Wallis on Gaffe Robertson
We'll wrap up the Robertson screwup by taking note of Jim Wallis' article condemning Robertson's call for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, two portions of which I found interesting:
The fun begins with paragraph three, in which Wallis observes, probably correctly, that "It's clear Robertson must not have first asked himself " 'What would Jesus do?' " The tendency to reduce difficult moral questions to WWJD is not without potential problems, especially when the subject is public policy. I'll expand on this later, but for now let's stick with one obvious fact: there's only one Jesus, and I'm not Him. I don't have his wisdom, his moral strength, his intimate relationship with the Father, or his capacity for miracles. In public policy WWJD becomes more complicated because Jesus in the gospels was founding a church, not a state. The standards of behaviour appropriate for the leaders of a church do not neccessarily apply in all cases to political leaders.
Wallis goes over-the-top in his penultimate paragraph:
It's time to name Robertson for what he is: an American fundamentalist whose theocratic views are not much different from the "Muslim extremists" he continually assails.
One need not support Robertson to see that this goes well beyond the truth. Robertson's call for Chavez' assassination, misguided as it was, was based on secular grounds, not biblical. Robertson, who has never hesitated to attribute his political musings to God (see my earlier post Kos 1, Robertson 0, below), did not do so here, and the only doctrine he cites is the Monroe Doctrine. Finally Robertson, unlike the muslim extremists (What's with the scare quotes here, anyway?) does not call for the killing of random Venezuelans, while Osama bin Laden and other radical Muslims have no qualms about killing civilians. This is a big difference.
I do agree with Wallis that Robertson should step down before he causes the church, and especially conservative evangelicals, any further embarrassment. And that, barring any unexpectedly interesting further developments, should suffice as far as Gaffe Robertson is concerned.
The fun begins with paragraph three, in which Wallis observes, probably correctly, that "It's clear Robertson must not have first asked himself " 'What would Jesus do?' " The tendency to reduce difficult moral questions to WWJD is not without potential problems, especially when the subject is public policy. I'll expand on this later, but for now let's stick with one obvious fact: there's only one Jesus, and I'm not Him. I don't have his wisdom, his moral strength, his intimate relationship with the Father, or his capacity for miracles. In public policy WWJD becomes more complicated because Jesus in the gospels was founding a church, not a state. The standards of behaviour appropriate for the leaders of a church do not neccessarily apply in all cases to political leaders.
Wallis goes over-the-top in his penultimate paragraph:
It's time to name Robertson for what he is: an American fundamentalist whose theocratic views are not much different from the "Muslim extremists" he continually assails.
One need not support Robertson to see that this goes well beyond the truth. Robertson's call for Chavez' assassination, misguided as it was, was based on secular grounds, not biblical. Robertson, who has never hesitated to attribute his political musings to God (see my earlier post Kos 1, Robertson 0, below), did not do so here, and the only doctrine he cites is the Monroe Doctrine. Finally Robertson, unlike the muslim extremists (What's with the scare quotes here, anyway?) does not call for the killing of random Venezuelans, while Osama bin Laden and other radical Muslims have no qualms about killing civilians. This is a big difference.
I do agree with Wallis that Robertson should step down before he causes the church, and especially conservative evangelicals, any further embarrassment. And that, barring any unexpectedly interesting further developments, should suffice as far as Gaffe Robertson is concerned.
posted by A. at 12:20 AM
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