Pat Robertson’s definition of blind faith should make Christians everywhere shudder.

The religious broadcaster and founder of the Christian Coalition has said in recent broadcasts of his TV show “The 700 Club” that he thinks fellow Baptist Charles Taylor is being undermined as the “freely elected” president of Liberia by officials in the U.S. State Department who have “tried as hard as they can to destabilize Liberia” and are “paving the way for the Muslims to take over.”

And he said this even though he admits that he knows nothing about how Taylor has governed his West African nation or how he has engaged in civil war with neighboring nations.

“I don’t know what he has done or hasn’t done,” Robertson reportedly told Washington Post reporter Alan Cooperman.

The shame is that Robertson doesn’t “want” to know. One has visions of him sitting with his fingers stuffed in his ears, eyes scrunched shut and humming “Shine, Jesus, Shine” to himself so he can’t hear the truth about Taylor’s very un-Christlike behavior.

That Robertson gives Taylor a King’s X for earthly accountability because he professes to be a follower of Jesus should infuriate every Christian.

Yet how many of the more than 1 million Christian Broadcasting Network viewers will hear Robertson making statements of support for the financial underwriter of mass murder without finding out for themselves what kind of a man Taylor really is? How many will think that because Robertson says he’s a good guy, he must be a good guy?

Look at Taylor’s record: former warlord, indicted war crimes suspect, financier of a 10-year terrorism campaign in which tens of thousands of people were killed, raped, kidnapped or maimed by militias in neighboring Sierra Leone.

And this guy calls himself a Christian and has prostrated himself before the Liberian people, saying: “I am not your president. Jesus is!”

“Among the bad guys in the world today, Charles Taylor is in the top five,” said David Scheffer, a former U.S. ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues who helped create the joint U.N.-Sierra Leone war crimes court that indicted Taylor.

Yet Robertson believes the indictment “should be quashed,” and he defends Taylor by saying he was elected by the people, observes the rule of law and that his country has a working legislature and courts.

Sure, he may be on the dictatorial side, but aren’t most African leaders? Besides, even a bad Christian in charge has to be better than a Muslim.

Perhaps Robertson should brush up on what other theologians have said about the qualifications to run a government.

“I’d rather be ruled by a competent Turk than an incompetent Christian,” Martin Luther, the father of the Protestant Reformation, once said.

If Luther is not to Robertson’s liking as a theological reference point, perhaps Helmut Thielicke would do.

“Since government is tied not to theocratic directives but to the rational judgment of man, Christians are not the only ones qualified for political office,” said Thielicke, who was removed from his post as professor of theology at Heidelberg University by the Nazis in 1940.

Robertson’s litmus test of good vs. evil — professed Christian vs. everyone else — blinds him to the damning reality of Taylor’s presidency. Or has he been blinded by something else — say, $8 million that Robertson invested in a Liberian gold mining venture about four years ago, a deal that was brokered by Taylor’s government?

The obvious question that follows that little nugget of information is, “What’s a man of the cloth doing sinking $8 million in something as speculative as a gold mine?” Robertson says it was intended to help pay for humanitarian and evangelical efforts in Liberia.

But wouldn’t people in need of both temporal and heavenly nurturing be more quickly served if the $8 million went directly to food, medicine and missionaries with Bibles?

A gold mine seems like a strange vehicle for getting help directly to widows and orphans — and Liberia has plenty of those, thanks to Charles Taylor.

Jill “J.R.” Labbe is a senior editorial writer and columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.