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PDF versionPat Robertson's Theological Pundritry
by Ken Briggs on Jan. 14, 2010
Pat Robertson has taken the "blame the victim" mentality to a new level.
Robertson's geo-religio-political analysis of the Haitian disaster is that it's their own damned fault. He contends that the island's slaves enlisted the devil to overthrow their French colonial oppressors in 1805 and have been punished ever since.
The television preacher has played on this grandiose stage before, once famously claiming to have turned the course of a hurricane.
That episode became the stuff of stand-up comedy, but there's nothing funny about this one. If anything, it suggests that the "pact with the devil" is more a projection of his own consorting with evil. So in an odd way he may be on to something.
Robertson may still be smarting from his rebuff as a candidate for the Republican nomination. He once fancied himself the guardian of the nation's "family values" crusade when restoration of morality was all the rage. But he had to return to his 700 club sanctuary in defeat. His brain stock, and he has plenty, seems to have been invested in greater nuttiness ever since.
His cruel attack on people who deserve our every ounce of compassion is insufferable. It probably stems from his twisted notions about Haitians and voodoo that threaten his church-based dualism, the grand battle between good and evil.
Wherever it came from, however, it is a strain in American religion that may go beyond a narrow fringe. There remains in some quarters a readiness to accuse the poor, the non-Christian, the anti-capitalist and the non-white of bringing calamity on themselves because they failed to believe as "we" do in "our" politics, economics, morality and religion.
If Robertson is a lone wolf, he will quickly be shouted off the stage as a man howler. If he fans wider flames, however, the damage will have been done.
What is it that people do not
What is it that people do not understand when MR. Robertson tells the FACTS? If anyone makes a pact with the devil there are consequences to be paid and therefore it is what it is; the TRUTH!, and to liberal Americans and liberal Catholics the TRUTH hurts and they blind themselves to what God says. I see no malice in what Mr. Robertson said, he stated historical facts! Two hundred years later the consequences!!
Pat Robertson only says what
Pat Robertson only says what he thinks will help him raise money. That he would uses this tragedy to line his pockets says plenty about him and his audience.
Steve
See the great Penny Lernoux's
See the great Penny Lernoux's article "The Fundamentalist Surge in LAtin America" at
http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=927
He also directly supported and funded the contra terrorist army killing Catholics in Nicaragua whom he called "God's Army."
He stands firmly behind the genocidal maniac Rios Montt who wiped out entire language groups in the Guatemalan Highlands in the eighties in the name of economic structures they had never heard of.
In 2005 he advised the USA should "take out" Venezuelan President Chavez.
ALSO:
http://www.antipasministries.com/html/file0000045.htm
reprints SR Shearer's article which begins:
"In the Spring of 1984 Pat Robertson and CBN reporter Norm Mintle traveled to El Salvador where they met with the late Roberto D’Aubuisson. Following the trip, the "700 Club" aired four 20-30 minute segments on El Salvador, the major theme being that D’Aubuisson was a "very nice fellow" who was being maligned by the "biased liberalism" of Newsweek, Time and U.S. News and World Report."
D'Aubuisson is responsible for the martyrdom of countless Roman Catholics. Ask the Rev. Fr. John Dear SJ, who also visited there back then.
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Robertson also entertains domestic targets On October 9, 2003, CNN reported the following:
ntroducing Mowbray on his show, Robertson said that a reader of his book could conclude that the State Department needed a nuclear explosion.
"I read your book," Robertson said. "When you get through, you say, 'If I could just get a nuclear device inside Foggy Bottom, I think that's the answer,' and you say, 'We've got to blow that thing up.' I mean, is it as bad as you say?" Robertson said.
"It is," Mowbray said, although his book never suggests that the State Department should be blown up with a nuclear device.
Foggy Bottom is the nickname for the State Department's Washington headquarters.
In a June interview with Mowbray on the "700 Club", Robertson made similar remarks.
"Maybe we need a very small nuke thrown off on Foggy Bottom to shake things up like Newt Gingrich wants to do," he said.
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And Gingrich, also a strident force for the contra terrorist army, entertains thoughts of returning from his disgrace to run for president in 2012 . . .
Pat Robertson is either a
Pat Robertson is either a very sick man or is the devil himself. No human beings, Christian or not, could say something so cruel to the victims of Haiti earthquake.
We might also revisit his
We might also revisit his reflections on Ariel Sharon's stroke.
This from the ADL website:
http://www.adl.org/PresRele/IslME_62/4847_62.htm
or on Hurricane Katrina and 9/11:
http://mediamatters.org/research/200509130004
or youtubing the exchange:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-CAcdta_8I
This is the same man who said
This is the same man who said that the Hubble telescope was an instrument of evil because it attempted to push our knowledge beyond the bible, who claimed 9/11 was retribution for homosexuality, who prayed on the air for God to prosper his investments, and whose solution for social inequality is tax relief. In times past American Catholics would have ignored such nonsense, but today thanks to the unholy alliance of bishops and the far right, Mr. Robertson is praised in Catholic publications, and joined in coalitions by Catholic clergy.
His firm belief in a vindictive deity has, unfortunately, many followers in the American Catholic church, primary among them Fr. J. Corapi whose astonishingly reactionary ravings can be witnessed regularly on EWTN. In fact, if memory serves me well, Mr. Robertson himself has made appearances on EWTN.
Sad to say, and to our shame, Robertson is no lone wolf.
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