My, my, how blessed some politicians and televangelists are to have a pipeline to God.
Take New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, who spoke for God when he rambled on that Hurricane Katrina was proof "God is mad at America" and that New Orleans will be racially "chocolate" because "It's the way God wants it to be"?
Maybe Nagin simply has learned from others who find fame, fortune, political success and even acquittal in criminal trials by claiming to be a godly emissary.
The most notorious self-proclaimed communicant with God, televangelist Pat Robertson, sporadically hoodwinks his 700 Club television audience with oddball claims about God's latest anger or instructions.
(God has never replied to me that I know, although I'm devout and regular in my communications with Him. As a child, a wartime GI and well into my years, I've regularly recited a prayer that serves me well -- "Now I lay me down to sleep/ I pray the Lord my soul to keep..." -- appended with names of family and friends deserving His care. )
It mystifies me when public figures who quote God seem to be at variance. Robertson, for example, says God is angry about gays. But I hear there are clergymen who believe God embraces gays as part of the human brotherhood.
Does God send different messages to different people and different religious groups? And which should we believe?
Some of the self-proclaimed godly are suspect. The sleazy Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who scammed tens of millions of dollars from Native Americans to buy congressional votes, has spread tainted money to the likes of Ralph Reed, the baby-faced, onetime, holier-than-thou Christian Coalition mouthpiece now running for lieutenant governor of Georgia; to James Dobson, the psychologist turned White House religious adviser, and to Louis Sheldon, the fiery traditional values crusader.
Then there are those supreme con men of the cloth, the Rev. Jimmy Swaggert, the weeping TV preacher who confessed to hooking up with prostitutes in crummy motels, and the adulterous embezzler, the Rev. Jim Bakker, who robbed supporters of millions before going to jail.
The ultimate recent sacrilege probably was hatched by Richard Scrushy, CEO of Birmingham-based HealthSouth, accused of fleecing the company of $279 million and facing life in prison.
Scrushy joined an evangelical black church, obtained ordination as a nondenominational minister, paid for a TV prayer program featuring himself and his third wife, and thereafter convinced saps on the jury that a man of God couldn't possibly have been a crook.
Pat Murphy
