The book contains various religious pronouncements.

"I have not come to make pious religious pronouncements," Christopher said.

Nevertheless, there was no question of interfering when a religious pronouncement was about to be made.

The intra-religious disputes (Sunnis and Shi'a, for example) he planned to handle through a sweeping fatwa, or religious pronouncement of tolerance - that would look admirable even to his enemies.

As Riel's religious pronouncements became increasingly removed from Roman Catholicism, the clergy began to distance themselves, and father Alexis André cautioned Riel against mixing religion and politics.

But over the past two decades Mr. Robertson has made many religious pronouncements on television and in four books, beginning with his autobiography, "Shout It From the Housetops," in 1972.

He said he did not believe that any disclosures over the last two months in Federal Court in Manhattan were enough to prove the prosecution's contention that his religious pronouncements incited violence.

In a recent fatwa - a religious pronouncement - Kadhem al-Husseini al-Haeri, one of the most influential Iraqi clerics, urged his followers to spurn their American occupiers.

A blessing is a type of religious pronouncement.

About this time, Mr. Johnson and Mr. Wilentz report, he also started making strange religious pronouncements.