His dying was introduced by the Christian Broadcasting Community, which Mr. Robertson based.
Rev. Robertson, the son of a long-serving U.S. congressman and senator from Virginia, was among the many first evangelists to take faith out of the realm of personal perception and into the secular enviornment of politics. Largely via his affect, the Christian proper turned a potent power in American politics and tradition.
His sole foray into electoral politics, a short-lived effort to hunt the Republican presidential nomination in 1988, “signaled the fashionable melding of fundamentalist Christianity with the Republican Get together — an affiliation that has continued proper as much as the current day,” Larry J. Sabato, a politics professor on the College of Virginia, advised The Washington Publish.
In contrast to many evangelists, Rev. Robertson got here from a privileged background. He grew up within the corridors of energy in Virginia and Washington and graduated from Yale Regulation Faculty earlier than turning to the ministry within the late Nineteen Fifties.
“Robertson’s critics typically depict the evangelist-broadcaster as a political extremist with weird beliefs,” novelist and journalist Garrett Epps wrote in The Publish in 1986. “However it might make extra sense to view him because the final old-school southern politician.”
Cherubic-looking, with a soothing, conversational method even when making incendiary remarks, Rev. Robertson reached tens of millions of individuals via his Christian Broadcasting Community, which he based on a shoestring price range in 1960. For many years, he had a robust non secular and political impression on a far-flung viewers of “born-again” followers.
Though he bristled on the time period televangelist, Rev. Robertson was probably the most fashionable and influential spiritual figures of his time. For many years, he was the host of “The 700 Membership,” an informal speak present that mixed hard-right politics, religion therapeutic and way of life information. Broadcast in dozens of languages and in additional than 200 international locations, the present made Rev. Robertson the world’s most-watched TV preacher.
“There have been many media-savvy, politically lively preachers in American historical past,” Sabato stated, “however Pat Robertson eclipsed all his predecessors by combining spectacular tv expertise and small-donor fundraising with a presidential candidacy that had a considerable impression.”
Multimillion-dollar empire
Along with his TV packages, Rev. Robertson made public appearances and produced dozens of books and movies as he constructed a enterprise empire that introduced in additional than $300 million a 12 months at its peak.
He expanded his mission to schooling within the late Seventies, founding CBN College (later renamed Regent College) in Virginia Seashore with the goal of “coaching Christian leaders to alter the world.” Former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell (R) was a graduate of Regent’s regulation college, and a whole lot of alumni labored within the administrations of presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump.
Rev. Robertson was a vocal supporter of Trump’s 2016 presidential marketing campaign and, after Trump was elected, interviewed him on the White Home. He distanced himself considerably after Trump misplaced the 2020 election to President Biden, saying Trump exhibited “very erratic” conduct and inhabited an “alternate actuality.”
In search of to encourage conservative Christians to grow to be lively in public life, Rev. Robertson helped launch a number of advocacy teams, together with the American Heart for Regulation and Justice, which was designed to be a conservative counterpart to the American Civil Liberties Union.
In 1987, Rev. Robertson was considered one of a number of founders of the Christian Coalition, which aimed to spur evangelical Christians into political motion. Amongst different issues, the group distributed voter guides in church buildings, outlining its most well-liked candidates — just about all of them Republicans.
When Rev. Robertson sought the 1988 GOP presidential nomination, he hoped to construct a authorities run by what he referred to as “Spirit-filled Christians.”
“I don’t assume being a Christian means simply spending time within the confines of the church, behind stained-glass home windows, singing hymns,” he stated, including that God had advised him to run.
He had a deeper marketing campaign battle chest than any candidate besides the eventual president, George H.W. Bush, however members of his previous Marine Corps unit — together with former congressman Pete McCloskey (R-Calif.) — got here ahead to say he had exaggerated his report within the Korean Warfare. Rev. Robertson filed a $35 million slander lawsuit in opposition to McCloskey however later dropped it.
Rev. Robertson completed forward of Bush within the Iowa caucuses, however the embarrassing episode over his navy report helped derail his marketing campaign, and he give up the race after operating poorly within the early primaries. However, his candidacy heralded the rise of non secular conservatives in politics.
