Christian Right Responds to Osama Pat Robertson's Threats

Most people condemned Pat Robertson's threats towards Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Most decent, moral, people, that is. What about leaders of the Christian Right? How have they reacted?

Media Matters explains that most are "too busy" to comment at all:

[S]everal leading Christian right political groups -- such as the Family Research Council, the Traditional Values Coalition, Focus on the Family, Concerned Women for America, the Christian Coalition of America, and the American Center for Law and Justice -- have maintained silence on the matter. Another major Christian right political outfit, the American Family Association, excused Robertson's comments as having been made in "frustration" during an August 25 radio broadcast and quoted the conservative Media Research Center offering a lukewarm endorsement of Robertson's comments.

These organizations portray themselves as moral leaders in America, but it's clear that they don't know much of anything about morality or leadership. By remaining silent, they are just as responsible as Pat Robertson himself. I find it particularly interesting that Jay Sekulow and the American Center for Law and Justice have been silent. They, after all, are supposed to be a legal group, not a religious group. They should be among the first to speak out against such threats, but their silence betrays where their real loyalties lies — and just how ethically bankrupt they always were.

Televangelist Jack Van Impe had the maturity to speak out:

VAN IMPE: And right now, the National Association of Evangelicals informs us that this man has done damage, and it could actually take the lives of some of the missionaries in South America because the news media in South America is bombarding this thing across the airwaves around the clock. God forgive him.

[...]

Not only that, but Mr. Robertson, you are pro-life, and yet you wanted the members of the Supreme Court to die last year, and now the president of Venezuela. We believe this book: Thou shalt not kill; Exodus 20, verse 13. And my Bible says that this is wrong, and I want to challenge you right now to change your ways. Because we as Christians do not need an Osami [sic] Bin Laden leading us.

He's not exactly liberal, but unlike other conservative evangelicals he appears to have a better understanding of what it takes to exercise moral strength and leadership than all the rest of the Christian Right combined.

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