Culture Warrior by National Journal Lyrics
In the spring of 2012, Richard Land went on the radio and uttered a series of sentiments he would come to regret. It was March 31, a month after the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, and Land—for decades one of the preeminent leaders of the Religious Right—was holding forth on his weekly, three-hour radio show, Richard Land Live! The Martin discussion started when a caller asked about racial profiling. Land did not mince words in response: He accused African-American leaders of using the killing of Martin to “gin up the black vote” in an election year. He derided Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Louis Farrakhan as “race hustlers.” He argued that President Obama had “poured gasoline on the racialist fires” by sympathizing with the Martin family. And he posited that George Zimmerman was being prematurely convicted in the media. “Instead of letting the legal process take its independent course,” Land said, “race-mongers are anointing themselves judge, jury, and executioners.”
Land, who was 65 at the time, has a natural radio voice, a deep baritone with a smooth Texan drawl, and he is a skilled polemicist. But he wasn’t mainly known as a radio host. As the longtime head of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention—the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, with a membership of nearly 16 million—he was one of the Religious Right’s top spokesmen in Washington. “In that position, he was the last of the classic Moral Majority-Christian Coalition-Christian Right culture warriors,” says Mark Silk, a professor of religion in public life at Trinity College. In 2005, Time magazine had named Land one of the most influential evangelicals in America and dubbed him “God’s lobbyist.” For years, he had been a frequent source for journalists and a regular on the talk-show circuit. During the administration of George W. Bush, he was known to have the White House’s ear; in 2001, Bush appointed him to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, where he ended up serving five terms.
Land, who was 65 at the time, has a natural radio voice, a deep baritone with a smooth Texan drawl, and he is a skilled polemicist. But he wasn’t mainly known as a radio host. As the longtime head of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention—the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, with a membership of nearly 16 million—he was one of the Religious Right’s top spokesmen in Washington. “In that position, he was the last of the classic Moral Majority-Christian Coalition-Christian Right culture warriors,” says Mark Silk, a professor of religion in public life at Trinity College. In 2005, Time magazine had named Land one of the most influential evangelicals in America and dubbed him “God’s lobbyist.” For years, he had been a frequent source for journalists and a regular on the talk-show circuit. During the administration of George W. Bush, he was known to have the White House’s ear; in 2001, Bush appointed him to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, where he ended up serving five terms.