Evangelist Opposed as Candidate

An influential minister in evangelical Protestantism said he is opposed to the idea of the Rev. M. G. (Pat) Robertson running for political office because the television evangelist has been “branded” as a partisan of the Religious Right.

The Rev. Ray C. Stedman, a Palo Alto pastor who chaired the Congress on Biblical Exposition in Anaheim this week, said in an interview that even though “I feel in close harmony” with Robertson on many things, “I would regret him running for political office.”

Since last fall, Robertson has let it be known that he is exploring the possibility of bidding for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination in 1988.

“I think he is too branded as a partisan whose positions would be extremely divisive in America,” Stedman said.

The Congress on Biblical Exposition, a first-time conference designed to encourage preaching informed by in-depth Bible study, was largely organized by Stedman, pastor of Peninsula Bible Church since 1950 and a widely known evangelical speaker and author.

Political analysts have said that Robertson would seem to have little chance to win the GOP presidential nomination, but observers are less sure of what effects his continued interest in the race would have in the Republican Party and in its large voting constituency among conservative Christians.

Charles Colson, another influential evangelical who was a speaker at the Congress on Biblical Exposition, told a news briefing that he had advised Robertson during a three-hour private discussion that the television evangelist should not decide to run unless he were sure “that God was calling him” to do it.

“I tried to tell him the downside of running a political campaign, and reminded him that if he ran, he’d have to step down from the pulpit entirely,” Colson said.

The Congress on Biblical Exposition, which attracted more than 3,000 ministers and church lay leaders, grew partly out of a conference three years ago in San Diego promoting a hard line on an “inerrant Bible” within evangelicalism.

But the often-divisive issue among conservative Protestants was not a part of the schedule of speeches and workshops at the Anaheim Convention Center and Marriott Hotel.

Otherwise, said Mike Regele, planning committee chairman for the Congress, there would not have been such a diversity of speakers, which included Anglican John Stott of London, Pentecostal pastor Jack Hayford of Van Nuys and faculty members of Pasadena’s Fuller Theological Seminary.

“Everyone involved was delighted that we have been able to cross into every camp of the evangelical world,” Regele said.

Many evangelicals prefer to affirm the Bible as “infallible” for faith and guidance in describing the book’s authority. The differences can arise over the perceived intentions of biblical authors--whether, for instance, the opening chapters were meant to be literal historical and scientific accounts or were meant to convey religious truths in other than literal ways.

A leading “inerrancy” advocate, the Rev. James M. Boice, a Philadelphia pastor and a speaker at the Anaheim congress, said interest has not flagged in the movement.

Boice said the Congress on the Bible in San Diego in 1982, which sparked a number of articles and books by proponents of “the high view of Bible interpretation,” will be followed by two gatherings intended to demonstrate how the Bible can be applied to contemporary problems.

Charles Colson is the chairman of Congress on the Bible II Sept. 23-27 in Washington. Its discussions will be guided by papers written for a “summit meeting” this December in Chicago of the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy, chaired by Boice.

Ismar Schorsch, an authority on European Jewish history, has been named the new chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, a post which bestows spiritual leadership on the holder for the 1.2 million members of the Conservative wing of Judaism.

The seminary’s main facility in New York City, founded 100 years ago, trains teachers, cantors and rabbis. The University of Judaism in Los Angeles is an affiliated undergraduate school.

Schorsch served as the seminary’s first provost from 1980 to 1984. He will succeed Gerson D. Cohen, who held the office for 13 years, on July 1.