WASHINGTON — A search committee has been selected to find a successor to Richard Land as president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC).
Richard Piles, acting chairman of the board of trustees, named Barry Creamer, vice president of academic affairs at Criswell College in Dallas, Texas, as chairman of the presidential search committee.
The other ERLC trustees named to the committee are Ken Barbic, of Washington; Kenda Bartlett, an at-large member of the board from Washington; Lynne Fruechting, from the Kansas-Nebraska convention; Ray Newman, an at-large member from Georgia; and Bernard Snowden, of Virginia. Piles, who serves as pastor of First Baptist Church, Camden, Ark., will serve as an ex officio member.
The committee will be seeking a candidate to bring to the ERLC board to succeed Land, who announced his retirement July 31. Land’s retirement will be effective Oct. 23, 2013, when he will complete 25 years as the ERLC’s president.
Land, 65, chose to announce his retirement nearly 15 months before its effective date to provide “plenty of time for an orderly transition for both the Commission and myself to the next phase of our respective future ministries,” he said in a July 31 letter to Piles.
Beginning in 1988, Land led the transformation of the Southern Baptist Convention’s ethics entity during the denomination’s conservative resurgence. He has acted as an outspoken advocate for biblical positions on such issues as the sanctity of human life, religious freedom, marriage and race relations.
There is not yet a timeline for the committee to bring a recommendation to the board.
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