Pat Robertson Remarks on Alzheimer’s Stir Passions by Erik Eckholm

The Rev. Pat Robertson’s suggestion that a man whose wife was “gone” with Alzheimer’s should divorce her if he felt a need for new companionship has provoked a storm of condemnation from other Christian leaders but a more understanding response from advocates of families facing the shattering disease.
On his television show, “The 700 Club,” on Tuesday, Mr. Robertson, a prominent evangelical who once ran for president, took a call from a man who asked what he should say to a friend whose wife was deep into dementia and no longer recognized him.
“His wife as he knows her is gone,” the caller said, and the friend is “bitter at God for allowing his wife to be in that condition, and now he’s started seeing another woman.”
“This is a terribly hard thing,” Mr. Robertson said, clearly struggling with the subject matter. “I hate Alzheimer’s. It is one of the most awful things, because here’s the loved one — this is the woman or man that you have loved for 20, 30, 40 years, and suddenly that person is gone “
“I know it sounds cruel,” he continued, “but if he’s going to do something, he should divorce her and start all over again, but to make sure she has custodial care, somebody looking after her.”
When Mr. Robertson’s co-anchor on the show wondered if that was consistent with marriage vows, Mr. Robertson noted the pledge of “’til death do us part,” but added, “This is a kind of death.”
He said the question presented an ethical dilemma beyond his ability to answer. “I certainly wouldn’t put a guilt trip on you if you decided that you had to have companionship, you’re lonely, you have to have companionship,” Mr. Robertson said.
The reaction from many evangelical leaders, who see traditional marriage as the cornerstone of morality and society, was harsh and disbelieving.
“This is more than an embarrassment,” Russell D. Moore, dean of the School of Theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., wrote in a blog post on Thursday. “This is more than cruelty. This is a repudiation of the gospel of Jesus Christ.”
But Beth Kallmyer, senior director of constituent services at the Alzheimer’s Association in Chicago, declined to question Mr. Robertson’s remarks.
“This is a challenging, devastating and eventually fatal illness, and it affects everybody differently,” she said. “The most important thing is that families get help.”
In the association’s experience, she said, it is rare for people to get divorced because of Alzheimer’s. “Families tend to rally round and support the patient,” she said.
But Alzheimer’s, compared to many other fatal diseases, can go on for years, progressively worsening.
“The decisions people make are personal,” Ms. Kallmyer said. If a caller to the association’s helpline asked if it was reasonable to date someone else, she said, “we wouldn’t say one way or another — we’d walk them through their situation.”
Mr. Robertson helped make the Christian Coalition into a formidable political force in the 1990s and is a popular televangelist. But he has also stirred hostility from fellow Christians over the years with unorthodox statements, including a defense of China’s one-child population policy at one point and stating that dire events like the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the Haiti earthquake were punishments from God.
“Few Christians take Robertson all that seriously anymore,” Mr. Moore wrote. “Most roll their eyes and shake their heads when he makes another outlandish comment.”

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