A former vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention has called for a boycott of CBN and the “700 Club” until founder Pat Robertson “repents” of endorsing Rudy Giuliani for president.
Wiley Drake, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Buena Park, Calif., urged evangelicals to stop watching CBN programs, refrain from ordering products and withhold gifts from the network, giving them instead to other Christian organizations.
Contrary to what some Christian believe, Drake said, boycotts are effective. In the early 1990s, he said, Christians boycotted Kmart and succeeded in getting pornography removed from store shelves. Last year Wal-Mart gave money to homosexual activists, and after Christians protested the company changed its mind.
In 1996, while working in California with Don Wildmon of the American Family Association, Drake said he went to the Southern Baptist Convention as a messenger and proposed the denomination boycott the Walt Disney Co. for departing from family values.
“And of course the rest is history,” Drake said Monday on his radio show broadcast on the Internet.
Drake said he told people if 25 percent of Southern Baptists did what the Drake family was going to do–not go to Disney properties or buy Disney products for at least a year–it would cost the company millions of dollars.
“I don’t know how many of our people boycotted Walt Disney,” Drake said. “I don’t know how much it cost them. But Michael Eisner cussed, ‘That blankety-blank Wiley Drake cost me $10 million off my bonus this year.'”
“The boycott worked on Disney,” Drake said. “The boycott worked on Wal-Mart. The boycott worked on Kmart.”
Drake said if forced to choose between voting for Giuliani or Hillary Clinton: “I would have to go with Hillary, because Hillary is not a pro-abortion candidate. She’s pro-choice, and there’s a difference.”
“Giuliani, on the other hand, is not pro-choice,” Drake said. “He is pro-abortion,” having increased public funding for abortion while mayor of New York. “It would be worse in our country under him than under Hillary.”
Drake said Clinton would also say she is tolerant of homosexuality and would allow gays freedom, but: “She is not pro-homosexual. She does not like homosexuals but wants them to have their ‘freedom.'”
Giuliani, on the other hand “has even gone so far to be a cross-dresser,” Drake said, and marched in a gay-pride parade.
“He is not only tolerant, he is active,” Drake said. “I cannot imagine Hillary, for example, dressing up like a man and marching in a gay-pride parade.”
“We are in a serious situation when one of our leaders–namely Robertson–endorses a man like this,” Drake said. “Whether he is ignorant when he does this, or he is senile, or he just wants to be pastor to a president, I just don’t understand.”
Drake, who recently made headlines for calling for “imprecatory prayer” against Americans United for Separation of Church and State for filing a complaint against him with the IRS, said he is praying that Robertson will repent and God will show him mercy.
“It’s a terrible thing, the Bible says, to fall into the hands of an angry God,” Drake said. “I can’t imagine if little old Pastor Wiley–who has considered himself to be part of this movement against killing babies and the sodomite agenda–if I am angry at that, how much more is my Father angry at what Pat Robertson has done.”
“Pat Robertson, in my opinion, has denied the very gospel he has preached all these years,” Drake said.
Drake called on other religious leaders to join his boycott call.
“I’m calling on Dr. Dobson; I’m calling on Dr. Wildmon,” Drake said. “I’m calling on Dr. Land of the Southern Baptist Convention. I’m calling on men of God that will come and say we support, we endorse, the boycott.”
He also invited listeners to endorse the boycott by e-mailing him or calling in to his radio show.
Drake urged listeners to call CBN and let them know support that otherwise would have gone to them will instead be given to someone else.
“Do not tune in to the ‘700 Club.’ Do not tune in to CBN,” he said. “I would encourage you to make sure that you support this boycott.”
Bob Allen is managing editor of EthicsDaily.com.
Managing editor at EthicsDaily.com from 2003-2009, Allen wrote more than 1,500 news stories during his tenure.
