True Partisanship

Ethics Daily had an excellent article today that demonstrated that Richard Land is much more partisan than those he criticizes for being partisan. Land, head of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, had attacked the Celebration of a New Baptist Covenant for being partisan. I previously critiqued his false claims about the timing of the event. His other argument was that if the Celebration had not been partisan, then more Republicans would have spoken. He correctly noted that three prominent Democrats spoke. However, three prominent Republicans were invited and agreed to attend, although not all of them did. He then claimed:

For instance, when we have a conference, we do our very best, and normally succeed, in getting both. If we're going to have a Democratic Party speaker, we have a Republican Party speaker. If we have two Democrat Party speakers we have two Republican Party speakers to avoid the appearance of being partisan and to try to avoid the appearance of engaging in partisan politics.

Sounds good, but there is one big problem--it is not true! Bob Allen checked in on the speakers to annual seminars held by his organization until 1999 (it has not been held since) and found that Republicans outnumbered Democrats six-to-one. Land may make big claims, but the facts do not support him. It turns out that the events his organization hosted were much more partisan in speaker line-up than the Celebration. But should this be a surprise? Land, after all, once said:

The go-along, get-along strategy is dead. ... No more engagement. We want a wedding ring. We want a ceremony. We want a consummation of the marriage.

Such an outrageously partisan approach clearly demonstrates that the real problem is with Land and not the Celebration. Hopefully, the media will quit giving Land an outlet to spread his lies about the Celebration. After all, this is not the only one. I had an article in February exposing the false claims Land made about the growth rates of the Baptist groups involved in the Celebration. And last year, I pointed out several false claims he made about the Celebration after it was first announced. It is time for Land to start telling the truth or keep his mouth shut!