Former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist told Christian scholars last night that his personal faith leads him to take annual medical mission trips to Africa.
Frist, who is a practicing heart surgeon, says his religious convictions, not science, also guide his views against abortion and the cloning of humans.
“The greatest good an individual can do is to improve the human condition. With each of these issues I approach them with being a Christian whose focus is service to heal.”
His speech to Christian scholars kicked off a conference hosted by Lipscomb University exploring faith in politics. Frist, a Republican, didn’t touch on the current presidential election or his own possible run for governor in 2010.
Richard Land, who is president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s commission on ethics and religious liberty, will take on presidential politics this morning. Land has warmed up to presumed Republican nominee John McCain and will address how far candidates should go to court Christians.
Democrat Barack Obama’s faith advisor, Shaun Casey speaks tomorrow. He says Christians and evangelicals in particular are breaking away from partisan politics.
“It’s no longer true that three or four preachers can get up and tell their constituency to vote this way or vote that way, and millions of people will vote in lock step.”
Casey says evangelicals are becoming hard to predict. He points to his own invitation to speak at Lipscomb, at a relatively conservative university affiliated with the Church of Christ denomination.
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