North Warns Southern Baptists of Sodom on Potomac

Fired National Security Council staff member Oliver L. North, who fell from grace as the Iran-Contra scandal unfolded, was hailed as a prophet with honor Monday by thousands of flag-waving Southern Baptists.

Standing Patton-like against a backdrop of a 40-by-60-foot American flag, North received a series of standing ovations as he compared his own travails to the crossing of the Red Sea. He urged about 15,000 Southern Baptists to become more politically active to fight back against “a veritable Sodom and Gomorrah on the banks of the Potomac.”

North at times held a Bible aloft as he mixed a conservative political agenda with the mannerisms of a Baptist evangelist. He said that there is “a desperate need for revival in this nation that we might turn back to (God).”

The former Marine lieutenant colonel spoke to the Southern Baptist Convention’s Pastor’s Conference, which precedes the three-day denominational convention, scheduled to open today.

North’s talk provided a preview of the patriotic tenor of this year’s convention, which will feature a revival Wednesday evening with the theme of a “Call to Prayer for Spiritual Awakening in America” and a talk Thursday by President Bush.

North, who in 1987 testified before Congress in televised hearings about his efforts to sell arms to Iran in exchange for American hostages and to use the profits to help the Nicaraguan rebels, was unrepentant about his involvement in the affair.

He compared himself to Moses and government attempts at criminal prosecution to an Inquisition.