Southern Baptist Convention ethicist Richard Land denounced the national health care law for its infringement of religious liberty during a chapel sermon at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary Feb. 14.
 

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According to guidelines announced by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and President Obama, religious organizations who offer health insurance to employees must subsidize insurance plans that cover contraceptives and abortive drugs, such as Plan B (the morning-after pill). 

"The ideologues, including the ones who sit in the Oval Office, believe that the woman's supposed right to free contraception, abortifacients, morning-after pills and sterilization services trumps the religious convictions of tens of millions of Americans who believe that they have a constitutional right not to finance that which they find unconscionable," Land said.

"The greatest threat to religious freedom in America now and for the rest of my lifetime will be government intrusion on the free exercise of people of faith's practice of their faith."

Reading the first commandment in Exodus 20 and Christ's appeal to give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's, Land said, "Ultimate allegiance, ultimate obedience, ultimate authority must be given to God, not to any government."

"Our Baptist forefathers understood this," he added, citing the article on religious liberty in the Southern Baptist Convention's Baptist Faith and Message:

Source: Baptist Press | Benjamin Hawkins