During the interview, which totaled just under 19 minutes, King asked Pelosi about a variety of topics, such as the race between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, the congressional Democrats’ failure to end the war in Iraq, and the proposed free trade agreement with Colombia. But Pelosi’s quote, "To minister to the needs of God's creation is an act of worship. To ignore those needs is to dishonor the God who made us," which she has used on at least seven occasions since 2005, did not come up.
The CNSNews report, by Pete Winn, detailed a number of occasions that Pelosi has used the quote since 2005. On January 16 of that year, Dana Milbank and Dan Balz of the Washington Post cited part of the quote uncritically in an article that tried to show that the Democrats were "getting religion." "...House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) cited a pair of biblical passages on the House floor, saying the Scriptures 'tell us that to minister to the needs of God's creation is an act of worship.' This is no accident. After exit polls showed that 'values voters' contributed to President Bush's reelection victory, Democrats have been looking for ways to keep the faith." Pelosi has attributed her quote to the Book of the Isaiah on at least one occasion.
One of the biblical scholars quoted in Winn’s report, Claude Mariottini of the Northern Baptist Theological Seminary, had written on his blog over a year ago that Pelosi’s quote doesn’t appear in the Old Testament.
In the two days since Winn’s report was published, the only major media outlet to pick up on the story was "Special Report with Brit Hume" on Fox News, who quoted from the report on its "Political Grapevine" segment.
