The former head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commissions says the possibility of a lesser-of-two-evils choice in this year’s presidential election cannot deter conservative evangelicals from going to the polls.
Richard Land
“The 2016 election year is well underway, and I believe it will be the most important presidential election since 1860, when we elected Abraham Lincoln,” Richard Land, president of Southern Evangelical Seminary, said in a recent radio clip. “If we had not elected Lincoln, we probably would not be one country today.”
Land, who retired in 2013 after 25 years as the Southern Baptist Convention’s top spokesman for public policy and religious liberty concerns, entertained similar thoughts four years ago, when he broke a 24-year tradition by endorsing a candidate for president.
“The 2012 presidential election on Nov. 6 is at least the most important election in a generation,” Land wrote in his personal endorsement of Republican candidate Mitt Romney. “It is perhaps the most important election since one that occurred on Nov. 6, 1860, when in the providence of God Abraham Lincoln was elected president, preserved the Union, and expunged the evil of slavery from our land.”
Land said U.S. Christians have a duty and responsibility to vote, even if it isn’t their candidate that winds up getting elected.