Pat Robertson's World
D'Souza, Dinesh
For some reason, Pat Robertson has become as much of an embarrassment to the Republican party as Lyndon LaRouche is to the Democrats. In fact, in some ways Robertson is the bigger bogeyman. All...
...They are into destroying institutions built by Christians...
...Certainly Robertson's attempt to define all conventional political issues in moral terms makes for an interesting perspective...
...Certainly Robertson embodies values that would appeal to the fiercely independent and anti-establishment farmers and townspeople there...
...The lifestyle of these people is absolutely disgraceful," he says...
...This seems to go beyond theological disagreement...
...He points out that high-living diplomats often come from desperately poor countries...
...Pat Robertson, when he moved to Virginia, quickly learned the rules that make such conmiunities grow and prosper...
...Right now Robertson backers, operating through a group called the Freedom Council, are frantically organizing in Oklahoma, Wyoming, Minnesota, Florida, and elsewhere...
...They don't care if New York allows sodomy...
...They don't want prayer for everybody's school, just for their schools...
...There is no evidence that Robertson wants federal bans on abortion and pornography...
...Recently Paul Kirk, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, sent out a fundraiser warning about radical Dinesh D'Souza is the managing editor Q/"Policy Review...
...Or whether he will become a powerful broker at the Republican convention...
...The unmitigated virtue of the Robertson candidacy is that it imports into the political process voters who never participated before...
...It is obvious to anyone who follows Robertson that his commitment to his faith is very strong...
...He added that the framers did not intend to give the Supreme Court final authority over the Constitution...
...He says we have "an attitude of hedonism which passes the bills on to our children...
...When Robertson's son took desperately ill, for example, Robertson laid hands on him and prayed in tongues...
...Storm, we command you to turn north and then go east...
...Here the antagonism and fear goes largely undocumented, because everyone realizes that the evangelical vote is crucial to a Republican majority and that born-again Christians are a relatively new team of recruits, and nobody wants to scare them off...
...It's hypocritical to support these governments, and it's wrong...
...This may be sound history, but it bucks a legal tradition going back to 1803 when Justice Marshall established judicial review...
...The first is that, in his quest for electoral approval, his theological certitude will be compromised...
...And these are not all Southern fundamentalists: for instance, the Michigan state chairman of the Freedom Council is Marlene Elwell, a Catholic Democrat and mother of five who works for the right-to-life movement...
...you are trying to silence a prophet of God...
...He accepted Christ as his personal savior after a series of conversations with a Philadelphia minister, Cornelius Vanderbreggen...
...Where the concepts of freedom are allowed to enter, by all means let us use those open doors...
...Christ was crucified—that's how he ended his career...
...Falwell knows this too—witness his alliance of convenience with George Bush...
...Ultimately the social issues are going to depend on the willingness of people themselves to live according to Judeo-Christian morality," Robertson says...
...also—through his "Save a Baby" ministry which cares for unwed mothers—he is personally aware of the anguish and desperation that forced pregnancy brings...
...The only difference between me and others is that I believe that when I pray, I get answers," Robertson says...
...But evangelicals have learned from their tenure in political participation...
...He enrolled in Bible school, and then convinced his wife Dede to pack up and move with him and the children to Virginia to start a church...
...Similarly Robertson has stopped talking about prophecies...
...David West, a professor of journalism at CBN University and Robertson's press secretary, says, "Evangelicals have learned that, in poUtics, you have to make coalitions with people you disagree with...
...During the 1960s and 1970s, Robertson's church blossomed into an empire...
...that is why he stresses that he is for the right of locaUties to set rules for themselves...
...We have been activated because we perceive continuous attacks by government agencies and by the courts against our deeply held beliefs," Pat Robertson says...
...The presidency should be a bully pulpit...
...We know this now...
...They have not found a coherent way to respond to it...
...Pat Robertson, well bred and well educated, could have opted for any field...
...In addition, Robertson heads CBN University, an accredited school whose president is a former New York Times man, Robert Slosser...
