SBC's Richard Land Gets Slammed for Racist Comments and Attacks on Obama

After the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy and the leadership of the Mormon Church there are few supposed religious leaders who are more anti-gay and more strongly aligned to the Republican Party than Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention -a church denomination that, given its strongly racists and pro-segregation past, ought to know well enough to steer clear of racial issues all together. But such prudence and discretion and acknowledgement of the SBC's foul history did not deter Richard Land from running his loud mouth against Barack Obama and in the process exposing the SBC for what it is. Right Wing Watch has details. Here are some highlights:

Richard Land, head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, yesterday took up a defiant tone against charges that he used racially-insensitive language during his radio show in his attack on President Obama and civil rights activists over the Trayvon Martin case, saying that he is being “mugged” by the media for simply “criticizing this rush to judgment.” Land on his show had said that “it was Mr. Obama” who turned the Trayvon Martin shooting into a national issue” by pouring “gasoline on the racialist fires” in order to help “gin up the black vote” for his re-election with the aid of “race hustlers.”

But black SBC pastors, including the incoming-president of the convention, criticized Land’s comments and one threatened to introduce a resolution condemning Land at an upcoming meeting, and other Baptists commented that it was reminiscent of Southern Baptists’ past work against the civil rights movement and helped feed “the deep-seated resentment toward people of color held by some white Southern Baptists.” Land’s problems didn’t end there.

Land kept up with his “sorry if you misunderstood” mantra in a letter to SBC president Bryant Wright posted late on yesterday where he again offered a non-apology about the “misunderstanding” regarding his comments, complaining that he “overestimated the progress” the country has made on issues involving race . . . .

Let's be clear. Land is a bigoted douche bag who hates blacks pretty much as he hates gays even as he wraps himself in false piety and false religiosity.