The Way as Wriitten by Boss Tweed?

t is said that God works in mysterious ways, so who am I to deny the Rev. Pat Robertson’s claims of divine inspiration? But his admission at a private meeting Sept. 14 of the Christian Coalition that prayer led him to model the organization on the venal political machines of the past --”on the Tammany Halls and Hague and the Chicago machine and the Byrd machine in Virginia and all the rest of them”--does give one pause.

So, too, the reverend’s exhortation to the organization, which he founded and heads, to seize the White House by indulging a cynicism not easily attributed to the known teachings of Jesus: “You know, the principle of warfare that has been used forever by those who wish to beat another enemy is, you know, divide and conquer.”

Bizarre that the self-proclaimed leader of Christians should reach back four centuries before Christ and cite Chinese general Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War” as the basis of his strategy to totally control our political system. And, he made clear, that is his goal: “We’ve had a major presence in one of the major parties . . . . And we also said by the year 2000 we’d have the presidency and that’s to me the next goal. We can hold the Congress, get some more good people into the Congress and into the governor mansions and then focus on the White House.”

The tape-recorded copy of Robertson’s speech in Atlanta was released by Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and its authenticity was confirmed by a Christian Coalition spokesman.

Robertson’s voice on the tape ranges from the giddy to the menacing: “This is sort of speaking in the family. It’s speaking out of my heart and not from any kind of prepared text. If there’s any press here, would you please shoot yourself. Leave.”

Assured that no outsiders were present, Robertson made remarks that completely undermine the organization’s insistence that it does not actively work to elect political candidates, thereby violating the tax-exempt status that is under investigation by the IRS and the Federal Election Commission.

Robertson was clearly partisan when he stated: “So, I don’t think that at this time and juncture the Democrats are going to be able to take the White House unless we throw it away.” Nor is he concerned about the law.

“We need to be like a united front. I know that all these laws say that we’ve got to be careful, but there’s nothing that says we can’t have a few informal discussions among ourselves.” Actually there is, but I will leave it to the judicial authorities to determine when informal talks represent a conspiracy to evade the law.

The goal of this campaign activity is to “overturn the established order and take power away from a bunch of liberals and give it to those who love this country.” Presumably in the ranks of liberals who don’t love their country one would find former House Speaker Tom Foley, whom Robertson bragged in the speech of having hounded out of office in 1994.

Robertson said he intends to amend the Constitution with a “religious freedom amendment,” to end the Supreme Court’s insistence on a separation of church and state, which he termed “a distortion of what the framers of the Constitution intended.”

What hogwash! The framers were deeply aware of the menace posed by religious demagogues like Robertson. Thomas Jefferson refused to identify himself publicly as a Christian, writing that he was: “averse to the communication of my religious tenets to the public because it would . . . seduce public opinion to erect itself into that inquisition over the rights of conscience, which the laws have so justly proscribed. It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others . . . to give no example of concession, betraying the common right of independent opinion, by answering questions of faith, which the laws have left between God and himself.” Amen.

Privately, Jefferson did consider himself to be a Christian: “To the corruptions of Christianity I am, indeed, opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself.” Jefferson eschewed the dogmatic and embraced instead the “rich fragments” of a moral code left by the teachings of Jesus which he summarized as “inculcating universal philanthropy, not only to kindred and friends, to neighbors and countrymen, but to all mankind, gathering all into one family, under the bonds of love, charity, peace, common wants and common aids.”

I dare say that many liberals, Tom Foley included, can lay better claim to that moral code than the Christian Coalition’s Boss Tweed wannabe.