On a day in which the nation was being urged to pray for the victims and families of the World Trade Center attack, comments reportedly made by the Revs. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson on Robertson’s The 700 Club Thursday were igniting debate among the nation’s laymen and clergy. Falwell blamed “the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists and the gays and lesbians … the ACLU, People for the American Way” and groups “who have tried to secularize America” for contributing to what occurred in New York. “I point the finger in their face and say, ‘You helped this happen,'” Falwell reportedly declared on the program, which is carried by the Fox Family Channel, recently purchased by the Walt Disney Co.
Robertson responded: “Well, I totally concur, and the problem is we have adopted their agenda at the highest levels of our government.” When asked about the ministers’ remarks on ABC’s Good Morning America Friday morning, the Rev. Forrest Church, pastor of the All Souls Unitarian Church in Manhattan, commented, “If we respond with this kind of hatred and this kind of bigotry, we really become abettors to the very sin that we are trying to extirpate.”
