Radio host Peter Sagal cracked a joke on his NPR show, “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me,” that took aim at a Catholic advertisement, but some Protestants were offended, as well.
Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, told Fox News‘ Bill O’Reilly he could see the joke as “blasphemous.”
“I don’t want to speculate what was going through that sick mind, but what I do want to point out, Bill, this is illustrates the hypocrisy, the double standard of the secular media when it comes to Christianity,” he tells O’Reilly. “I can guarantee you one thing that if this host had been ridiculing Mohammed or Islam, he would have been out overnight. Look at what they did to Juan Williams just a few years ago. But when it comes to Christianity, it’s open season.”
Context is key, though, Jeffress says.
“I think the context to me is something that at the very least is dirty, and possibly could be blasphemous,” he says.
O’Reilly counters: “I truly hope that his comment about Jesus was not salacious, all right? I truly hope that maybe he was saying that Jesus’ hands were nailed to the cross and that’s why, maybe. You know. I mean, it’s Christmas, Pastor. I want to be as charitable as I can to this man. If indeed, it was salacious what he was trying to get at with Jesus, then that is—he should be fired immediately. I don’t know if we can prove that or not.”
Whether it was blasphemous could be left to interpretation. However, Jeffress says, “NPR at the very least is ridiculing Christianity.”
