Has Pat Robertson disavowed the notion that America is a Christian nation with no constitutional separation between church and state?
Presidential candidate Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) doesn’t think so.
Robertson, the president and founder of the Christian Coalition and himself a former presidential candidate, said in a newspaper column last week that he never called for a Christian America and that he supports a wall between church and state.
But in the latest imbroglio involving the evangelical leader and his views, Specter called Robertson’s denial “flatly untrue” and says he has the news clippings to prove it.
Specter, a moderate whose platform centers on combatting the increasing conservatism of the Republican Party, last year attacked the religious right for what he called its intolerant views.
In the latest chapter of his battle with the right, Specter fired off a letter to Robertson this week. The letter questioned the sincerity of a column Robertson wrote in the April 12 edition of The War Street Journal.
In his column, titled “A Reply to My Critics,” Robertson denied that he ever “suggested or even imagined any type of political action to make America a `Christian nation.'”
Robertson also rejected anti-Semitism in his column.
In an letter sent Monday to Robertson, Specter wrote, “These are welcome statements, but before they can be accepted at face value there is still a history that needs to be dealt with.”
In a telephone conference with Jewish journalists Tuesday, Specter said he has asked to meet with his fellow Yale law school alumnus to “confront him with his prior statements.”
The Robertson column and subsequent bout with Specter comes in the wake of a major fence-mending campaign between the Jewish community and Robertson and his Christian Coalition.
The feud erupted last summer when the Anti-Defamation League published a scathing report of the religious right. The report accused the Christian Coalition and Pat Robertson of being the primary force behind what it called the religious right’s “assault on tolerance and pluralism in America.”
Earlier this month, Robertson’s top professional at the Christian Coalition, Executive Director Ralph Reed, tried to end the fight that has dominated discussions between the two communities.
Reed told 200 ADL activists gathered in Washington: “The Christian Coalition believes in a nation that is not officially Christian, Jewish or Muslim. A nation where the separation of church and state as an institution is separate and inviolable.”
After his speech, ADL’s national director, Abraham Foxman, challenged Reed to get his boss to echo the message and go one step further.
“I hope that in this new dialogue and this new spirit of sensitivities that you can convince Pat Robertson to take one more step to purge himself of conspiracy theories which, while not intended, are part of the landscape of anti-Semitism throughout history,” Foxman said at the time.
Foxman was referring to passages in Robertson’s 1991 book, “The New World Order” in which the evangelical leader refers to a conspiracy by “European bankers,” a phrase used throughout modern history as an anti-Semitic reference.
On Tuesday, Foxman welcomed Robertson’s The Wall Street Journal column as a “new beginning.”
Robertson writes in the column, “I have never suggested or even imagined any type of political action to make America a `Christian nation.'”
Attempting to address challenges that he used anti-Semitic code words in his 1991 book, Robertson wrote, “It saddens me that my words could ever be seen as anything but pro-Jewish. That was never the message, never my heart.”
He also wrote that he realizes “that being pro-Israel does not necessarily equate to being pro-Jewish.”
“Here in the U.S.,I have repudiated anti-Semitism repeatedly and in the strongest terms,” he wrote.
Foxman said Robertson’s record “appears to be on both sides” of the church- state debate, but he said he “takes at face value” his most recent statements.
Foxman added, “He’s said many of the things that need to be said, but there is still the need for Pat Robertson to purge himself of conspiracy theories in general.”
Others in the Jewish community were not as forgiving.
“This doesn’t even begin to answer my concerns with Pat Robertson,” said Steve Gutow, executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council.
“I would not suggest for one minute that the ideas he suggests will give [Jews] a very easy and flourishing life in this country,” Gutow said, citing as examples school prayer, an end to legal abortions, censorship of books and restricting civil liberties for homosexuals.
“I don’t think he has an active anti-Semitism, but has a view that people different from him are on a different plane,” Gutow added.
Some Jewish Republicans have a different view.
“It’s high time the Jewish community stops its attacks on him,” said Matthew Brooks, executive director of the National Jewish Coalition, the major organization of Jewish Republicans.
“He has apologized, disavowed anti-Semitism and repudiated past statements,” Brooks said. “He has answered his critics effectively and honestly. The onus of responsibility now rests with the Jewish community to find ways we can work together.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
