Land named to religious freedom group

The head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) is one of three new appointees to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

Richard D. Land, president and chief executive officer of ERLC, will serve a two-year term – ending May 14, 2003 – on the 10-member commission, created under the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 to monitor religious freedom abroad.

Shirin Raziuddin Tahir-Kheli and Roman Catholic Bishop William Francis Murphy will also serve two-year terms on the commission. Tahir-Kheli is director of the South Asia program at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University and is also a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia.

Murphy is bishop of the Archdiocese of Rockville Centre in New York.