...Department of Education, which he feels is "unconstitutional as an establishment of religion...
...The first is their concentrated dedication and proselytization, which have historical roots...
...He favors "low-level technology transfers" to China because "in turn we can gain the kind of concessions which would enable us to take in Western thought, especially religious thought...
...By all the conventional criteria, Pat Robertson was making the right moves...
...they just don't want it in Mississippi...
...It's the moral component to Reagan's New Federalism...
...it borders on bigotry...
...And in a letter to Norman Lear, Robertson warned him to lay off: "You are not merely trying to silence a member of the press...
...Recently Robertson shocked the Washington Post when, in an interview, he remarked that "a Supreme Court ruling is not the law" and that if he became President he would take court rulings as advisory, not binding...
...To walk around Pat Robertson's or Jerry Falwell's community is to enter a new world, a strange world, but not a TVvilight Zone: it bustles with life, and is driven by an energy unfamiliar to most from the outside...
...The problem for fundamentalists is the leveling impulse of liberalism, which refuses to allow divisive social issues to be resolved at the local level...
...Or whether by embarrassing Bush in the early running he will clear the field for other candidates...
...Shout It From the Housetops, he recounts that fervent prayer wrought countless "little miracles" which enabled Robertson to establish himself as a successful pastor...
...The enthusiasm is immense...
...Obviously there is nothing wrong with praying to God for wisdom to make the right decisions...
...The general suspicion, derived from his popularity and annual revenues, is that he is in the business for the money...
...He knows that moral legislation can only work if there is a pre-existing moral consensus...
...He has let up on the public healings...
...How can one reconcile his methodology with the duties of a President in a popular democracy...
...Grace in New York, Robertson started an electronics business...
...Stuart Rothenberg, editor of Political Report at the Free Congress Foundation, maintains that GOP regulars are "frightened of Robertson...
...The boon for Republicans is that "he stimulates two groups," as researcher Bill Greener of the RNC puts it, "non-participants and Democrats...
...In 1976 evangelicals flocked to Jimmy Carter from Gerald Ford, but in 1980 they went for Reagan over Carter by 56 to 34 percent...
...Pat Robertson could congratulate himself for leading a movement away from the political left and making such an impressive list of liberal foes, except that he also draws heavy criticism and alarmed looks from Republican party officials, and from the political right...
...He has taken up the Reagan Doctrine, and called for overt funding of Jonas Savimbi's anti-Communist rebels in Angola and the Renamo freedom forces in Mozambique...
...It is possible (though unUkely) that he will be a vice presidential nominee...
...And you can't get everything you want...
...And as a Bush aide warned in a memo to the Vice President, "We've got Air Force TVvo but remember, to many of these people, Pat Robertson has God...
...Will the peoples concerns be subordinated to whispers from above...
...There is no doubt that the born-again churches can produce numerous former drug addicts, convicts, and homosexuals (even AIDS victims) who have converted to Christ and reformed their lives...
...On the United Nations, he criticizes "the excessive salaries of U.N...
...He has prophecies...
...But to wait for visions and sounds from heaven is to discount the reasoning power of the President, the wise counsel of his cabinet, and the opinions of the people who put them in power...
...It is the problem Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and the other preachers face...
...His father was A. Willis Robertson, a U.S...
...Moreover, his new Republican recruits will work tirelessly for the cause...
...And what about the USSR...
...But there are hundreds of evangelicals who will come forward to testify that when they prayed with Robertson their ailments got better...
...And there are Robertson's missionary outposts abroad...
...senator, and there are two Presidents (the Harrisons) in his ancestral background...
...So you have to be patient...
...Pat Robertson did not grow up in a fundamentalist milieu...
...not only has this diversified his agenda, but it has given him a new flexibility...
...Nevertheless Robertson's expectation that God can be called upon to intervene in natural disasters, and his Old Ibstament mode of prayer, are considered bizarre...
...After a brief stint at W.R...
