September 24, 2001
Bush appoints Land to freedom panel
___WASHINGTON (ABP)--President Bush announced Sept. 17 that he plans to appoint Southern Baptist leader Richard Land to a two-year term on the United States Commission on Religious Freedom.
___Land has been president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission since 1988.
___In that position, he serves as host of the commission's "For Faith and Family" talk-radio program that is broadcast at stations across the country and over the Internet. He was an architect of the SBC's boycott of Disney and served on committees that drafted both a family article for the Baptist Faith & Message in 1998 calling on wives to "submit graciously" to their husbands and a complete rewrite of the confessional statement two years later.
___Before working for the SBC, he was a professor and administrator at Criswell College and an associate pastor at First Baptist Church in Dallas.
___Land took an 18-month leave of absence from Criswell College in 1987 and 1988 to work as an administrative assistant to Texas Gov. William Clements. In that role, he served as senior adviser to the Republican governor on church-state issues and matters relating to "traditional family values," including abortion, drugs and pornography.
___A native of Houston, Land received a bachelor's degree from Princeton University in 1969, a master's from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary in 1972 and a doctorate from Oxford University.
___Created by a 1998 law designed to make religious freedom central to U.S. foreign policy, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom monitors governments around the world and recommends action against those that deny religious freedom.
___Land, who has been vocal about the persecution of Christians around the globe, is one of three Bush appointees to serve terms ending May 14, 2003.
___The commission job is part time, and Land won't have to leave his SBC job. Commissioners are not paid but are considered government employees.
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