Televangelist Pat Robertson’s comments about leaving a spouse who has Alzheimer’s have drawn fire from every outlet imaginable. Evangelical Christian megachurch leaders condemned Robertson’s advice to a viewer of his 700 Club show that it’s OK to leave a spouse for another love interest if the spouse has Alzheimer’s. Christianity Today Magazine wrote, “Pat Robertson Repudiates the Gospel.” And The Alzheimer’s Foundation of America issued a statement advocating compassion for Alzheimer’s patients and their families and classified Robertson’s comment as insensitive.
Eric J. Hall, founding president and chief executive officer of the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America, in a statement said that Robertson’s comments highlight the very need for greater efforts to educate the public about the impact of Alzheimer’s disease on individuals and their families, and to destroy the stigma and misperceptions that surround the brain disorder.
“There is no doubt that this heartbreaking disease robs people of their memories and other intellectual functions, but to liken Alzheimer’s disease to, as Mr. Robertson said, ‘a kind of death’ fosters an insensitivity that feeds misperceptions about the disease,” Hall said. “It fails to take into account that people with Alzheimer’s disease, although impaired, deserve optimal care and dignity. Love and compassion are the greatest gifts for every human being until their very last breath.”
Ironically, Robertson’s fellow Christian leaders were not as kind.
The Christian Post offers these comments:
“I’m just flabbergasted,” Joel Hunter, pastor of the 15,000-member Northland Church in Orlando, Fla., told ABC News. “I just don’t know how anyone who is reading Scripture or is even familiar with the traditional wedding vows can come out with a statement like that.”
Hunter continued, “Obviously, we can all rationalize the legitimacy for our own comfort that would somehow make it OK to divorce our spouse if circumstances become very different or inconvenient. … That’s almost universal, but there’s just no way you can get out of what Jesus says about marriage.”
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ABC News also spoke with Leith Anderson, president of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE).
According to Anderson, marriage is a lifelong and faithful commitment between a man and a woman that calls for the couple to endure good times and bad.
Anderson referred to the book of Corinthians when he spoke with ABC News, saying, “The wife’s body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband’s body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife. You can’t quit your own body with Alzheimer’s, so you shouldn’t quit your husband’s or wife’s body either.”
Albert Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, reacted to Robertson’s comments on Twitter, writing, “This is what happens when you abandon Scripture and do theology and morality by your gizzard. Let’s call it what it is.”
John Piper, of Desiring God Ministries, also commented on Twitter, writing, “Pat Robertson’s view of how Christ loves the church and gives himself for her. Leave her for another.”
Christianity Today writes,
This is more than an embarrassment. This is more than cruelty. This is a repudiation of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Few Christians take Robertson all that seriously anymore. Most roll their eyes, and shake their heads when he makes another outlandish comment (for instance, defending China’s brutal one-child abortion policy to identifying God’s judgment on specific actions in the September 11 attacks, Hurricane Katrina, or the Haiti earthquake). This is serious, though, because it points to an issue that is much bigger than Robertson.
William Saletan at Slate says “Robertson has been denounced not just as a hypocrite by liberals, but as a heretic by Christians,” but pens a despicably supportive piece about Robertson, mischaracterizing Robertson’s words, saying, “Robertson didn’t advocate divorce.” Perhaps Saletan would like to watch the video again?
Saletan expands the comments made by Joel Hunter to ABC:
Joel Hunter, a prominent evangelical pastor, sees no wiggle room in [Robertson’s] words. “We can all rationalize” that it’s “OK to divorce our spouse if circumstances become very different or inconvenient,” Hunter told ABC News. But “we have to stop trying to mischaracterize what Scripture says for our own convenience.” Hunter worried that “you could do this for anything.” For example: “My husband watches and plays video games, and so he has left the marriage, and it’s kind of like a death.”
For the record, here’s what Pat Robertson actually said, courtesy of Slate:
At the tail end of Tuesday’s show, his cohost, Terry Meeuwsen, read a chat-room question from a man seeking advice. The message said:
I have a friend whose wife suffers from Alzheimer’s. She doesn’t even recognize him anymore, and, as you can imagine, the marriage has been rough. My friend has gotten bitter at God for allowing his wife to be in that condition, and now he’s started seeing another woman. He says that he should be allowed to see other people because his wife as he knows her is gone … I’m not quite sure what to tell him.
Meeuwsen turned to Robertson for an answer. In the video, you can see him struggling:
That is a terribly hard thing. I hate Alzheimer’s. It is one of the most awful things, because here’s the loved one—this is the woman or man that you have loved for 20, 30, 40 years, and suddenly that person is gone. They’re gone. They are gone. So what he says basically is correct, but—I know it sounds cruel, but if he’s going to do something, he should divorce her and start all over again. But to make sure she has custodial care and somebody looking after her—
Meeuwsen interjected: “But isn’t that the vow that we take when we marry someone, that it’s for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer?” To this, Robertson replied,
Yeah, I know, if you respect that vow, but you say “till death do us part,” this is a kind of death. So that’s what he’s saying, is that she’s like—but this is an ethical question that is beyond my ken to tell you. But I certainly wouldn’t put a guilt trip on you if you decided that you had to have companionship. You’re lonely, and you’re asking for some companionship, as opposed to—but what a grief. I know one man who went to see his wife every single day, and she didn’t recognize him one single day, and she would complain that he never came to see her. And it’s really hurtful, because they say crazy things. … It is a terribly difficult thing for somebody, and I can’t fault them for wanting some kind of companionship. And if he says in a sense she is gone, he’s right. It’s like a walking death. But get some ethicist besides me to give you the answer, because I recognize the dilemma and the last thing I’d do is condemn you for taking that kind of action.