Grateful for God’s blessings
by: Richard Land - Dec 26, 2008
It has been sixty years since the founding of the organization that is now the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. We believe many Christ-followers have gained a greater appreciation for God’s Word and what it says about how we should conduct our lives and the values our society should reflect through this ministry.
We are grateful for all that God accomplished through the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission in 2008.
The church cannot afford to be silent in the face of the full-scale assault upon Judeo-Christian values that we are witnessing in the culture. The ERLC recognizes that many of the issues are not easily understandable and we seek to help Southern Baptists and others appreciate better the threat these issues present to our faith and our families. The ERLC is committed to both communicating a scriptural response to these issues to the local church and to be both “salt” and “light” in places where the debate rages, such as Washington, D.C.
News commentators and analysts are interested in what Southern Baptists and other Evangelicals believe. The ERLC offered God’s vision for a culture redeemed in every type of media accessible: television, radio, print, and online. This year marked our expansion into more blogs and even online video dialogue.
In addition to personal interaction through meetings and phone calls, the ERLC utilized letters as a channel of communication with national leaders, sending roughly 60 letters to members of Congress and the White House, expressing our concerns or support on issues of faith, family, and freedom. We continued to affirm our strong support for policies that protect human life, such as anti-abortion measures and a bill to provide meaningful oversight for tobacco products. We also reaffirmed our support for marriage as the union of one man and one woman, and sought to stop dangerous pro-homosexual policies such as the expansion of hate crimes laws to include violence against homosexuals and the granting of special protections for homosexuals in the workplace.
We published a non-partisan Election Day guide, which pulled excerpts from the Democrat and Republican Party platforms on a wide range of critical issues, which was made available online at no charge at iVoteValues.com, along with a wealth of other resources that called Bible-believing Americans to active and principled involvement in our nation’s civic affairs.
We maintained strong relationships with other organizations and individuals committed to the advancement of religious liberty and human rights both here and around the world, including the Family Research Council, Concerned Women for America, Eagle Forum, the National Coalition Against Legalized Gambling, the Institute on Religion and Democracy, and the Alliance Defense Fund, among others.
We used the microphones of press conferences and rallies to draw attention to the ongoing abuses in places like Darfur, North Korea, and China. One of our foremost human rights concerns remained the worldwide trafficking and enslavement of persons for sex or manual servitude.
Our burden for the spiritual health of individual Americans and the spiritual state of the union led us and the SBC’s North American Mission Board to launch a wide-ranging, cooperative call to prayer among Southern Baptists–the 40/40 Prayer Vigil for Spiritual Revival and National Renewal.
Over 4,200 individuals and churches pledged to participate in the ground-breaking prayer vigil, which consisted of 40 days of prayer from September 24 to November 2, 2008.
We moved our Faith & Family Impact bulletin/handout resource to a digital platform this year. Individual Impact products, corresponding with the moral and social emphasis Sundays on the denominational calendar, are available online for download at no charge at iLiveValues.com.
As we look ahead, we recognize the key to a victorious future is not found in Washington, D.C., but in each God-honoring home and Bible-believing church around the country. Yet that does not mean we are to withdraw from society and cease pushing against that which threatens our faith, our family, and our nation. We promise to remain actively engaged, and faithful in presenting the Truth in our nation’s capital and everywhere God gives us a platform.
We count it pure pleasure, a special blessing from God, to be able to serve you and your family. As you are considering your end-of-year giving, we hope you will prayerfully consider the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.
While the future may look dim for our culture, we know that God, in His mercy, provides us hope eternal in His Son. Our prayer is that in the year ahead, more and more people will meet the King of kings and Lord of lords and that, with their lives transformed, our nation will never be the same.
Steadfast in His service,
The staff of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission
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