...She was a field director for Reagan's re-election in 1984...
...But in almost all cases, what they sought and continue to seek is the opportunity for their own communities to pass laws under which they choose to live...
...Actually the hurricane, which seemed directly headed for the Robertson conglomerate, did veer away at the last minute...
...now they realize that Robertson may actually plan to do something about them...
...But if we talk about moral renewal, and apply it across the board, then we are talking about the problems that concern most Americans...
...In Michigan Robertson claims to have fielded the second largest number of candidates for control of the GOP conventions— more than Jack Kemp— although that's only in the first round of voting...
...being from the South, he could be a regional complement to either Bush or Kemp...
...Yet much has been written about him implying that his motives are suspect...
...He favors a flat tax...
...He doesn't speak in tongues...
...His latest book is The C^holic Classics, published this fall by Our Sunday Visitor...
...I belong to the Lord," Robertson told Conservative Digest...
...Falwell, for instance, began with Moral Majority, a narrowly focused moral issue crusade, and has now re-christened his group the Liberty Federation, which implies a wider range of concerns, but also an entirely different rhetorical approach...
...And we are getting more sophisticated in the art of politics...
...After the prayers subsided, Robertson reports, his son's fever broke and he soon got well...
...They didn't start reading T.S...
...Actually, he grew up in Brooklyn...
...In fact, in interviews he has sounded defensive and concessionary about his faith...
...In the last six years, evangelicals have been deserting the Democratic party in droves...
...The deficit, he says, reflects "public demand for instant gratification and the unwillingness of many to deny themselves any presumed good...
...On trade with the Soviet bloc, Robertson faults "an immoral campaign by the banking community to fund governments which brutally repress their own people...
...Falwell, for instance, changed his position to allow rape and incest exceptions in abortion legislation, not because he views this as desirable, but because he knows what is politically realistic...
...There are also genuine concerns about Robertson's religious views and their impact on his policies...
...He sees visions...
...If he continued to mingle in Democratic circles, absorb the regnant passions, hitch onto the civil rights movement, become fashionably deprecating toward his Southern background, and quote the Yale deconstructionists once in a while, he would be virtually assured of ending up like Bill Moyers, Tbm Wicker, or one of the other heavyweights of the Enlightened New South...
...After five decades of virtual isolation, fundamentalists returned to the political arena not because they wanted to cross the wall separating church and stat& Rather, they sensed the state scaling the wall and mounting an assault on their lives...
...Instead, Robertson decided to be gauche...
...In 1984 nearly 80 percent of born-again Christians voted to re-elect the President...
...There is much snickering at the RepubUcan National Committee over films taped by People for the American Way which show Robertson praying for the diversion of Hurricane Gloria away from his Christian Broadcasting Network facilities in Virginia Beach...
...he knows that this consensus has been eroded in many parts of America and only remains in certain communities...
...This is not, in other words, your typical Southern hick...
...But there is a pragmatic side to Robertson as well...
...Falwell addressed issues in a way that showed he didn't much care about pubUc opinion...
...but then their faces grow dark and they mutter: Abortion, School Prayer, Pornography...
...Robertson's TV show, "The 700 Club," reaches 27 million viewers a month, according to Nielsen...
...New Hampshire's former governor, Meldrim Thonyjson, has recently come out for Robertson, maintaining that he has the best chance to win the New Hampshire primary...
...But this ignores the past travails of Robertson and the other TV evangeUsts, who started out years ago in run-down Southern circuits, when the money was awful, when ridicule was common, when countless other alternatives were available to them...
...In Nebraska, Robertson backers have swept control of Republican county conventions in Douglas County (which contains Omaha) and Lancaster County (which contains Lincoln...
...With tremendous resolve, they built their own schools, their own gymnasiums, their own auditoriums, their own churches...
...Very familiar with Robertson and his people, she is not at all uncomfortable about working for him...
...Robertson graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Washington and Lee University and then attended the Yale Law School...
