|
Pat Robertson
(founder of the Christian Coalition)
|
"We at the Christian Coalition are
raising an army who cares. We are training people to be effective -- to
be elected to school boards, to city councils, to state legislatures, and
to key positions in political parties.... By the end of this decade, if
we work and give and organize and train, THE CHRISTIAN COALITION WILL BE
THE MOST POWERFUL POLITICAL ORGANIZATION IN AMERICA."
- Pat Robertson, in a fundraising
letter, July 4, 1991 |
"We have enough votes to run the
country. And when the people say, "We've had enough," we are going to take
over."
- Pat Robertson, speech given
to the April, 1980 "Washington for Jesus" rally, quoted from Robert Boston,
The Most Dangerous Man in America, p. 29 |
"If Christian
people work together, they can succeed during this decade in winning back
control of the institutions that have been taken from them over the past
70 years.
Expect confrontations that will be not
only unpleasant but at times physically
bloody.... This decade will not be for the faint of heart, but
the resolute. Institutions will be plunged into wrenching
change. We will be living through one of the most tumultuous
periods of human history. When it is over, I am convinced God's people
will emerge victorious."
- Pat Robertson, Pat Robertson's
Perspective octavo 1992 |
"It is interesting,
that termites don't build things, and the great builders of our nation
almost to a man have been Christians, because Christians have the desire
to build something. He is motivated by love of man and God, so he builds.
The people who have come into (our) institutions (today) are primarily
termites.
They are into destroying institutions that have been built by Christians,
whether it is universities, governments, our own traditions, that we have....
The
termites are in charge now, and
that is not the way it ought to be, and the time has arrived for a
godly
fumigation."
- Pat Robertson, New York Magazine,
August 18, 1986 |
"The Constitution of the United
States, for instance, is a marvelous document for self-government by the
Christian people. But the minute you turn the document into the hands
of non-Christian people and atheistic people they can use it to destroy
the very foundation of our society. And that's what's been happening."
- Pat Robertson, The 700 Club
television program, December 30, 1981 |
"Individual Christians
are the only ones really -- and Jewish people, those who trust God of Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob -- are the only ones that are
qualified to have the reign, because hopefully, they will be
governed by God and submit to Him."
- Pat Robertson, The 700 Club
television program, January 11, 1985, defending his stance that only Christians
and Jews are fit to hold public office |
"When I said during my presidential
bid that I would only bring Christians and Jews into the government, I
hit a firestorm. "What do you mean?" the media challenged me. "You're not
going to bring atheists into the government? How dare you maintain that
those who believe in the Judeo-Christian values are better qualified to
govern America than Hindus and Muslims?" My simple answer is, "Yes, they
are."
- Pat Robertson, The New World
Order, p. 218 |
"There will never be world peace
until God's house and God's people are given their
rightful place of leadership at the top of the world. How can
there be peace when drunkards, drug dealers, communists, atheists,
New Age worshipers of Satan, secular humanists,
oppressive dictators, greedy moneychangers, revolutionary assassins, adulterers,
and homosexuals are on top?"
- Pat Robertson, The New
World Order, p. 227, Word Publishing, 1991 |
"The public education movement has
also been an anti-Christian movement... We can change education in America
if you put Christian principles in and Christian pedagogy in. In
three years, you would totally revolutionize education in America."
- Pat Robertson, The 700 Club
television program, September 27, 1993 |
"You say you're supposed to be nice
to the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians and the Methodists and this,
that, and the other thing. Nonsense. I don't have to be nice to the spirit
of the Antichrist. I can love the people who hold false opinions but I
don't have to be nice to them."
- Pat Robertson, Fundamentalist
Christian tele-minister. |
|
Jerry Falwell
(founder of the Liberty University)
|
"I hope I live to see the day when,
as in the early days of our country, we won't have any public schools.
The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running
them. What a happy day that will be!"
- Rev. Jerry Falwell, America
Can Be Saved, 1979 pp. 52-53, from Albert J. Menendez and Edd Doerr, The
Great Quotations on Religious Freedom |
"The idea that religion and politics
don't mix was invented by the Devil
to keep Christians from running their own country."
