Quote of the Day (Berger)

“America is a nation of Indians ruled by Swedes.” – Sociologist Peter Berger, as quoted by Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, at the Hall of Philosophy at Chautauqua Institution in upstate New York, yesterday afternoon

(Berger and Land were referring to a poll showing that India was the most religious country in the world, while Sweden was the least. In contrast, the United States tied with Ireland for third—though I should add that I’m not sure if this poll were taken before or after the full effect of the sex abuse scandal in the Emerald Isle had hit home there. In contrast to the mass of the American people, America’s political elite tends to be much less religiously affiliated or permeated with any spiritual sense.

Three years ago, Land was named by Time Magazine one of “the 25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America.” There’s no doubt that he was more conservative than the packed audience that listened to him in the Hall of Philosophy, but he was far from the stereotype of the religious right than they had expected, and their questions to him, if pointed at times, were almost uniformly respectful—something I could not say for an audience in the same venue last year, who pelted a scientist taking issue with stem-cell research with questions that did not hide their feeling that he did not have the right to bring his religious or moral opinions to bear on his work.

I think that Land moved the audience to a respectful position—without, I might add, convincing them of the rightness of his positions—through his good humor, his refusal to endorse candidates, and his opposition to, for instance, prayer in schools—something he judges as coercive, given that it involves children vulnerable to peer pressure. He also told the audience how he had vigorously condemned the Republican National Committee’s attempt in 2004 to get their hands on directories of evangelical church members for their turn-out-the-vote effort. As far as the Chautauqua community is concerned, anyone who makes Karl Rove uncomfortable can’t be all bad.

Land’s most recent book is The Divided States of America: What Liberals and Conservatives Are Missing in the God-and-Country Shouting Match. Judging from his address yesterday, it sounds like one worth reading.)