{"id":1739,"date":"2009-10-16T17:44:46","date_gmt":"2009-10-16T17:44:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2009\/10\/southern-baptist-leader-apolog.php"},"modified":"2009-10-16T17:44:46","modified_gmt":"2009-10-16T17:44:46","slug":"southern-baptist-leader-apolog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/10\/southern-baptist-leader-apolog","title":{"rendered":"Southern Baptist Leader Apologizes for Holocaust Reference"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>(RNS) A top Southern Baptist official has apologized to Jews for saying Democrats&#8217; proposals to reform health care are &#8220;precisely what the Nazis did.&#8221;<br \/>\n&#8220;It was never my intention to equate the Obama administration&#8217;s health care reform proposals with anything related to the Holocaust,&#8221; Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission wrote in a letter on Wednesday (Oct. 14) to the Anti-Defamation League. &#8220;My concern, which is clear when the remarks are reviewed in context, was about the potential denial of health care to the elderly, the infirm, the disabled and the unborn.&#8221;<br \/>\nAccording to the Florida Baptist Witness, Land referred to Nazis as he criticized the health care reform plans of President Obama and congressional Democrats in a Sept. 26 speech to the Christian Coalition of Florida.<br \/>\n&#8220;I want to put it to you bluntly,&#8221; Land said in the speech. &#8220;What they are attempting to do in health care, particularly in treating the elderly, is not something like what the Nazis did. It is precisely what the Nazis did.&#8221;<br \/>\nIn an Oct. 9 letter, Foxman told Land that he was particularly offended by the remarks as a Holocaust survivor.<br \/>\n&#8220;While we understand there are deep convictions and passions regarding the health care reform, whatever one&#8217;s views are, the Nazi comparison is inappropriate, insensitive and unjustified,&#8221; Foxman wrote.<br \/>\n&#8220;Such comparisons diminish the history and the memory of the 6 million Jews and 5 million others who died at the hands of the Nazis and insults those who fought bravely against (Nazi dictator Adolf) Hitler.&#8221;<br \/>\nLand told Foxman that he would choose his words more carefully in the future.<br \/>\n&#8220;Given the pain and suffering of so many Jewish and other victims of the Nazi regime, I will certainly seek to exercise far more care in my use of language in future discussions of the issues at stake in the health care debate,&#8221; he wrote.<br \/>\n<em>By Adelle M. Banks<br \/>\nCopyright 2009 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(RNS) A top Southern Baptist official has apologized to Jews for saying Democrats&#8217; proposals to reform health care are &#8220;precisely what the Nazis did.&#8221; &#8220;It was never my intention to equate the Obama administration&#8217;s health care reform proposals with anything related to the Holocaust,&#8221; Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Southern Baptist Leader Apologizes for Holocaust Reference<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/10\/southern-baptist-leader-apolog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Southern Baptist Leader Apologizes for Holocaust Reference\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"(RNS) A top Southern Baptist official has apologized to Jews for saying Democrats&#8217; proposals to reform health care are &#8220;precisely what the Nazis did.&#8221; &#8220;It was never my intention to equate the Obama administration&#8217;s health care reform proposals with anything related to the Holocaust,&#8221; Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/10\/southern-baptist-leader-apolog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beliefnet News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-10-16T17:44:46+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"mconsoli\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Southern Baptist Leader Apologizes for Holocaust Reference","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/10\/southern-baptist-leader-apolog","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Southern Baptist Leader Apologizes for Holocaust Reference","og_description":"(RNS) A top Southern Baptist official has apologized to Jews for saying Democrats&#8217; proposals to reform health care are &#8220;precisely what the Nazis did.&#8221; &#8220;It was never my intention to equate the Obama administration&#8217;s health care reform proposals with anything related to the Holocaust,&#8221; Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/10\/southern-baptist-leader-apolog","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2009-10-16T17:44:46+00:00","author":"mconsoli","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/10\/southern-baptist-leader-apolog","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/10\/southern-baptist-leader-apolog","name":"Southern Baptist Leader Apologizes for Holocaust Reference","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-10-16T17:44:46+00:00","dateModified":"2009-10-16T17:44:46+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/9cadc277e135f295b85f71137e2447a6"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/10\/southern-baptist-leader-apolog#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/10\/southern-baptist-leader-apolog"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/10\/southern-baptist-leader-apolog#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Southern Baptist Leader Apologizes for Holocaust Reference"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/9cadc277e135f295b85f71137e2447a6","name":"mconsoli","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/2ad\/2ad44a0d65de6022a5c619dffa5e7fddx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/2ad\/2ad44a0d65de6022a5c619dffa5e7fddx96.jpg","caption":"mconsoli"},"description":"\"Moderation is the center wherein all philosophies, both human and divine, meet.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d -Benjamin Disraeli","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author\/mconsoli"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1739\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}