SBC's Land to Christians: It's Your Duty -- Get Out and Vote Your Values

SBC's Land to Christians: It's Your Duty -- Get Out and Vote Your Values

(AgapePress) - A well-known Southern Baptist theologian has told a gathering of conservative activists that it's a sin not to vote in the upcoming mid-term elections.

Dr. Richard Land says Christians and churches should be engaging in the political process. At the recent "Values Voter Summit" in Washington, DC, he outlined the biblical basis for that belief.

Land, the president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, says pastors should not be endorsing particular candidates, but should be distributing voter guides and encouraging their members to head to the polls.

"God is not a Republican; God is not a Democrat -- but God is pro-life. And God has a side when it comes to pro-life: He's on it," Land told the gathering. "He's pro-life, He's pro-heterosexual marriage, He's anti-pornography. I have no doubt about that whatsoever. All I have to do is look at the clear teachings of God's Word."

And Christians, Land continued, need to proclaim the truth -- "the truth about homosexuality, the truth about God's plan for marriage, the truth about when life begins and society's obligation and responsibility to defend innocent life." To do less than that, he added, "is to be untrue to our biblical mandate to preach the whole counsel of God."

And while he pointed out that pastors are not to endorse candidates, Land did have some counsel for Christians in general: vote -- and do so for candidates who endorse their values and beliefs.

"I don't think that we [as Christians] should align ourselves with any particular party," he cautioned. "[Instead] we should be looking for party platforms that align themselves with us.

"But I also think that this should be a decision that is made by churches and made by ministers, not made by the government," he added. "So I think the IRS regulations need to be changed. I believe they're an unwarranted intrusion of the government into the free exercise of our faith in our churches."

As explained by sponsors of the Houses of Worship Free Speech Restoration Act (H.R. 235), under current Internal Revenue Service law, houses of worship in the U.S. run the risk of losing their tax-exempt status if their leaders speak out on issues that may be considered "political." This legislation would simply "allow religious leaders to educate their flock on the moral issues of the day, whether considered political or not," they say.

Land, host of the "For Faith and Family" radio broadcast, serves as a commissioner on the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom. In early 2005 he was labeled by Time magazine as one of "The Twenty-Five Most Influential Evangelicals in America."