Word: pardon
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...issues of Watergate, President Nixon's guilt or culpability, and even President Ford's pardon seemed to have played relatively small roles in the election. Most voters were much more concerned about inflation, the economy and local issues...
President Ford, invoking the name of God five times, might have thought that he was on solid theological ground in pronouncing a "full, free and absolute pardon" for former President Nixon. Ford had shown compassion and mercy, and few virtues win higher praise in sacred or contemporary theological writings. "What does the Lord require of thee," says the Book of Micah, "but to do justly and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" The Apostle Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians, exhorts Christians to "be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another...
...Ford misjudged both Americans in general and American churchmen in particular. Evangelist Billy Graham applauded the Sabbath pardon, but he was a decided exception. Conservative or liberal, Christian or Jew, most other religious thinkers deplored Ford's action on grounds of theology as well as simple justice...
Beyond the disastrous political and social consequences?the reopened Watergate wound, the revived climate of distrust and division?the pardon, for all its compassion, is bad theology. On its own terms, within Ford's Bible-oriented, evangelical Christian framework, it does not meet traditional tests for an act of judicial mercy. One of the most serious defects is Nixon's continuing reluctance to admit any real fault in the Watergate affair...
...pain" over the Watergate "mistakes" and "misjudgments." His behavior even comes perilously close to that in Jesus' famous parable of the unmerciful servant: a man had been forgiven a large debt by his master, then brutally tried to collect what was owed him by a subordinate. After his own pardon, Nixon fervently opposes amnesty for Viet Nam War resisters. Indeed, according to his son-in-law David Eisenhower, Nixon now says that he would not have accepted pardon at all if it had been tied to amnesty...