“Within the not-too-distant previous, the charismatic and Pentecostal wing of American Protestantism noticed political engagement as a ‘worldly’ and sinful exercise,” the late Michael Cromartie, vp of Washington’s Ethics and Public Coverage Heart, and a longtime watcher of the evangelical motion, stated in a 2011 interview with The Publish. “Pat Robertson, maybe greater than anybody within the charismatic wing of conservative Protestantism, was pivotal in creating this paradigm shift.”
After his flirtation with the presidency, Rev. Robertson reverted to his self-appointed position as “God’s prophet.” He typically predicted doom for these he deemed insufficiently righteous and attributed pure disasters and different calamities to perceived political and ethical failings. He insulted different religions and had an extended historical past of divisive statements that created worldwide friction.
In 2005, Rev. Robertson referred to as for america to assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. The evangelist later apologized, after a trend.
“Wait a minute,” he stated, “I didn’t say ‘assassination.’ I stated our Particular Forces ought to ‘take him out,’ and ‘take him out’ may be a lot of issues, together with kidnapping.”
When Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast in 2005, Rev. Robertson urged that the storm was God’s punishment for authorized abortion. He attributed the Haitian earthquake in 2010 to “a pact with the Satan” made two centuries earlier, when the nation’s Black founders received their independence from French enslavers.
Rev. Robertson supported Israel, however in his 1991 e-book “The New World Order,” he repeated long-discredited notions {that a} cabal of Jews and Freemasons secretly managed a lot of American life. He denounced Hinduism as “demonic” and Islam as “not a peaceable faith.” He claimed that some Christian denominations harbored “the spirit of the Antichrist” and stated Mormon beliefs “are, to place it merely, flawed.”
He referred to as feminism “a socialist, anti-family political motion that encourages girls to go away their husbands, kill their kids, observe witchcraft, destroy capitalism and grow to be lesbians.”
After the terrorist assaults of Sept. 11, 2001, Rev. Robertson stated he agreed with fellow Virginia minister Jerry Falwell that nonbelievers, abortion suppliers, feminists and homosexual individuals in america had been as blameworthy because the Muslim extremists on the controls of hijacked airliners.
In the end, Rev. Robertson’s provocative feedback and condemnations of what he thought-about rampant ethical depravity pushed him to the cultural margins.
“Republicans started to draw back from looking for his public endorsement,” Sabato advised The Publish. “Robertson’s backing was efficiently utilized by Democrats to model his candidates as ‘excessive’ and ‘religiously illiberal.’ ”
‘Mommy, Daddy, constituent’
Marion Gordon Robertson was born March 22, 1930, in Lexington, Va. He acquired his nickname, Pat, from an older brother who favored to pat younger Marion’s cheeks.
His mother and father had been the youngsters of Baptist pastors, and Rev. Robertson typically boasted of his patrician roots. He stated he was descended from two presidents, William Henry Harrison and his grandson, Benjamin Harrison.
Lots of Rev. Robertson’s political and spiritual beliefs had been formed by his father, Absalom Willis Robertson, who served seven phrases within the Home as a conservative Democrat from Virginia, then was a senator from 1946 to 1966.
“I discovered to say ‘Mommy,’ ‘Daddy’ and ‘constituent,’ in that order,” Rev. Robertson typically stated.
He labored on his father’s early campaigns, however throughout a hard-fought race in 1966, Rev. Robertson stayed on the sidelines, telling The Publish 21 years later, “The Lord steadfastly refused to let me.”
His father narrowly misplaced within the Democratic major and have become, in Rev. Robertson’s phrases, “a damaged, defeated man.”
After attending public faculties in Washington, Rev. Robertson graduated from the McCallie Faculty, a non-public prep college in Chattanooga, Tenn.
He returned to his hometown of Lexington to attend Washington and Lee College, the place he was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa honor society earlier than his commencement in 1950. He served as a Marine Corps officer through the Korean Warfare earlier than enrolling at Yale Regulation Faculty in 1952.
He admitted to a considerably reckless youth, full of consuming, poker, a succession of girlfriends, frequent visits to New York nightclubs and a wild-oats interval in Europe.
