In the name of God.

The day after the election Bob Jones III, president of Bob Jones University, sent a congratulatory letter to George W. Bush. Sounding a bit cranky and, unsurprisingly, holier-than-thou, Jones III was not altogether in high spirits about America: "In your re-election, God has graciously granted America--though she doesn't deserve it--a reprieve from the agenda of paganism."

That's pretty much the flip side of what Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell said about the attacks of September 11, 2001. When something good happens, like Bush's re-election, Jones III says we don't deserve it. Conversely, when something bad happened, like September 11, Falwell and Robertson say we deserved it.

The good ministers' faith--based deal? What's good we don't deserve, what's bad we do deserve. God never gets the blame and we're never right--it's a game of heads He wins, tails we lose. If the right candidate wins, it's simply something "God has graciously granted." If bodies rain down from the sky in Manhattan, it's our fault.

More specifically, here's how Falwell explained the theology when Robertson asked him during a TV interview how he felt about September 11: "What we saw on Tuesday, as terrible as it is, could be miniscule if, in fact, God continues to lift the curtain and allows the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve."

Pointing his pious finger toward why exactly God lifted the alleged curtain, Falwell said, "The ACLU has got to take a lot of blame for this." plus there's blame for "throwing God out of the public square," and of course the protective curtain--the theological equivalent of a missile defense system--was pulled because of "the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays" as well as "the Christ-haters, the People for the American Way, and NOW."

The whole shebang came down, in other words, because of Roseanne and Gloria Steinem, not because of Islamic Jihad and Mohammed Atta and his virgin-seeking squadron of flyboys.

Robertson replied, "I totally concur, and the problem is we've adopted that agenda at the highest levels of our government, and so we're responsible as a free society for what the top people do, and the top people, of course, is the court system."

If I had to guess, I'd say that Robertson would have been more contented on September 11 if United Flight 93, instead of crashing into a field, had proceeded on its way to Washington and flattened the U.S. Supreme Court.

In any case, Bob Jones III continued in his congratulatory note to President Bush as follows: "You have been given a mandate. We the people expect your voice to be like the clear and certain sound of a trumpet. Because you seek the Lord daily, we who know the Lord will follow that kind of voice eagerly. Don't equivocate. Put your agenda on the front burner and let it boil. You owe the liberals nothing. They despise you because they despise your Christ."

As a footnote, it's interesting to look at how those who say they "know the Lord" run things. From its founding in 1927 until 1971 blacks were prohibited from enrolling at Bob Jones University. From 1971 through 1975 only married blacks were permitted to attend. Following a court decision, the school began to admit unmarried blacks in 1976 but adopted a discipline rule that prohibited interracial dating and marriage; for example, interracial dating and marriage meant expulsion and students affiliated with any group that promoted any change in the school's dating regulations were similarly subject to expulsion. The reason? Biblical, according to the school's founder, Bob Jones I. If God wanted people together, He wouldn't have made them in different colors.

And so what's next? From the Quran: "Believers, make war on the infidels who dwell around you." And from Bob Woodward in his book, Bush at War, describing an interview with George W. Bush: "The president was casting his mission and that of the country in the grand vision of God's master plan." wherein he promised, in his own words, "to export death and violence to the four corners of the Earth in defense of this great country and rid the world of evil"

Ralph R. Reiland is the B. Kenneth Simon Professor of Free Enterprise at Robert Morris University and a columnist with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.