- Rev. Jerry Falwell, Sermon,
July 4, 1976 |
"If we are going to save America
and evangelize the world, we cannot accommodate secular philosophies that
are diametrically opposed to Christian truth ... We need to pull out all
the stops to recruit and train 25 million
Americans to become informed pro-moral activists whose voices can be heard
in the halls of Congress. I am convinced that America can be turned
around if we will all get serious about the Master's business. It
may be late, but it is never too late to do what is right. We need an old-fashioned,
God-honoring, Christ-exalting revival to turn American back to God. America
can be saved!"
- Jerry Falwell, "Moral Majority
Report" for September, 1984. |
"There
is no separation of church and state. Modern U.S. Supreme
Courts have raped the Constitution
and raped the Christian faith and raped
the churches by misinterpreting what the Founders had in mind in the First
Amendment to the Constitution."
- Jerry Falwell (source unknown) |
Other Religious Right
Leaders
(past and
present)
|
"Unique among the nations, America
recognized the source of our character as being godly and eternal, not
being civic and temporal. And because we have understood that our
source is eternal, America has been different.
We
have no king but Jesus."
- John Ashcroft, Commencement
address given on May 8, 1999, upon receiving an honorary degree at ultra-right-wing
and ultra-fundamentalist Bob Jones University, also known for its anti-African-American
segregationist policies |
"We're going to bring back God and
the Bible and drive the gods of secular humanism right out of the public
schools of America."
- Pat Buchanan, campaign address
at an anti-gay rally in Des Moines, Iowa, February 11, 1996 |
"Evolution is a bankrupt speculative
philosophy, not a scientific fact. Only a spiritually bankrupt society
could ever believe it. ... Only atheists could accept this Satanic theory."
- Rev. Jimmy Swaggart |
Capital punishment is our society's
recognition of the sanctity of human life.
- Orrin Hatch |
"Providence has given to our people
the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty of our Christian nation
to select and prefer Christians for their rulers."
- John Jay, the first Chief
Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court |
"Romanism is a pagan counterfeit
of the Christian religion, ancient paganism and idolatry, claiming to be
the church which Christ founded...The Roman Church is not another Christian
denomination. It is a satanic counterfeit, an ecclesiastic tyranny over
the souls of men, not to bring them to salvation but to hold them bound
in sin and to hurl them into eternal damnation. It is the old harlot of
the book of the Revelation--'the Mother of Harlots.'...Threats and fear
have been her weapons. Her wealth has dazzled, her ceremonies blinded the
eyes of her devotees to the blackness of her purpose and the rottenness
of her heart."
- Bob Jones Jr., of Bob
Jones University, referring to the Roman Catholic Church, FAITH for the
Family, 1981, Bob Jones University |
| "No, I
don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they
be considered as patriots. This is one nation under God."
- George Bush, to a AA reporter
Robert I. Sherman in August 27,1987, while serving as vice-president and
running for President, Full text of exchange follows:
Sherman: What will
you do to win the votes of the Americans who are Atheists?
Bush:
I guess I'm pretty weak in the Atheist community. Faith in god is important
to me.
Sherman: Surely you recognize
the equal citizenship and patriotism of Americans who are Atheists?
Bush:
No, I don't know that Atheists should be considered as citizens,
nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.
Sherman (somewhat
taken aback): Do you support as a sound constitutional principle
the separation of state and church?
Bush:
Yes, I support the separation of church and state. I'm just not very high
on Atheists.
|
| "Everything that American Atheists
does, Rob, is bullshit."
- Ed Murnane, cochairman of the
Bush-Quayle '88 Illinois campaign, October 29, 1988, responding to
AA reporter Robert I. Sherman regarding a lawsuit filed because students
are required to pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States "one
nation under God". Full text of exchange follows:
Murnane: It's
bullshit.
Sherman: What is bullshit?
Murnane: Everything
that American Atheists does, Rob, is bullshit.
Sherman: Thank you
for telling me what the official position of the Bush campaign is on this
issue.
Murnane: You're
welcome!
|
| "What you should do for me is what
you should do for everybody: Believe in
God. Get off our backs."
- Ed Derwinski, the Secretary
of the Department of Veteran's Affairs, responding to the question
of what American Atheists could do to have the Bush administration
take an interest in the problem of discrimination against American Atheist
veterans. January 3, 1991 |
"Therefore, I, George W. Bush, Governor
of Texas, do hereby proclaim June 10, 2000, Jesus
Day in Texas and urge the appropriate recognition whereof, In
official recognition whereof, I hereby affix my signature this 17th day
of April, 2000."
