Conservative Religious Leaders Smack Crazy Pat

Thanks for getting us going with all your televangelizing and shit, dude, but now your headline-grabbing batshit insanity is making us all look bad, so shove off, will ya?

Fellow conservative religious leaders have expressed concern and even open criticism over Pat Robertson's habit of shooting from the hip on his daily religious news-and-talk television program, "The 700 Club."

The Christian Coalition founder and former GOP presidential candidate has said American agents should assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and suggested that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's stroke was divine retribution for pulling Israel out of the Gaza Strip.

Let’s not forget his regular tirades against liberals, atheists, and homosexuals: “Just like what Nazi Germany did to the Jews, so liberal America is now doing to the evangelical Christians. It's no different. It is the same thing. It is happening all over again. It is the Democratic Congress, the liberal-based media and the homosexuals who want to destroy the Christians. Wholesale abuse and discrimination and the worst bigotry directed toward any group in America today. More terrible than anything suffered by any minority in history.”

Or against Gay Day at Walt Disney World: “I would warn Orlando that you're right in the way of some serious hurricanes, and I don't think I'd be waving those flags in God's face if I were you, This is not a message of hate -- this is a message of redemption. But a condition like this will bring about the destruction of your nation. It'll bring about terrorist bombs; it'll bring earthquakes, tornadoes, and possibly a meteor.”

Or against feminists: “(T)he feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.”

Or against the State Department: “Maybe we need a very small nuke thrown off on Foggy Bottom to shake things up.”

And, you know, lots of other stuff. Anyway…

"He is in a very visible leadership position and comments such as recent ones related to Mr. Sharon and so many others are misinformed and presumptuous and border on arrogance," said David Dockery, president of Union University, a private college affiliated with the Tennessee Baptist Convention.

Dockery suggested Robertson might want to consult other theologians "before making these pronouncements so quickly."

"It puts the evangelical movement in a bad light when that happens because people make broad generalizations, rightly or wrongly, all the time," said Dockery, who also is chairman of the board for the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities.

Not to split hairs or anything, but what puts the evangelical movement in a bad light is not denouncing the likes of Pat Robertson, whose vitriolic screeds are not remotely Christian. His comments aren’t just “misinformed and presumptuous and border[ing] on arrogance”—they’re hateful, inflammatory bile. He doesn’t need a suggestion to consult theologians (heh—“other” theologians, as if Robertson’s a “theologian” and not just an unhinged lunatic who shields his spewing spleen behind the cloak of religion); he needs a one-way ticket to an asylum for the criminally shrill.

It used to be easy to rely on Robertson’s patented brand of hellfire and brimstone madness to fund their tidy little business built on the back of illiberalism. He was nothing if not a useful tool for whipping adherents into a hate-fueled frenzy until they give ‘til it hurts. Now it’s not so easy. He gave them what they wanted—prominence—and now they don’t want the responsibility it entails, the criticism it’s brought; don’t want to have to deal with the problematic dichotomy of motivating through hate while claiming to peddle the message of Christ’s love.

If the best the leaders of the conservative religious movement can do is suggest that he not speak at Tuesday’s closing banquet of the National Religious Broadcasters Conference, the problem isn’t Pat Robertson. The problem is that it’s decidedly inconvenient for snake oil salesmen to have the King Cobra constantly yakking about how splendiferous his oil is.

(Crossposted at Ezra’s place.)