"I'll hold my nose and vote" for Mitt Romney, says Southern Baptist pastor Robert Jeffress, who made headlines in October for calling the Mormon Church a cult.
Jeffress, head of a Texas megachurch, was playing "who's a Christian?" -- the hot talk show quiz for evangelicals on Tuesday -- with MSNBC host Lawrence O'Donnell.
You may recall Jeffress from his sidling up to Gov. Rick Perry before Perry fell out of the race. Or maybe when he told his First Baptist Dallas congregation that
Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and Mormonism are all false religions and I stand by those statements.
He was invited aboard to parry the salvation status of the GOP candidates after Franklin Graham swept morning talk headlines with his insinuations that, really, you know President Obama must be Muslim. Graham also repeated his hedge line -- acknowledging that Obama does say he's Christian, but no one can see into Obama's heart, the evangelist said on Morning Joe.
However, Graham did have X-ray soul vision on Rick Santorum, promptly decreeing that he knew Santorum was indeed Christian because of the stands Santorum takes on values.
All of this would make Billy Graham's head shake. The senior evangelist learned the hard way, after his too-close association with Richard Nixon, to stay out of politics. And for the last decades of his public career, whenever asked to pass judgment on someone else's soul, he demurred. That job, he would always say, was God's alone.
Franklin, evidently, thinks God needs help on this.
Meanwhile, Jeffress had no trouble at all denouncing Mormonism as not "historic Christianity" while annoucing he would "hold his nose" and vote for the Mormon in the race.
Why O'Donnell didn't follow up with asking him about Catholic Santorum's Franklin-approved-Christian values is a strange gap. Indeed, Jeffress was once called 'a poster boy for hatred' by the zealous defender of the Catholic Church Bill Donohue.
DO YOU THINK... the presidential election is a more-Christian-than-thou showdown?
Cathy Lynn Grossman is too fidgety to meditate. But talking about visions and values, faith and ethics lights her up. Join in at Faith & Reason. More about Cathy.
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