- George W. Bush, "Jesus Day
2000" Proclamation |
| "We receive our rights from God."
"The decision points up the fact
that we need common-sense judges who understand that our rights were derived
from God. Those are the kind of judges I intend to put on the bench."
- George W. Bush, in statements
to reporters with Russian President Vladimir Putin. (Note: Putin
is an atheist.) Bush was criticizing the 9th Circuit Court of
Appeals decision that references to God make reciting the Pledge of Allegiance
in schools unconstitutional. June 26, 2002 |
"We are a nation conceived, born
and nurtured by faith... Our faith is declared in our Constitution, on
our currency and in our lives."
- Bob Dole, Republican
Presidential Candidate |
"Today we are engaged in a final,
all-out battle between communistic atheism and Christianity."
- Sen. Joseph McCarthy, in his
famous address to the Ohio County Women's Republican Club on February 9,
1950 |
"The "wall
of separation between church and state" is a metaphor based on bad history,
a metaphor which has proved useless as a guide to judging. It should be
frankly and explicitly abandoned."
- William Rehnquist, Chief Justice
of the U.S. Supreme Court, Dissenting Opinion in Wallace v. Jaffree
(1985) |
"God, the source of all knowledge,
should never have been expelled from our children's classrooms."
- Ronald Reagan, address, National
Religious Broadcasters, Washington, D.C., January, 1984, quoted from Menendez
and Doerr, The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom |
“I want you to just let a wave of
intolerance wash over you. I want you to let a wave of hatred wash
over you. Yes, hate is good. Our goal is a Christian nation.
We have a Biblical duty, we are called by God, to conquer this country.
We don’t want equal time. We don’t want pluralism.”
- Randall Terry, founder
of Operation Rescue quoted in The News-Sentinel, 8-16-93 |
"Tolerance is the worst roar of
all, including tolerance for homosexuals, feminists, and religions that
don't follow Christ."
- Josh McDowell, at a
Youth for Christ rally in 1994 |
"God extends his grace to his people
(and mankind in general) when he destroys the wicked, because in destroying
the wicked, he is averting their evil works that so plague God's children
and mankind in general. When he maims and kills cultists and theological
liberals, he prevents the spread of heretical doctrine that damns souls...God's
judgment -- not his favor -- leads the world to righteousness. We should
petition God's judgment on the wicked because judgment is a form of grace."
- Andrew Sandlin, "Hatred
for God's Enemies", written for the Chalcedon Foundation |
"It was Christians, you know, not
pagans, who were responsible for the Holocaust. It was Christians, not
pagans, who lynched people here in the South, who burned people at the
stake, frequently in the name of this Jesus Christ"
- Archbishop Desmond Tutu,
U.S. Conference for the World Council of Churches, 2000 |
|
Notable Examples
from Other Countries
|
“It is quite unlawful to demand,
defend, or to grant unconditional freedom of thought, or speech, of writing
or worship, as if these were so many rights given by nature to man.”
- Pope Leo XIII, “Great
Encyclical Letters” (p.16) |
"Only faith in Christ gives rise
to a culture contrary to egotism and death."
- Pope John Paul II, mass
rally in Mexico City, 1/25/1999 |
"One million Arabs are not worth
a Jewish fingernail."
- Rabbi Ya'acov Perin |
The earth is flat, and anyone who
disputes this claim is an atheist who deserves to be punished."
- Sheik Abdel-Aziz Ibn
Baaz, Supreme religious authority, Saudi Arabia, 1993 |
"Therefore, I am convinced that
I am acting as the agent of our Creator.
By fighting off the Jews, I am doing the Lord's work."
- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf |
Secular schools can never be tolerated
because such a school has no religious instruction and a general moral
instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently,
all character training and religion must be derived from faith.... We need
believing people.
- Adolf Hitler, April 26,
1933, from a speech made during negotiations leading to the Nazi-Vatican
Concordat of 1933 |
"The good Christian should beware
the mathematician and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already
exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken
the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of hell."
- Saint Augustine (354-430),
Christian church father, bishop |