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Ethics Expert to Speak at OBU Chapel

October 24, 2001

Southern Baptist's spokesperson for social and moral concerns will visit Oklahoma Baptist University next Wednesday for the university's weekly chapel service.

Dr. Richard Land has served as president and chief executive officer of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission since 1988.

During his tenure on Capitol Hill as spokesman for the largest Protestant denomination in the country, Dr. Land has represented Southern Baptists' views inside the halls of Congress, before U.S. Presidents, on the pages of major daily newspapers, and over national television networks.

His half-hour weekday radio program, "For Faith and Family," is heard by more than 1.5 million listeners each week on more than 550 radio stations across the country and throughout the world.

Land has worked as a pastor, theologian and public policy maker addressing social and cultural ills for the past two decades. In the late '80s, Land served as senior advisor to Gov. William P. Clements, Jr., of Texas.

While serving under Gov. Clements, Land addressed issues concerning public education, mental health, the handicapped, AIDS, as well as church-state and religious liberty issues and anti-drug, anti-pornography and anti-abortion legislation.

Dr. Land earned an undergraduate degree from Princeton University and a master's degree from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, where he served as student body president and received the Broadman Seminarian Award as the outstanding graduating student.

He holds a doctor of philosophy degree from Oxford University in England.

After graduating as the outstanding graduate in his class from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, Land served as pastor of churches in Texas, Louisiana, North Carolina, Tennessee and Great Britain. He also has served as vice president for academic affairs at The Criswell College in Dallas, Texas, and has been visiting professor at Southern Baptist seminaries and divinity schools across the country.

He and his wife, Rebekah, a psychotherapist in private practice, have three children, Jennifer, Richard, Jr., and Rachel.

OBU's chapel services are Wednesdays at 10 a.m. in the university's Raley Chapel.