...Politics is the art of the possible," Robertson now says...
...And if the Lord told me to do something, I'd do it, whatever it was...
...The other problem works in the opposite direction...
...He wants to fund the contras and has suggested the possibility of a U.S.-recognized govermnent-inexile...
...Public officials "are bound to support the Constitution as they see it," Robertson said...
...Don't talk to me about popularity," Falwell once sneered...
...Your winds shall die down and you shall go harmlessly into the ocean in the name of Jesus...
...They have "the most powerful political organization in America...
...instead he sold most of his possessions and migrated South with his family to start a small church...
...But those who have worked closely with the evangelicals, such as Catholic activist Paul Weyrich, say it is remarkable how well the old fimdamentalist firebrands have learned a sense of practical compromise as well as teamwork...
...When fundamentalists first entered politics, they brought to it an unadulterated moral fervor...
...Falwell himself has mellowed to the point where he is comfortable with the Reagan-Bush approach of giving only rhetorical subservience to the moral agenda...
...The party establishment is clearly uneasy about him," says Robert Shogan, a Los Angeles Times reporter who works the Robertson beat...
...He is an enthusiastic backer of strategic defense...
...The Christian Broadcasting Network takes in $230 million a year, more than twice as much as Jerry Falwell's operation...
...Such doors do not exist in the Soviet Union...
...During the time of the framers, Robertson explains, "it was considered that the education of children was a religious matter...
...Otherwise Robertson's views are basically the same as those of President Reagan, with added punch in some cases...
...Robertson was once preoccupied with a handful of social issues, but through his anchor's job on "The 700 Club" he has developed an active interest in foreign and domestic policy questions...
...There is a possibility of a revolution of ideas that the Conwnunist leaders could not suppress...
...So most of them joined the "dogmatic" "inflexible," "antiquated" evangelical groups of Jerry Falwell and Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker and Pat Robertson, where the rules could get pretty sUly, but where the spirit was still free...
...Now the methodology may seem a little bit suspect...
...Both arguable points of view...
...He was a Marine lieutenant in Korea, where he reached the finals of the Golden Gloves middleweight championship...
...More specifically, do they seek a "Christian Nation" which involves the imposition of Protestant orthodoxy on the rest of us...
...What...
...Robertson, by contrast, talks to God...
...It concerns the effect an important aspect of Robertson's religion will have on the political office he seeks...
...There are two reasons that evangelical groups like Pat Robertson's grew so fast...
...personnel, which exceed those of public servants everywhere in the world...
...Ronald Reagan's successor should call the people to a sense of moral worth, to a return to the traditional family values, the dignity of life, and other things that we have held dear for so many years...
...If all the evangelicals do is talk about prayer and abortion, without question we will become a very narrow special interest group," Robertson says...
...It is conceivable that Robertson's candidacy is merely aimed at forcing the moral agenda into the political debate, and once Kemp and Bush have outdone themselves in making commitments on these issues, Robertson will drop out with a smile...
...Nevertheless, those who cover the Pat Robertson presidential candidacy and frequent the GOP cocktail party circuit detect bad vibes about Brother Pat...
...The second reason is the failure of the mainline Protestant denominations and the Catholic Church to meet the , spiritual needs of their people...
...He took a break in 1956 to become Richmond county chairman for Adlai Stevenson's campaign for the presidency...
...Ultrafundamentalist Christians" are trying to take over the country, Kirk warns...
...Pat Robertson "wants to get more Christians involved in government," a prospect Kirk finds "alarming," "frightening," and "crazy...
...He is reluctant to speak in areas that relate to his religious vocation lest this rouse fears of an improper Christian involvement in politics...
...Of course evangelicals and fundamentalists realized very soon that they could not alter the social rules by which they were treated without altering them for everybody...
...He thinks we should move to a system in which Social Security contributions are voluntary...
...She sees his candidacy as "putting together people who work for traditional values, setting aside theological differences...
...Robertson once referred to liberal forces in America as "primarily termites...
