ERLC’s Land Presents Religious Liberty Award to the President
President George W. Bush received the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission’s 2006 John Leland Religious Liberty Award from Richard Land January 29 in the Oval Office.
In the Oval Office, President Bush receives the 2006 John Leland Religious Liberty Award from Richard Land. Photo by Eric Draper/White House
President Bush with Richard Land and Barrett Duke. The painting “A Charge to Keep” hangs on the wall in the background.
The ERLC’s trustees voted in September to give the award to Bush for “courageously defending the right of all people to exercise freely their religious faith,” according to the framed citation.
“I can’t think of another President in my lifetime who has done more to promote religious liberty specifically as a fundamental human right around the world” than Bush, said Land. The President expressed gratitude for the award and said it was “really an honor,” Land said. The award, which was presented for the 15th consecutive year, is named in memory of a Baptist preacher of the late 1700s and early 1800s who worked with James Madison, often described as the Father of the Constitution, to gain support for the First Amendment’s guarantees of no government establishment of religion and no interference with religious free exercise.
The award cited the President as a “staunch advocate for the right of people throughout the world to live out their faith without fear,” an “effective opponent of anti-Semitism and all forms of racism and ethnic prejudice,” and a “faithful witness to his faith in the Lord Jesus Christ to both his countrymen and the world’s leaders.” Bush has personally raised religious freedom as an issue with the leaders of both China and Russia, Land said.
The President showed Land and Barrett Duke, the ERLC’s vice president for public policy, a painting in the Oval Office titled “A Charge to Keep.” The painting of a horseman riding up a steep path is based on the Charles Wesley hymn “A Charge to Keep I Have,” which includes these lines Bush has cited as especially meaningful to him: “To serve the present age, my calling to fulfill; O may it all my powers engage to do my Master’s will.”
Land said, “The opportunity to present the award in that setting was a rare honor that reflects well on all Southern Baptists and was a personal privilege that I will cherish for the remainder of my days.”
1 comments (post your own) feed
1 On Oct 6th, 2007, at 8:31pm, Jesse Sproat wrote:
I agree, President Bush has and continues to press for religious freedoms here in the US and around the world. It is sad that this presentation and award was not even mentioned in our “free press” society. I also cannot think of a president in recent history that has done as much as President Bush.
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