Bill Clinton, a Southern Baptist, would never support partial-birth abortion, or call for special protection laws for gays, or be a Democrat.
Oh, wait.
Land realized how bad he would look if people thought he would vote for Hillary, hence his backtracking.
This is all the original article included:
Richard Land, president of the Religious and Ethics Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, takes a hard line against virtually all the major Republican candidates. He says he’d vote for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, New York Democrat, over Mr. Giuliani if the 2008 presidential race came down to such a choice. And if Mr. Giuliani wins, “he’ll do so without social conservatives,” Mr. Land said.
Mr. Land says the religious conservative leaders he knows don’t trust Mr. McCain either.
“Do we have any reason to believe that his being pro-life would have anything to do with who he would nominate to the Supreme Court?” Mr. Land told CNN’s Paula Zahn. “It’s that kind of uncomfortability with his unpredictability — the maverick nature that makes him so popular with independents — that gives conservatives pause.”
The claim made about his remarks were without a direct quote .
January 1999 Issue
President Clinton’s Spiritual Enablers
Reaping an Unholy Harvest
by R. Albert Mohler, Jr.
...In a nutshell, grassroots Southern Baptists arose in the late 1970s and, over the course of two decades, overthrew a liberal denominational regime that had championed a vision of Baptist identity in which Bill Clinton had felt securely at home. The denomination’s conservative leadership, repulsed by the President’s behavior and outraged at his policies on abortion and homosexuality, has called for the President to resign. The exiled liberal element, who prefer to call themselves moderates, love the President’s policies and believe that his series of embarrassing escapades should by no means bar the completion of his term. They have become his Baptist enablers. (snip)
Tellingly, it turns out that Woodward interviewed Richard Land, the conservative president of the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, but chose not to use any of his statements. The ERLC is the successor to Valentine’s Christian Life Commission. In the course of a recent denominational restructuring, the SBC changed the name of the agency, at least in part to indicate a break with the CLC’s positions under Valentine, and the BJCPA under James Dunn. Land told Woodward what he evidently did not want to hear. “Bill Clinton must have inhabited a very different Southern Baptist universe from mine,” noting that he is the same age as the President. “To me Foy Valentine was a radical liberal undermining Southern Baptist beliefs.” Thankfully, not all Southern Baptists of his generation followed the President’s example. (snip)