Is Pat Robertson's endorsement of Giuliani all that surprising?
Many have called Pat Robertson's endorsement of Rudy Giuliani hypocritical. Robertson has compromised his position on abortion and gay marriage in order to hitch his wagon to the presidential contender.
Not so, says Naomi Schaefer Riley, in a opinion piece in today's Wall Street Journal. (It deserves to be read in full.) In fact, Robertson's decision fits in a long tradition of evangelical support for an agressive foreign policy toward ideologies deemed to threaten Judeo-Christian civilization.
Riley quotes Richard land, who says evangelicals have long been interested in foreign policy. "The only part of the country that had majority support for Roosevelt's interventionist policies was the South." Then, after World War II, came godless communism. "Communism was seen as a direct threat to the Christian faith and Judeo-Christian civilization. Among Catholics and evangelical Christians, this message resonated first and with the most intensity."
For decades, evangelical missionaries returned home to their churches with stories from behind the growing menace. "Every year, we heard a speaker or two who had come from 'behind the Iron Curtain,' " says John Wilson, editor of CT's sister publication Books & Culture. They had harrowing tales to tell, sometimes first-person, sometimes not. There was a palpable sense of a world-scale conflict with godless communism."
Though some disagree that the threat of Islamic extremism equals that of communism, a similar pattern is emerging among returning missionaries. "In the past you had missionaries come back and talk about being imprisoned. Now you have reports from people about beheadings and bombings," says Timothy Shah, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
The fact the Robertson's endorsement has raised such objections shows that there isn't the same kind of wide agreement on foreign policy as there was in the heydays of evangelical anti-communism. It remains to be seen both if Islamic extremism is believed to be the threat that communism was and if Giuliani can be seen as an equal opponent as Ronald Reagan was.
Posted by Rob Moll on November 16, 2007 11:19AM
Comments
Naomi Schaefer Riley has forgotten that the real problem before us "today" is, among other issues, the personal/National moral twin issues of both abortion and the form of marriage. If we fail to repent on the home/personal front, we will never be able to stop the judgements of God now knocking on the front door of this Nation by first looking beyond our borders. The enemy is already here and it is us!
Pat Robertson, in my opinion is wrong indeed.
Posted by: Mark Nungesser at November 20, 2007
Does it really matter who Pat Robertson or any other ao called "Christian Leader" endorses? I would hope that we would be able to make our choices as individuals and not have to walk lock step based on someone else's opinion.
Posted by: Tom at November 20, 2007
You'll recall that in the 1980's went to Latin America and praised the contras, so his endorsement of Guilliani is not so unusual. You will also recall Evangelical support of Reagan's policy of supporting repressive brutal dictatorships guilty of all sorts of human right's violations too.
Posted by: JohnW at November 26, 2007
You'll recall that in the 1980's Pat Robertson went to Latin America...
Posted by: JohnW at November 26, 2007
Just over a century before the birth of Christ, something very strange happened. Probably the worst group of people in the Bible, the Edomites, ‘became Jews’. These people are condemned by all the major prophets.
The Edomites were converted as a group to become Jews by John Hyrcanus, in about 120BC (Flavius Josephus, Antiquities, XIII ix 1; XV vii 9). Josephus, the Jewish historian who lived just after the time of Christ, says 'They (Edom) were hereafter no other than Jews'.
If you can check the passage in Josephus, please do so and see for yourself. Cecil Roth in his Concise Jewish Encyclopedia (1980) says ‘John Hyrcanus forcibly converted [Edom] to Judaism. From then on they were part of the Jewish people..’ (p 154).
This explains one aspect of the Crucifixion, and the animosity between Jesus and the 'false Jews' (Revelations 2:9 and 3:9). Jesus will destroy Edom when he returns (Rev 19:11-13, Isaiah 63:1-6). It explains the aversion of modern Jews to the Christian religion.
Robertson is one of the large number of so-called 'Judeo-Christians' who ignores this history, and adores the people of the viperish Pharisees.
Posted by: John C at January 25, 2008
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