Pat Robertson Dead
As always, when someone one has very strong opinions on dies, there is the mental struggle to refrain from rejoicing or taking pleasure. But at the same time, expounding on one's feelings about the departure still can help.
In this vein, Pat Robertson did more to discredit Christianity in the US than just about anyone else in the latter part of the 20th century. Some highlights of his statements that drove this are in the RIP post in All Saints. For me, I have some very personal reasons to have found him to be a negative influence.
In the mid-70s, my father began watching 700 Club. Prior to this, he has been a middle-of-the-road Presbyterian, who felt that politics and religion shouldn't mix outside of one's own casting of votes. That all changed as he became more and more pulled into Pat Robertson's judgmental, Christofascist teachings and statements. It led him to get involved with a small group of charismatics in our congregation, which is where he got the "word of instruction that he should move our entirely family to Southern California so he could go to seminary at Melodyland (which was NEVER accredited). He started getting into things like "Seed Faith", an early iteration of the prosperity gospel heresy. He started finding the "work of the devil" in popular literature (he convinced my siblings and I to burn a copy of the Wizard of Oz (book), barred us from attending Halloween parties and trick or treating, started giving large amounts of money to the 700 Club and other similar groups. As I grew into my teens and started reading and learning on my own, it drove a wedge between us, as I came to be a firm believer in principles such as the separation of Church and State. This rift never really went away.
There are perhaps some good things Mr. Robertson did. I can't think of any offhand. All I can console myself with at this point is that he probably had a rather uncomfortable conversation when he met his Maker.
In this vein, Pat Robertson did more to discredit Christianity in the US than just about anyone else in the latter part of the 20th century. Some highlights of his statements that drove this are in the RIP post in All Saints. For me, I have some very personal reasons to have found him to be a negative influence.
In the mid-70s, my father began watching 700 Club. Prior to this, he has been a middle-of-the-road Presbyterian, who felt that politics and religion shouldn't mix outside of one's own casting of votes. That all changed as he became more and more pulled into Pat Robertson's judgmental, Christofascist teachings and statements. It led him to get involved with a small group of charismatics in our congregation, which is where he got the "word of instruction that he should move our entirely family to Southern California so he could go to seminary at Melodyland (which was NEVER accredited). He started getting into things like "Seed Faith", an early iteration of the prosperity gospel heresy. He started finding the "work of the devil" in popular literature (he convinced my siblings and I to burn a copy of the Wizard of Oz (book), barred us from attending Halloween parties and trick or treating, started giving large amounts of money to the 700 Club and other similar groups. As I grew into my teens and started reading and learning on my own, it drove a wedge between us, as I came to be a firm believer in principles such as the separation of Church and State. This rift never really went away.
There are perhaps some good things Mr. Robertson did. I can't think of any offhand. All I can console myself with at this point is that he probably had a rather uncomfortable conversation when he met his Maker.
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Robertson was even-handed in his portrayal of Regent(I mean, they HAD given him an invitation), but also got into the controversy surrounding Robertson's then-recent book promoting disguised antisemitic conspiracy-theories. According to Cox, alot of the Regent staff he talked claimed that the problem was that Robertson had unreliable ghost-writers, a defense Cox found somewhat suspect.
I don't imagine he would have cared for my opinion though: as a Piskie, in his eyes I'm the Antichrist.
kinda equivalent to this...?
https://www.pinterest.se/pin/385339311863588740/
As usual, Gary Larson hits the spot...
BTW, we seem to be working on the assumption that Robertson has gone upstairs, whereas he may well have been sent direct to the boiler-room...
"If you gave him an enema you could bury him in a matchbox."
I think it's ok to welcome an end to him doing harm. Obviously repentance and amendment of life would have been the preferable route but it's still welcome that his capacity to inflict further suffering is ended.
His meeting with God will have been a bit of a shock to him.
I liked this take on his reception.
This.
