Updated December 24, 2006
Southern Baptist votes must have been a target when presumptive Republican Presidential Nominee John McCain chose Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his vice presidential nominee.
With 80% of Baptist ministers supporting McCain but congregations tiring of church in involvement in politics, Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religion Liberties Commission made it clear an August 8 that he saw her as the breath of life for the Baptists-as-Republicans electoral strategy which twice did so much to elect George Bush the younger. In an interview with CBS News, Land recommended Palin because:
... she's a person of strong faith. She just had her fifth child, a Downs Syndrome child. And there's a wonderful quote that she gave about her baby, and the fact that she would never, ever consider having an abortion just because her child had Downs Syndrome. She's strongly pro-life.
She's a virtual lifetime member of the National Rifle Association. She would ring so many bells. And I just think it would help with independents because she's a woman. She's a reform Governor. I think that, from what I hear, that would be the choice that would probably ring the most bells, along with Mike Huckabee, of course, who's a Southern Baptist.
He greeted the announcement of her candidacy with the proclamation that she is "straight out of veep central casting."
With is recommendation followed, Land and other SBC leaders are trying to deliver the vote with a 40-day Prayer Vigil for Spiritual Revival and National Renewal. Starting Sept. 24, those involved are to offer daily prayers will include requests for God's guidance in voting, for the election of more "godly" Christians, for God to "help churches find ways to help Christians get to the polls" and for public officials to be protected "from the attacks of Satan."
Richard V. Pierard, professor of history emeritus at Indiana State University, writes in Beliefnet that:
More than 1,300 churches [out of the SBC's reported 42,000] have allegedly signed up for the prayer campaign, which the denomination is promoting through Internet links, conference calls with pastors and a promotional DVD.
The effort is, according to the Associated Press, a companion to the iVoteValues and iLiveValues efforts being carried out jointly by Land's group the the right-wing Family Research Council.
Planning for these efforts dates back many months and suggests that while McCain's culture wars electoral strategy was to some degree forced upon him, Southern Baptist involvement was well-engineered.
