Pat Robertson

Paris. -- In 1991 the Rev. Pat Robertson, the evangelical television preacher, founder of the 1.5 million-member ''Christian Coalition,'' an influential figure on the American political right, published a book called ''The New World Order.'' It was a direct response to George Bush's proclamation of that supposed new order, in the aftermath of the Persian Gulf War.In this book Mr. Robertson described the threat to American sovereignty posed, he said, by a conspiracy of internationalist forces dominating not only the U.N. but liberal and internationalist political circles within both American political parties.

Pat Robertson's recent claim that the Haitian earthquake is punishment from God is not a fluke. It is, instead, part of a long string of mean-spirited, narrow-minded drivel from Mr. Robertson. I believe in a supreme being. I also believe that Mr. Robertson gives him a bad name. Denny Olver, Baltimore

PAT Robertson intends to make the job of serving on a school board even harder. The Christian broadcaster has mounted a campaign in Maryland and around the country to use this year's high school graduation ceremonies as a springboard to bring prayer back to public schools.Charging that his opponents want "to keep God away from America's graduations," Mr. Robertson, through his legal foundation, the American Center for Law and Justice, has issued 300,000 copies of a bulletin that encourages students to initiate prayers, Christian testimonies and other religious speech during graduation ceremonies this month and next.

I am a confused and angry American. Today I open my browser and see the devastation in Haiti. My heart breaks for those people and I have collected clothes from each closet to send, wishing I could do more. Next is Pat Robertson saying this was brought on by their ancestors because they sold themselves to the devil to drive out the French back in 1791. This is the same as the mean and untrue things he said about 9/11. It happened because the country was filled with feminists, abortionists, ACLU members, and gays and lesbians.

WASHINGTON -- In public, televangelist Pat Robertson is a smiling preacher who insists his Christian Coalition is a nonpartisan group that seeks only to educate voters about religious issues, not to elect one party or specific politicians.But behind closed doors last week, Robertson revealed himself as a tough political boss who expects his troops to issue marching orders to a Republican Congress he says they elected and to handpick the country's next Republican president in 2000."We're not a bunch of ingenues any more," he told about 100 state leaders at a meeting in Atlanta.

Pat Robertson's recent claim that the Haitian earthquake is punishment from God is not a fluke. It is, instead, part of a long string of mean-spirited, narrow-minded drivel from Mr. Robertson. I believe in a supreme being. I also believe that Mr. Robertson gives him a bad name. Denny Olver, Baltimore

McCain becomes the counterweight to Pat Robertson in the GOP, hopefully keeping Bush balanced upright. The vote to oust its first African-American sitting judge will come back to haunt Baltimore County. The China trade issue pits the presidential party against the congressional party and this election can't settle this. The tall ships will come up the bay as if there weren't enough sailboats out there already.

A new ad for Democrat Parris N. Glendening linking opponent Ellen R. Sauerbrey to evangelist Pat Robertson drew a blistering response yesterday from Mrs. Sauerbrey, who called it a "despicable" assault on conservative Christian voters.In some of the harshest rhetoric of the gubernatorial campaign, the Republican said the commercial -- which says she is backed by "Pat Robertson's radical right" -- amounts to religious "bigotry.""What's the message? That there's something wrong with someone with faith supporting a person in the political process?"

Prayer Isn't Proper In The Public SchoolsI found David Raupp's column on Pat Robertson (The Evening Sun, May 13) to be alarming. Pat Robertson certainly has twisted the Supreme Court's ruling on prayer at graduation ceremonies to fit his own purposes.Don't people realize that prayer is a form of worship? Since when do we knowingly provide public support for religious worship? The answer is when we want to proselytize.We were doing something wrong, it was brought to our attention and now we should accept that fact and go on. No one should be forced to participate in or listen to forms of worship (nor be subjected to religious proselytizing)

EAU CLAIRE, Wis. - Democrats trying to portray President Bush as too headstrong when he decided to invade Iraq got help this week from an unlikely source: evangelist and Bush supporter Pat Robertson. Appearing on Paula Zahn Now on CNN Tuesday night, Robertson recalled a private meeting with Bush in Nashville, Tenn., before the Iraq war began. He said the president asserted that there would be no war casualties. "I warned him about this war. I had deep misgivings about this war, deep misgivings.

WASHINGTON -- Political reporter David Brody is punching his keyboard with two fingers, checking the Web for mentions of his stories. Up pops a liberal blog quoting one of his recent interviews. He's delighted - until he sees the snippet is attributed to "Pat Robertson's CBN." "Pat Robertson's CBN," Brody says in frustration. "We take that as a dig." Brody does work for Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network, and mostly he's proud of that. But stereotypes are inevitable when you cover politics for a network run by a standard-bearer of the religious right.

