The Power to Bless

The Religion News Service has published a story about the ten religious leaders that GOP candidates are wooing. Fourth on the list of most powerful religious leaders is Richard Land. Here's a quote:

Enormously respected and eminently quotable, Oxford-educated Richard Land plays political guru for the nation’s 16 million Southern Baptists. With the early campaign’s focus on religion and divorces, Land, 60, has been outspoken in declaring what is acceptable in a candidate (Mormonism) and what is not (infidelity).

Land's influence on Republican Party politics is exceeded only by that of Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, broadcaster James Dobson and Michael Farris, head of the Home School Legal Defense Association.

Prior to the ascendance of Richard Land, I know of no instance when a Southern Baptist denominational executive was ever mentioned as someone with enough power to influence the outcome of a political candidacy.

Before the fundamentalist takeover of the SBC, Baptist denominational executives were all staunch advocates for separation of church and state. Since the takeover, they have all been endowed with the power to bless political candidates -- GOP only, of course.