Volume 13, Issue 4: Verbatim

Quotations on America, Her God, Her War, and Her Judgment

Various People

They've just draped the hideous Pilgrim Monument with red, white and blue lights, and the mist is coming in off the bay. I feel enormous sadness leaving this little place [Provincetown, Mass.], not least because it's far safer than where I'm headed; but also because its calm and eerie beauty has helped keep me and others sane these past couple of weeks. I do want to say, however, that this little town of such diversity and counter-culture has done itself proud. The memorials, the crowds, the gentle hugs on the street, the bonfires and tears, the flags jammed onto boats and trucks—they all showed that beneath our differences, some things endure. A drag-show benefit at the Atlantic House raised over $10,000 for the American Red Cross a few days ago. How's that for a symbol? My one deep hope is that through this awful conflict, we may relearn the importance of a citizenship and community that transcends our particular identity. And part of that started here.

The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America, I point the finger in their face and say, `You helped this happen.'

Well I totally concur, and the problem is we have adopted that agenda on the highest levels of our government.

The President believes that terrorists are responsible for these acts. He does not share those views, and believes that those remarks are inappropriate.

Falwell was offering the classic Christian perspective that God judges nations as well as individuals. He made a mistake in tying this specific disaster to particular sins, implying that people who commit one sin are responsible for another. His timing was bad and his statement was wide open to distortion.

There is no doubt that America has accommodated itself to so many sins that we should always fear God's judgment and expect that in due time that judgment will come. But we ought to be very careful about pointing to any circumstance or any specific tragedy and say that this thing has happened because this is God's direct punishment.

The terrible tragedy that has befallen our nation, and indeed the entire global community, is the sad by-product of fanaticism. It has its roots in the same fanaticism that enables people like Jerry Falwell to preach hate against those who do not think, live, or love in the exact same way he does. The tragedies that have occurred this week did not occur because someone made God mad, as Mr. Falwell asserts. They occurred because of hate, pure and simple. It is time to move beyond a place of hate and to a place of healing. We hope that Mr. Falwell will apologize to the U.S. and world communities.

My statements on the "The 700 Club" on Thursday, September 14th, were called divisive by some whom I mentioned by name. I had no intention of being divisive. I was sharing my burden for revival in America on a Christian TV program, intending to speak to a Christian audience from a theological perspective about the need for national repentance.