Ok, I have to say that I've been rather disappointed with some of my "emergent" friends and the "progressive" thinkers that I know and don't know (both Christian and non-religious) as well as the media. They have made some REALLY hate filled comments about Pat Robertson the last few days.
Now, again, you know where I stand. I am not a defender of Robertson. He says dumb things that inflame people with frequency. I often find myself thinking that he should just keep his big mouth shut.
However, he sees this voodoo ritual done so long ago as a pact with the devil because in evangelical circles and pentecostalesque religious worldviews, any spiritual entity other than God is considered to be the devil. Yes, it's oversimplified and uninformed, possibly even capable of being considered stupid by people who are educated about tribal religions like voodoo, but it is NOT mean and not hateful. At least not in the way that I perceived it when I saw him on television.
If we rail on him and demonize him for saying what he has always said from the point of view that he has always had, how are we better or different? Being ignorant doesn't seem as bad to me as being venomous. You can correct someone without spewing malice at them.
I mean a simple, "Pat Robertson doesn't speak for me" would work as well as, if not better than, "Pat Robertson is an insufferable a**hole who should be burned at the stake and burn in hell." Who does that help?
Young open-minded Christians often beg people to think differently or demand to have their alternative viewpoint validated, but do we do others the same favor? It is called showing grace and trying to see where people are coming from. He is coming from a worldview where what he said isn't considered insensitive. Maybe we don't. We say we want to strive to find common ground, but if what we really mean is common ground that belongs only to us, is it really common?
Here is a bit of common ground to consider: during his little mentioning of this whole thing, the number for Operation Blessing was scrolling across the bottom of the screen, and it's hard to argue that he has no love for helping people in crisis when you know that he and his viewers could easily collect a million dollars that they will send in aid (and have done in the past).
And spare me the "how much goes to salaries and overhead" b.s. The Red Cross and various non profits do the same thing.
Sorry, it just doesn't sit well with me when we bad mouth someone who is a brother in Christ (whether we like it or not) who was actually doing something good just because what ignorance came out of his mouth overshadowed it. He was just saying aloud what a lot of evangelicals were already thinking. Just because it's wrong won't keep people from helping the people of Haiti. We can't all pack up and go put our hands in the dirt. Some people have to send well intended money to let others do the work.
And that's just my two cents worth. Give the man the benefit of the doubt because when it comes right down to it, he is aiming to help as much as we are, even if he has what we consider to be the wrong rhetoric.