...There seem to be two main problems with a Robertson candidacy that should concern even those sympathetic to what he stands for...
...But whatever his purpose, "a lot of people are fearful of Robertson," says Ed Rollins, Reagan's 1984 campaign manager...
...Obviously the new inclusive rhetoric of the fundamentalists can be interpreted as a clever ploy to allay pubUc suspicions until they get into power, after which it's time to stop the cliches and lock up the homosexuals and the Roman Catholics...
...This group has pried open the Democratic party's grip on the South...
...There is also a streak of wild populism...
...This, to me, does not reveal rapacity or opportunism...
...They are, as Greener puts it, "a new, identifiable, homogenous and active constituency that can be easily mobilized...
...Some conservatives have expressed concern that Robertson intends to impose his theological beliefs in some way...
...Howard PhilHps of the Conservative Caucus remarks that, of late, Robertson seems to be emphasizing his business acumen over his religious and moral faith...
...Robertson seems to have gone from low-key television evangelism to the sense that he needs a national podium to persuade Americans (not just evangelicals) that moral regeneration is the key to solving foreign and domestic problems...
...Press secretary West argues that divine epiphany is very rare and moreover it is "confirmed" by the dictates of reason and sound advice...
...The main reason for this Republican uneasiness is not theological...
...To Michael Kramer of New York magazine, the Reverend Robertson is "a wacko...
...Even though the television preachers swear by the principle of separation of church and state, is it possible for born-again Christians, whose entire worldview is shaped by theology, to make practical distinctions between the domain of Caesar and the domain of the Lord...
...Still, there is an anti-democratic tinge to Robertson's modus operandi which is bound to become an issue as 1988 draws nearer...
...For a touch of the bizarre, consult Robertson on the U.S...
...They decided to create their own world to compete with the secular world...
...he has said repeatedly that he intends to let states and local communities resolve these questions for themselves...
...What differences wdll a Robertson candidacy make...
...In his autobiography...
...Will presidential aides be driven to hiding in the White House bedroom and, when Robertson sleeps, recommend their favored courses of action in deep, authoritative tones...
...The cost of supporting criminals in jail is Unked to the cost of a Harvard degree: "1 don't think we should give the murderer or the rapist the economic equivalent of a Harvard education for the rest of his life" Robertson's views include a protectionist element...
...The great irony of the 1970s is that the Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, and Unitarian churches, which labored so hard to become "relevant" to modern needs, lost members in the hundreds of thousands...
...In an August 1985 interview with Conservative Digest he said we need "free trade but fair trade," which of course means no free trade...
...Indeed it is true that the early Moral Majority fundraisers called for a "Christian nation...
...Who knows if Robertson will siphon off right-wing support from Kemp...
...For years these people have professed allegiance to the New Right position on social issues...
...extremist Christians...
...The Federal Reserve Board must be brought under the control of the elected officials of this country...
...Ever since the Scopes trial, fundamentalists have tended to withdraw from the world's institutions, regarding them as corrupted by Darwinism, materialism, and hedonism...
...Eliot, contributing to the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and lamenting the absence of absolutes in the public squar& Their deep religious sentiments, it turned out, were satisfied neither by liberal theology nor by high church conservatism...
...which include a refugee program for Central America...
...He was soon inculturated into the fundamentalist world of relying on faith for all earthly, as well as spiritual, needs...
...The left's hostility, at least in part, comes from a sense of political frustration...
...Probe GOP estabhshment types and at first they cite the kooky fundamentalist beliefs...
...Fears that Robertson covertly seeks nationwide moral legislation, perhaps even imposition of his evangelical theology at the federal level, can be traced directly to the strident rhetoric that evangelicals once used...
...All LaRouche does is print posters saying "Star Wars Is Safer Than Sex" and "More People Died At Chappaquiddick Than At Three Mile Island...
...Where did all these people go...
...But today it is different...
Vol. 19 • November 1986 • No. 11
