Richard D. Land (born 1946) was the president of Southern Evangelical Seminary in Charlotte, North Carolina, a post he held from July 2013 until his retirement in 2021.

[2] Formerly he served as president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention in the United States, a post he held from 1988 to 2013, when he stepped down in the wake of his controversial comments about the Trayvon Martin case.

from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and DPhil from Regent’s Park,[5] University of Oxford, where he did his doctorate research on the Puritan movement in 17th century England.

"[12] At a November 19, 2012 American Enterprise Institute event on immigration reform, Land stated that he was "ashamed" of the Republican Party in the 2012 presidential election.

His comments were criticized by several black Southern Baptist pastors, who felt they reversed a long effort by the SBC to distance itself from a past history of racism.

[16] On April 14, 2012, Baptist blogger Aaron Weaver discovered that Land's commentary on the Martin case had been lifted almost verbatim and without attribution from a column by Jeffrey Kuhner of The Washington Times.

According to Weaver, while Land included a link to the article in show notes that were posted online, he did not disclose that his commentary was based almost entirely on that column.

It also found that Land had used "carelessness and poor judgment" in lifting material from other sources without attribution, calling it a case of clear plagiarism.

[23] Land was one of 25 nominees to an “executive advisory board” of evangelical pastors proposed by then-candidate Donald Trump in the runup to the 2016 Presidential election.