Robertson's Giuliani endorsement yesterday has some in the Christian conservative shaking their heads and their fists. Read this from a top person at the Dobson-founded Family Research Council:
"This is a man whose supporters basically are pro-family, pro-life, pro-traditional-marriage, and here he has stepped away from them to endorse a candidate who has been very honest in saying he does not support those issues...It's beyond puzzling -- it's a little strange."
Actually, it is anything but strange and it highlights the massive difference between Pat Robertson and James Dobson. Robertson is an incrementalist. Robertson is a politician. And Robertson is the son of a United States Senator. That last fact tends to get lost in discussions over anything Pat Robertson does. It is, however, probably the most important fact in understanding his politics.
His father, Democratic Sen. Absalom (now there is a name just waiting for a big comeback) Robertson, was a powerful and strategic political player and one of the architects of Richard Nixon's "southern strategy" that emphasized tossing aside black votes for white votes to secure necessary electoral college votes in the south. But as a senator, he also understood that change came slowly. Pat Robertson learned that lesson.
It has informed his every political and business move. While it is easy - really, really easy - to portray him as a kook because of his regular ridiculous sayings, it is also easy to miss his extraordinary political and business success. Robertson sold his media empire - one begun with an investment in a few radio stations - for $1.2 billion.
Robertson wins a decision at a time. In politics he never goes for it all.
That is what irks James Dobson so much. Dobson has had enormous success as well. His Focus on the Family has annual revenue of more than $125 million and his radio show is heard by millions every day. Strategically, however, Dobson is Robertson's polar opposite. He wants to go for it all. His positions are absolute. To derivate from them is to derivate from God's calling.
And that is what is happening over Giuliani. Robertson has endorsed him. Dobson is going nuts. The evangelical political civil war has just started. Expect more talk of a third party any day now.
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The Left will never take the place of the Religious Right. Anyone that believes that would believe Satan's rhetoric to Jesus was true theology as well.
Dobson is correct on his Biblical views. No one has disproved that, because they can't. Focusing on the family is an important topic from one end of the Bible to the other. Not Mr. Kuo, or, anyone else has shown Mr. Dobson's wrongdoing. Dobson is not just part of the religious Right, he is part of the historic Christian community, that was set in motion by Christ Jesus and His apostles.
Whatever Leftists desire to achieve through progressive ideology, or dream they'll accomplish with the word "Christian," they will not be able to take authority of Church leadership, because they are not part of the Church. They can mimick, copy and act Christian, but peel away the skin and you'll find good old fashioned pagan practices and beliefs front and center.
So let the nature of heresy takes its course. Robertson is no different than anyone in courting and embracing error. Look at what Liberals and Progressives have done since giving up their tie-dyed shirts and Birkenstock sandals for a suit and tie.
What is happening to the Church in America is that the culture of moral corruption, hedonism, and the "anything goes" trumpeted and promoted by Leftist secular humanism is taking its toll on decent Christians.
When in Rome . . .?
The original Christians didn't.
And some still don't.
Not sure of the point here - I can see that Robertson is above all a politician, but choosing Guiliani over Clinton is certainly not going to do more to advance the so-called moral issues. So is it more that he is ultimately more committed to the political right than he is to his moral issues. Fine, but then he can't have it both ways. Dobson, while his behaviour towards other evangelical leaders is bullying and un-Christlike, is at least consistent.
Incidentally, I can point to plenty of perfectly orthodox Christians , who are profoundly moral in their personal lives and who hunger to be godly, whose politics are left of centre, who believe that the evidence points to greater government intervention in the economy and redistribution of wealth both increases general wealth and social justice. Thus posts like the last one which seek to claim that only true believers in a certain type of conservatism are "real" Christians are wrong - and frankly rather offensive.
Thinker:
Please don't get the idea I like Pat "Prayin' Hurricanes Away, Sayin' We Deserved 9/11" Robertson, either ...
I have had a number of serious problems with Pat Robertson over the past few years. From calling for the assassination of Hugo Chavez, to telling us that in 2006 there would be a more devastating Hurricane hitting the United States than Hurricane Katrina (there wasn't), to recently suspending a law student at his University for posting an unflattering but unedited picture of him on that student's personal facebook page.
All of that has been since 9/11 when he blamed homosexuality in America for the attacks.
It's a shame. I know that Pat confesses Jesus Christ as Lord, but I also know that when he does things like endorse a pro-choice, pro-gay rights candidate, he drags along with him the reputations of a lot of Christians, and the reputation of the Christian Church in America as a whole.
Perhaps its telling. What, with so many of our American denominational churches embracing homosexuality and other non-biblically supported ways of life--we should expect that with the church, its leaders will follow.
Ultimately there is no condemnation in Jesus Christ, but that also doesn't mean that there should be endorsement of sin.
Confessing Jesus Christ as Lord at a drop of a hat-- hasn't every con artist televangelist done that, too? Isn't that the epitome of "lip service"? And Robertson's God is a rather pagan God of Nature, who visits natural disasters on his enemies. Look at what he said about Dover, Pennsylvania, when the Creationists there lost the lawsuit a year ago. How he is really to be distinguished from the priests of Baal and Jupiter and Odin isn't entirely obvious.
Maybe it's time to stop reading the Bible so narrowly and ungenerously and on trust of 'tradition', Boone. I wonder where the Pauline attitude toward divorce went. That is the most clear and repeated of prohibitions, but no Christian Right leader enforces or advocates it- is not the serial polygamy of much of their following not a "non-biblically supported way of life", also? Or does it fall under the "my divorce/abortion/cousin's homosexuality is an exception, everyone else's is immoral" rule and attitude that is so in vogue lately?
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