In 1954, in opposition to his mother and father’ needs, he married Adelia “Dede” Elmer, a Catholic from Ohio. They celebrated their anniversary on March 22, however in 1987 the Wall Road Journal revealed that they had been truly married 5 months later, on Aug. 27, 1954.
Though Rev. Robertson typically railed in opposition to premarital intercourse as a preacher, his spouse was greater than six months pregnant once they had been married.
Dede Robertson died in April 2022. Survivors embrace 4 kids, Timothy Robertson, Elizabeth Robinson, Ann LeBlanc and Gordon Robertson; 14 grandchildren; and 23 great-grandchildren.
Rev. Robertson graduated from Yale Regulation Faculty in 1955 however failed the New York bar examination and by no means practiced. As a substitute, he turned a administration trainee and lived within the New York Metropolis borough of Staten Island, the place he was chairman of the 1956 presidential marketing campaign of Democrat Adlai Stevenson.
By the late Nineteen Fifties, Rev. Robertson was drawn to the Pentecostal and fundamentalist components of Christianity, following the trail of his mom, who turned more and more reclusive and prayerful.
After what he referred to as a revelatory second, wherein he claimed to be “talking in tongues,” Rev. Robertson enrolled in what’s now the New York Theological Seminary, from which he obtained a grasp of divinity diploma in 1959.
He moved his household to Portsmouth, Va., and later was ordained as a Baptist minister. With solely $35 within the financial institution, he borrowed $37,000 to purchase a failing tv station in Portsmouth, quickly discovering his new path as a spiritual broadcaster.
In 1966, when Rev. Robertson wanted $7,000 to satisfy his month-to-month bills, he held a telethon, asking for 700 viewers to pledge $10 a month. His profitable plea marked the start of “The 700 Membership.” This system’s format, combining testimonials of religion with discussions of present occasions, was thought-about revolutionary for its time.
A preferred early host was Jim Bakker, who had a spiritual puppet present along with his spouse, Tammy Faye. Their tearful appeals helped the station garner donations from viewers till the Bakkers left to start their very own ministry within the early Seventies. Their televangelism empire, often called the PTL Membership, collapsed within the Nineteen Eighties amid a lurid intercourse and monetary scandal.
After Bakker’s departure, Rev. Robertson took over as “The 700 Membership” host, interviewing visitors and praying with callers. Within the Seventies, CBN turned one of many first networks to increase into satellite tv for pc and cable broadcasting, a transfer Rev. Robertson stated was ordained by God. He typically famous that he sought divine steerage in his enterprise affairs.
Regardless of the supply, Rev. Robertson proved to have exceptional expertise at broadcasting and moneymaking. CBN usually had greater than 40 packages in manufacturing, with world broadcasts in additional than 70 languages.
As Rev. Robertson’s media and actual property holdings expanded worldwide, his web price was estimated by Forbes journal at greater than $100 million. (Others speculated that the true determine was a lot larger.) He lived in a neo-Georgian mansion, stored a secure of horses and owned a non-public jet.
A few of his enterprise offers raised authorized and moral questions. Amongst his intensive industrial pursuits in Africa, he had agreements with dictatorial rulers Charles Taylor of Liberia and Mobutu Sese Seko of Congo (previously Zaire) that gave Rev. Robertson’s firms mining rights for gold and diamonds. The Virginian-Pilot newspaper of Norfolk reported in 1997 that Rev. Robertson’s humanitarian group, Operation Blessing, had been used to move gear to Africa for diamond mining.
In 1990, Rev. Robertson created a holding firm, Worldwide Household Leisure, and reestablished CBN as a nonprofit charity. His son Gordon P. Robertson turned CBN’s chief government in 2007 and changed his father as host of “The 700 Membership” in 2021.
The Household Channel, because the holding firm turned recognized, proved to be a money cow and was offered in 1997 to considered one of Rupert Murdoch’s Fox broadcasting divisions for $1.9 billion. Rev. Robertson and his household reportedly netted $227 million from the deal.
The channel was later bought by the Walt Disney Co. One situation of the sale was that, no matter any modifications of possession, Rev. Robertson’s “The 700 Membership” would air twice a day in perpetuity, conserving his face and message earlier than the general public for eternity.
Donald P. Baker, a former Publish workers author, contributed to this report.
