TV preacher Pat Robertson’s cable network, like real television news broadcasts, is awash in remembrances of the tragedies five years ago today, when terror attacks on American soil killed close to 3,000 people.
Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network’s Web site prominently displays a “special interactive feature,” dubbed “Remembering 9/11.” A plug for that section declares that “the nation changed during the broadcast of The 700 Club. Our format tossed aside, we watched the nightmare unfold.”
What was not “tossed aside” from Robertson’s “700 Club” back then was the TV preacher’s penchant for outrage. A mere 48 hours after the terror strikes unfolded, Robertson engaged in an unseemly on-air discussion with the Rev. Jerry Falwell that blamed the attacks on Americans for being too secular.
Before turning to Falwell for comment, Robertson blathered on about how God had essentially turned against the United States.
“We have a Court that has essentially stuck its finger in God’s eye,” declared Robertson, “and said we’re going to legislate you out of the schools. We’re going to take your commandments from off the courthouse steps in various states. We’re not going to let little children read the commandments of God. We’re not going to let the Bible be read, no prayer in our schools. We have insulted God at the highest levels of our government. And, then we way, ‘Why does this happen?’ Well, why it’s happening is that God Almighty is lifting his protection from us.”
Robertson then, via a satellite hookup to Lynchburg, Va., turned to Falwell, his long-time Religious Right fellow traveler, for more invective on the fateful events of Sept. 11.
Falwell quickly agreed with Robertson’s analysis and even went beyond his loopy and offensive take.
“What we saw on Tuesday,” Falwell said, “as terrible as it is, could be miniscule if in fact, God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve.”
That’s right, America, according to the troubled mind of Falwell, likely deserved the horrific bloodshed of Sept. 11. And why was God so peeved at the USA? Falwell blamed it on the usual suspects.
The top of the list were those pesky church-state separationists, whom Falwell derided for “throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools.”
Falwell’s rant didn’t stop there. Of course, supporters of privacy rights and the advancement of civil rights for gays were also to blame.
“The abortionists have to bear some of the burden for this,” Falwell fumed, “because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the Pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians…. I point the finger in their face and say, ‘You helped this happen.’”
The TV preachers’ screeds were deeply offensive and not in any way realistic. American federal courts have ruled that school-sponsored religious activities do violate the First Amendment separation of church and state. But those courts have never barred truly voluntary student prayer and Bible reading. Other court decisions ensure freedom of conscience, but they can hardly be considered anti-religious or anti-Christian. It is a terribly tired Religious Right canard that America’s public square has been stripped of Christianity.
The televangelists did not help their cause by dragging their feet on offering apologies for their incendiary comments. It took Robertson several days before issuing a statement, and when he did, he largely blamed the debacle on Falwell. Falwell, for his part, offered half-hearted apologies that sounded defensive. His ministry would later issue a fund-raising letter blaming the media for beating on him for those comments.
Almost five years after that infamous “700 Club” episode, Robertson and Falwell are still decrying an American public square purportedly bereft of God, attacking gays and trying to roll back individual freedoms. But their revealing, over-the-top comments on the tragedies of 9/11 still hover over the two. They would like us to forget what they said back then, but we must make sure that Americans don’t do so.
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