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Falwell Labels Political Foe ‘Anti-America’
...On Monday the newspaper devoted a “Nashville Eye” op-ed piece to a rebuttal of Land by David Harkness, a retired Presbyterian minister who attended a Southern Baptist college and seminary.

“I’m an Eagle Scout, graduate of Baylor University and Southern Baptist Seminary and am now a retired Presbyterian minister,” Harkness wrote. “My wife, a Mississippi College graduate, and I raised two wonderful Christian daughters, one a registered nurse, the other a teacher. I served 32 months in the Army and was commissioned an officer by President Harry Truman. I voted for Dwight D. Eisenhower, a Republican, and have voted in every election since.

“Now I learn from you that I am not a ‘real American.’

“As an ‘unreal American’ saved by Jesus Christ, I find it impossible to meditate on His words ‘Blessed are the peacemakers’ while supporting a pre-emptive, unnecessary war against an undefined enemy, ordered by a president who claims to be led by God, that has killed close to 150,000 innocent Iraqi people and more than 1,200 U.S. soldiers, seriously injuring tens of thousands more people. And $200 billion of taxpayers’ money? How much food, education and medical care could this have provided for Americans?”

“You expend enormous amounts of energy to protect the unborn while collateral damage in Iraq has slain thousands of women, many pregnant, and killed or maimed thousands of little children,” Harkness said later in the article. “What greater hypocrisy can one practice?”

“So, Mr. Land, please don’t ask me to accept your Jesus. I’m content to remain an ‘'unreal American’ and to seek the true Jesus whose mission is redemption, forgiveness and love which, if taken seriously, could indeed heal our serious polarization and make of all of us--reds and blues--reconciled real American sisters and brothers.”

Charles Deweese of the Brentwood-based Baptist History and Heritage Society had a letter in Sunday’s paper saying the Land interview “reveals what SBC leaders really stand for today.”

“These leaders talk traditional Baptist values,” Deweese said. “What they actually practice is anti-traditional faith that is nationalized, politicized, militarized, chauvinized, fundamentalized and opportunized.”