Recent terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C., came because the nation has insulted God and lost divine protection, the Rev. Jerry Falwell and religious broadcaster Pat Robertson said last week.
'We have imagined ourselves invulnerable and have been consumed by the pursuit of health, wealth, material pleasures and sexuality, Robertson said in a Sept. 13 statement.
Falwell, a baptist minister and chancellor of Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., said he blames the attacks on pagans, abortionists, feminists, homosexuals, the American Civil Liberties Union and the People for the American Way, the Associated Press reported.
Falwell later said he did not mean to blame single groups.
Wake Forest University Divinity School Dean Bill Leonard criticized the comments.
'It trivializes theology. It trivializes the dead,' he said in the AP report.