The American Conservative

What does this tell us about Wright and Robertson — and of Dante? That human beings are not machines. What is best and what is worst in us comes out of the meeting of our minds and our hearts, of our thoughts with our experiences. If fundamentalist Christianity rescued Phil Robertson from his self-created Hell, is it really so hard to understand why he would become a fierce exponent of it? I don’t have to share his theology to understand why he embraced it. Similarly, is it really so difficult to understand why Jeremiah Wright embraced his false gospel? I certainly don’t share his theology — in fact, I repudiate it — but after considering what he had been through, I had a lot more sympathy for him.