NASHVILLE, Tenn. (ABP) — America is approaching “the most crucial election process in our lifetime,” according to Richard Land, executive director of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. Though not explicitly endorsing the re-election of President Bush, Land made it clear he believes a John Kerry victory would take the United States down the wrong path.
Land told the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee Sept. 21 that Americans will choose between a high road and a low road.
Choosing the “high road” could lead to renewal, revival and possibly reformation, he said. But choosing the “low road” will lead American society into outright sexual paganism, he told the committee at their semi-annual meeting in Nashville, Tenn.
Claiming the recent Massachusetts Supreme Court decision in favor of same-sex marriage is what makes the election so important, Land said, “Legalizing same-sex marriage will be the final death blow to marriage as defined by God” and as accepted in Western society for hundreds of years.
And because of the gay-marriage issue, democracy is also at stake, Land continued. Americans must choose “whether we will have government of the people, by the people and for the people,” or whether government will be “of the judges, by the judges, and for the judges.”
Land cited several states in which citizens have voted to amend their state constitutions to prevent judges from ruling in favor of marriage between same-sex partners. He said, even California residents voted against allowing the marriage of “girlie men,” with the only demographic favoring same-sex marriage being people between the ages of 18 and 24.
“We can do this,” Land said. “The majority is with us. We must mobilize our citizens, register them, and get them to vote their values.”
Referring to the relatively small ERLC as “the swift boat of the culture wars,” Land also highlighted the development of the “I Vote Values” campaign to register voters, provide values-based information about party platforms, and encourage people to vote their values.
An “I Vote Values” tractor-trailer outfitted by the ERLC has appeared at more than 50 venues in 13 states so far, with 20,000 people passing through its doors, he said. The effort has distributed more than 9,000 “voter toolkits” designed to help volunteers register at least 50 voters each, produced half a million platform resource guides, and drawn millions of visitors to the ivotevalues.com and ivotevalues.org websites, Land said.
Earlier in the two-day meeting, in the mode of a general rallying his troops for battle, Southern Baptist Convention president Bobby Welch brought the Executive Committee to its feet with a stirring call to action.
Welch, pastor of First Baptist Church in Daytona Beach, Fla., recently finished the eastern swing of a promotional bus tour in which he plans to visit all 50 states and Canada within 25 travel days. The tour, he said, is one of “seven or eight” promotional components leading up to the launch of the “Everyone Can Kingdom Challenge” during the 2005 SBC meeting in Nashville, Tenn.
Welch and other SBC leaders are promoting a goal of 1 million baptisms during the 12-month period between the 2005 meeting in Nashville and the 2006 annual meeting in Greensboro, N.C.
This comes after four years of declining baptisms in the SBC, with 377,357 recorded for 2003.
Welch said Baptists must stop viewing the church as a fort and think of it as a forward operations base. Welch, a wounded and decorated Vietnam veteran who served in the Special Forces, said a forward operations base is not intended to be permanent, but is designed to facilitate an army's forward progress. Soldiers advance from the forward operations base, then return to it for rest, nourishment, medical attention, encouragement and new weapons before going out again, Welch said.
Likewise, Baptists should think of their churches not as places of retreat but as forward operations bases from which they go out to work of God.
“Facility-based evangelism, where people must come to a building in order to be reached with the gospel, will eventually kill us,” he predicted.
In other business, the Executive Committee agreed to:
— Ask the SBC to request a “good faith estimate” from cooperating state conventions as to when they anticipate reaching a 50-50 division of Cooperative Program funds between the state conventions and the SBC.
– Set aside $150,000 from SBC reserve funds to support Welch's “Everyone Can Kingdom Challenge” and agreed to reimburse First Baptist Church of Daytona Beach for initial expenses advanced toward the initiative — about $50,000.
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