American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America Chris Hedges Free Press / 256 pages / $25 President Eisenhower famously said, "Our government makes no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith, and I don't care what that faith is." The people Chris Hedges writes about in his new book have a different view: They care a lot about the religion on which our government is based and they think it should be Christianity - their version, of course. American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America is a call to arms against what Hedges sees as the efforts of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and the operators of Trinity Broadcasting Network, among others, to turn the United States into a Christian nation.

To hear some tell it, God has had his hands full these past few months. Just ask the Rev. Pat Robertson. Or Indianapolis Colts kicker Mike Vanderjagt. Or New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin. The embattled chief executive of the storm-ravaged city became the latest leader to see the divine hand in earthly disaster this week when he said it was the wrath of God that sent "hurricane after hurricane after hurricane" to the Gulf Coast. "Surely, God is mad at America," Nagin said Monday during festivities to honor the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. "Surely he doesn't approve of us being in Iraq under false pretenses.

WASHINGTON -- Call me paranoid, but sometimes I think the mainstream media give maximum coverage to the Rev. Pat Robertson in order to discredit him. Or at least to discredit politically active TV evangelists who have enough connections to get their phone calls returned from the White House. Either way, it hasn't worked. Mr. Robertson is still in business. His latest fatwa, delivered on The 700 Club, his daily Virginia-based television show, is directed at "the good citizens of Dover," a Pennsylvania town that Mr. Robertson says has "rejected" God. Their sinful deed, Mr. Robertson says, was to vote out of office all of Dover's school board members who were up for re-election and supported intelligent design.

DOVER, PA. -- Jim Cashman wants a recount, but even if he still winds up losing his seat on the area school board, he wants to make something clear: God has not been voted out of office. In fact, God is very much in good favor in the shops and creaky porch-fronts of this small Pennsylvania town, despite the community's apparent objection to discussing "intelligent design" in the local public high school, Cashman said. The Supreme Being certainly hasn't been "rejected" from the place, as religious broadcaster Pat Robertson suggested the other day. "That was an unfortunate thing to say," said Cashman, a 51-year-old auto repair shop owner who was among eight school board members voted out of office this week, ostensibly for approving a four-paragraph passage, read during ninth-grade biology class at Dover Area High School, suggesting an alternative to Darwin's theory of evolution.

THE SIMILARITIES among the radical wings of religious fundamentalism are striking and frightening. In Iran, for example, the mullahs issue fatwas, the exhortations to assassinate people they don't like. The most notorious of these in recent times was the fatwa issued in 1989 by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini against the Indian-born author Salman Rushdie. The ayatollah was incensed because Mr. Rushdie's novel Satanic Verses seemed to insult Islam. We have our own religious nuts here in America.

If a new television campaign by Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays had had only its dramatic scenes -- a teen-age girl contemplating suicide with a handgun and a young man being beaten by a gang as the attackers shout slurs -- it would have been controversial enough.But because these scenes are interspersed with clips of the Rev. Pat Robertson and other conservatives deploring homosexuality, the campaign has drawn the wrath of Mr. Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network, which is threatening legal action against stations that broadcast the two 30-second advertisements.

ROCHESTER, N.Y. -- The Republicans who live along the shores of Lake Ontario here have generally been moderate to progressive in their politics. They tended to elect centrist Republicans, as well as Democrats, to Congress and the state legislature. In 1980 they supported George Bush over Ronald Reagan. And in 1992 and 1996, many of them defected from the Republican line to vote for Bill Clinton because they thought the religious right had gained too much influence in the party. Thus, on the face of it, this should be good ground for John S. McCain to make his case that Pat Robertson and the Christian Coalition have become the tail wagging the Republican dog. "A lot of people felt that in the last two elections we went too far to placate the Christian right," said John Bouchard, the party activist leading the McCain operation in Monroe County.

Effort to open center for kids earns embrace I was both disturbed and disappointed to read how some residents of Baltimore have received a group of young people who are trying to do the right thing by opening a youth center ("Dreams of opening center - as well as people's hearts," Aug. 21). It is often said that children are our future. When did adults in Baltimore become so hostile toward that future? Some of the concerns expressed by area residents are legitimate. The Midway and Coldstream communities have some of the city's higher juvenile arrests rates, and from 2002 to 2003, the number of reported incidents of dirty streets and alleys in those communities tripled.

The Rev. Pat Robertson seemed to delight years ago in waving before his television flock an American Civil Liberties Union letter showing his photograph alongside two other prominent Christian conservatives under the headline: "The Most Dangerous Men in America?" His significance as menace or inspiration is less clear now than it was then, due not least to Robertson's success making Christian conservatism a force in mainstream national politics. Many scholars who have written on Christian conservatism say the 75-year-old evangelist is well past his peak of influence.