When a killing spree happens in this country, we’ve come to expect a nut job pastor to claim that it’s a warning from God. Sadly, Tuesday’s knife attack at Ohio State proved to be no different. Less than 24 hours after a student slashed and wounded 10 people before being shot and killed by police, a leading religious right pastor claimed it was evidence of what happens when we don’t tell immigrants to get saved or get out.
Sam Rohrer, president of the American Pastors Network, dropped by TheDoveTV’s “Focus Today” on Wednesday. The discussion turned to the Ohio State attack. People for the American Way’s Right Wing Watch got a clip.
Rohrer told host Perry Atkinson that when immigrants come to a country “because of the blessings they believe exist there,” we are supposed to welcome them with open arms. However, he argued that countries are supposed to assimilate new arrivals by “pointing them to the God of heaven.” He believed Israel failed to do this with its immigrants–and America is going down the same path.
In the past, Rohrer said that people came to this country “because of what God did”–the freedoms we have. As long as we “presented them in the culture to this God,” this country was blessed. However, he argued, when this country decided that “God is no longer God, but government is God,” more people came to this country “who had no interest in our God.”
To Rohrer’s mind, this runs counter to the “historic biblical rules” on immigration, which require countries to only accept immigrants who are are willing to respect our God. Indeed, we are actually turning them against “the God of the Bible.” For that reason, Rohrer believed “God must discipline our country” until we resume taking in only immigrants who accept the Judeo-Christian God.
Rohrer then really went off the deep end. He claimed that there are large numbers of immigrants who are “here for the wrong reasons” and were allowed to come here by leaders “with wrong motives.” As far as he was concerned, the attacker at Ohio State was a textbook example of what happens when you take in immigrants “who have no respect for our God.” This guy may have broken our law, but was in “full conformity” with sharia law. Rohrer believed we would see more of this until we realized that we cannot have “two competing Gods, two competing systems of law” in this country.
Watch the whole thing here, if you can stand it. The discussion about the Ohio State attack began at around the 15-minute mark. Strangely, Rohrer went into this spiel after Atkinson asked him about how Christians should avoid becoming callous to true refugees. When Rohrer finished this hateful rant, Atkinson called it “the most brilliant explanation” he’d ever heard on the immigration issue.
Believe it or not, this sort of talk is actually very common in religious right circles. Just last year, for instance, Bryan Fischer argued that anyone who wants to this country should know up front that “we are a Christian country,” and will be expected to “adopt the religious practices of their host country.”
Unless I’m very wrong, what both Fischer and Rohrer are preaching is no different from de facto practice in Iran. According to the State Department, Iranian Christians are frequently subjected to arbitrary arrest and detention, and are all but barred from senior governmental and educational positions. This only proves what I have suspected for a very long time–the only difference between American fundies and the mullahs in Iran is that our fundies don’t wear black turbans.
You have to give Rohrer credit for one thing, though. We already know that the religious right wants to put the First Amendment in the shredder. He has now effectively admitted that, at least as a start, he wants to effectively repeal the First Amendment for any immigrants coming to this country.
As I’ve said a number of times, religious right leaders usually sound halfway reasonable in public, only to go full-on fascist when they think they’re only talking to the true believers. This screed from Rohrer is a textbook example of this. Let Rohrer know what you think of this outrageous suggestion on his Facebook page.
