Salazar regrets 'Antichrist' barb Senator says he meant only to accuse Dobson of being 'self-serving'
By M.E. Sprengelmeyer, Rocky Mountain News
WASHINGTON - Sen. Ken Salazar said Wednesday he regrets referring to Focus on the Family and its founder James Dobson as "the Antichrist" - a term among the worst slurs in Christianity. Salazar issued a statement Wednesday evening, backing down from a remark he made Tuesday night during an audio interview aired on KKTV of Colorado Springs.
In that interview, Salazar said of Focus on the Family: "From my point of view, they are the Antichrist of the world."
The remark and Salazar's retraction represent the latest development in a bitter fight over President Bush's judicial nominees and efforts by religious groups like Focus on the Family to get them approved by the Senate.
"After being relentlessly attacked in telephone calls, e-mails, newspapers and radio stations all across Colorado, having my faith questioned, and having my wife's business picketed as part of these attacks, I spoke about Jim Dobson and his efforts and used the term 'the Antichrist,' " Salazar said in a written statement.
"I regret having used that term. I meant to say this approach was unchristian, meaning self-serving and selfish."
Tom Minnery, vice president of government and public policy for Focus on the Family, said "Antichrist" can be considered the worst insult in Christianity. It refers to a great antagonist of Christ who was expected to spread evil prior to the end of the world.
"It's a person, very powerful, described in the Book of Revelations at the end of the age (who) rises up against Christ and everything Christ stands for," Minnery said. "Christ ultimately defeats the Antichrist and reigns on earth.
"That's about as bad as you can get . . . it's very offensive. The Antichrist is exactly what the term indicates, the embodiment of everything that opposes Christ. It leaves us speechless."
David L. Weddle, professor of religion and chairman of the department of religion at Colorado College, calls Antichrist the "most religiously charged word in Christianity."
"The Antichrist is the human agent (who) brings about the end of history," Weddle said. "It's hard to come up with a more irredeemably damned figure than that.
"Whenever politicians begin to throw around religious rhetoric, they need to pay special attention to a greater degree of theological sophistication than most of them are capable of employing.
"I don't think Ken Salazar had all this in mind, quite frankly. I think what he had in mind was the milder notion that by questioning his motives, the members of Focus on the Family were acting in an unchristian way. Politicians have a certain disposition toward exaggeration."
The fight between Colorado's junior senator and arguably the most powerful figure in evangelical circles began with an ad campaign.
Focus on the Family's political arm had placed print and radio ads against Salazar, a Democrat, and senators in 15 states, urging them to "STOP the nonsense" and end filibuster rules that have prevented 10 controversial judicial nominees from getting up-or-down confirmation votes.
Salazar, who is Catholic, fired back last week, accusing Focus on the Family of "hijacking Christianity" and trying to turn the United States into a "theocracy."
On Sunday, Dobson and other conservative religious activists held a rally dubbed "Justice Sunday" in Louisville, Ky., that was beamed into churches and homes across the country. They highlighted the phone numbers of Salazar and other targeted senators, urging viewers to call and register their opposition to the filibuster.
That same day, a separate church group picketed a Westminster Dairy Queen run by Salazar's wife, Hope. Focus on the Family officials denied having anything to do with the protest, but it angered Salazar that opponents were targeting a family member, not him.
After the Antichrist remark, Focus issued a statement accusing Salazar of "overheated rhetoric" and "trying to take attention away from his failure to keep his campaign promises."
During the 2004 election campaign, Salazar said he favored giving qualified judicial nominees up-or-down votes. Since taking office in January, he has defended the minority party's right to use the filibuster as a way of ensuring that nominees have at least some bipartisan backing.
A filibuster extends debate indefinitely, preventing nominees from getting a vote unless 60 of the 100 senators agree to cut off the debate. Republicans have threatened to change Senate rules to end the filibuster on judicial nominations, and Democrats have said they might retaliate by slowing other legislative action.
The issue is an emotional one for religious groups that believe some nominees have been blocked because of their religious beliefs - something Democrats deny. Some of these groups blame liberal judges for not enforcing decency standards, denying public displays of the Ten Commandments or recently refusing to reinstate a feeding tube for Terri Schiavo.
One former Salazar rival predicted Wednesday that the senator would come to regret his harsh words against religious conservatives.
"The Senate has been and should be regarded as a deliberative body that is above the fray of name-calling and insult," said former Colorado Congressman Bob Schaffer, who lost the Republican U.S. Senate primary in 2004 and now leads a coalition pushing to end Senate filibuster rules.
Schaffer is state coordinator for The Judicial Confirmation Network, which recently launched the Web site www.SalazarWaffles.com to highlight the senator's alleged changing of position on giving nominees confirmation votes.
"Americans care about the judicial nominees for a variety of reasons," Schaffer said. "For some people it's religious, for others it's economic, and for others it's patriotic.
"By insulting those who believe that their religious freedom is at stake . . . he seems to have narrowed his individual emphasis on what ought to be a very broad, general discussion of substantive issues."
Salazar, meanwhile, is calling for a compromise that would allow some of President Bush's circuit court nominees to move forward as long as Democrats preserve the right to use filibusters in the future.
"My own view is that we should move forward with the compromise," Salazar said Wednesday.