One of the Southern Baptist Convention’s most prominent voices has announced he’s retiring next year after completing 25 years as head of the 16 million member church’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC). Richard Land took over in 1988 after the conservative resurgence in the church. (Land and ERLC Vice President Barrett Duke, pictured above, visited IRD in 2010.) The shift was often dramatic, as his predecessor, Foy Valentine, had joined with the United Methodist General Board of Church and Society to help found the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights in 1973.
Land established a D.C. presence for his agency and transformed it into an outspoken pro-life advocate. In recent years he and his agency also have been stalwartly defenders of traditional marriage. And Land, who served over a decade on the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, has always been outspoken on behalf of the persecuted globally. Unlike some other evangelicals, he has actively resisted tying the Gospel to Big Government or an unthoughtful environmental agenda.
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