Thanks for the cartoon! 🤣🤣
Very easy to say when you're not someone he campaigned for the death of.
Personally I think he's just keeping Kissinger's seat in Hell warm for him.
People did try, and he was still busy criticising Black people in his 90s.
Here's a relevant post I made in a thread about the U.S. Supreme Court.
Pat Robertson held a great deal of power, both as a religious broadcaster and as a Republican political figure. (For some reason people don't often think of him as the latter, but he was at least as harmful as Lee Atwater, Paul Weyrich, Rush Limbaugh, or a number of non-elected but nonetheless influential Republican political figures.) The fact that he is no longer using that power to harm people is, for obvious reasons, a source of joy for the people he spent his life harming.
One of the ways "to work to change opinions and beliefs by calling them out and taking appropriate action" is by honestly describing the wrongs committed by evildoers, even if they're dead. Soft pedaling the evil committed by people just because they have recently died just convinces other evildoers that their own offenses will be posthumously whitewashed in the public's mind. Fred Clark has an interesting post on the duty of speaking ill of the dead, which he views through the lens of A Christmas Carol. The occasion was the then-recent death of David Koch, another one of those non-elected but incredibly influential Republican political figures.
I recommend reading the whole thing. It's not that long.
Thanks @Crœsos .
Charles Dickens lived in this neck of the woods, and is often celebrated as a local lad, although I wonder how many people have actually read his works. He may be a bit prolix, but he often has something to say which is entirely relevant to today's world, over 150 years since his death.
FWIW, I find Blackpool to be one of the least attractive of Dickens' heroes.
I am thinking along the lines of Shakespeare's Mark Anthony: 'Friends, Republicans, Countrymen, I have come to bury Robertson, not to praise him.'
Source
The most amazing theatrical performance I have ever been privileged to watch was the RCS's 2012 Julius Caesar, with an all Black cast, set in modern day Africa. The absolute star of the show was the guy who played the rabble-raising Mark Anthony, repeating "these are honourable men" over and over until it lost all its meaning.
He was phenomenal.
/End tangent
Reading in today's Guardian about the geopolitical dangers of a second Trump presidency, it occurred to me how much better off the world might be if Trump were no more. Other evils would inevitably follow - as Gandalf said, even Sauron was only an emissary.
If that thought is sinful, I repent me of it.
I think you can go as far as saying that there are some people for whose death you'd not go into mourning, and Trump and Putin are 2 such.
Robertson was looking forward to meeting God face to face. If so I'm happy he finally got what he wanted.
Robertson and a British co-host praying for someone whose child was supposedly being harmed by Dungeons And Dragons.
Robertson and an American female co-host doing commentary about a just-viewed report on the evils of pornography, with Robertson expressing incredulity that some women like the genre, and then tepidly asking his co-host if she did. The co-host seemed taken aback, and answered no.
(That one I saw when it went viral on the internet, not while I was channel-surfing.)
The end bit and the commentary for a report on two evangelical Christian guys, one straight, one gay, who went on a lecture tour debating the morality of homosexuality. From what I saw in both the report and the outro, both debaters were treated with about-equal respect.
And probably the most historically significant thing I remember about Pat Robertson...
As you might imagine, Robertson was in favour of invading Iraq. But it was reported in the press that, when meeting with GW Bush in the build-up, Robertson was incredulous at Bush's optimistic view of how it would all go, and thought himself obligated to state that there would be way more casualties than the president was predicting.
Yes, I'll go with that. Thanks.
Here's her verdict on Thatcher (from today's Guardian article), which she could well have applied to today's government:
Any ambitions she may have had for a lead role in government were banjaxed by her outspoken opposition to the Iraq war. Grandstanding opportunities were limited to occasions such as the death of Margaret Thatcher, when she cut through sentimental parliamentary etiquette with her own salty verdict on an ideology of “greed, selfishness, no care for the weaker, sharp elbows, sharp knees”.
My italics.