In 2005, Richard Land, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, told the Nashville Tennesseean that it "is permissible to inflict discomfort to gain information that will save lives, as long as it doesn't cause permanent damage." In 2007, he wrote on the WaPo/Newsweek blog, "I condemn torture and physical abuse of prisoners, no matter how heinous their crimes. We must never sink to the level of our enemies often barbarous behavior." Yesterday, he told Jeffrey MacDonald of the Religion News Service:I consider waterboarding torture...One of the definitions of torture is that it causes permanent physical harm. I can't separate physical from psychological. And I can't imagine that being repeatedly subjected to the feeling of drowning would not, in some cases, cause lasting psychological trauma.But so far as I can tell, Land has never uttered a word of criticism of any government employee who during the Bush administration engaged in torture or in the justification or legitimation of it. The only U.S. government official he has been prepared to criticize in re: torture is President Obama, for releasing the Bybee memos. And: "To leave open the possibility of prosecuting men for what the Justice Department had declared was legal, I think is a horrific mistake." As for praise of the current president's readiness to call waterboarding torture and ban its use--not a word.
Richard Land. Always the moralist. Always the partisan.
I wonder if Land thinks of himself as aligned with the gospel portrayals of the high priests, scribes, Pharisees, and Sadducees?
He certainly provides me with a contemporary image of those sorts of folks. He is on the wrong side of many moral issues. He was sucking up to the most repressive, oppressive, leadership this country has seen in decades.