Pat Robertson, the founder of the Christian Broadcast Network in 1961, died this week at age 93. He expanded CBN over the years to more than 170 countries and territories and has broadcast in dozens of languages. As host of CBN’s “The 700 Club” for an amazing 55 years from 1966 to 2001, he interviewed multiple world leaders and covered significant events. Robertson became a leading figure in conservative politics as evangelical Christians became more politically engaged. Robertsons’s enterprises included Regent University, the American Center for Law and Justice, which defends the First Amendment rights of religious people; and Operation Blessing, an international humanitarian organization.
He ran for the Republican nomination in 1988, losing to H.W. Bush, but the grass-roots Christian religious movement his campaign helped create became a powerful force in conservative politics in the early 1990s as the Christian Coalition. I remember well supporting Robertson in this election, not only because he espoused Christian morality but also because he, Yale Law-trained, was the most articulate/intelligent candidate on Constitutional/secular issues as well.
I watched “The 700 Club” for many years, beginning in the 1980s, before moving away from cable that carried his show. I have not watched his show in many years but when I watched I always admired Pat Robertson for using his great influence to consistently support Christian moral principles, even when it exposed him to criticism, and he continued to do so up until his death. He could go far afield sometimes such as when he had a “Word of Knowledge” about someone in Missouri getting his back healed or other types of healing to nonspecific persons. I often wondered why, if God was performing a miraculous healing, He would not give the specific name and address to verify the healing was actually of God. However, we all have theological blind spots to one degree or another and I am not to judge the servant of another. He was generally on the right side of the Biblical and political questions of the day and courageous in his defense of Biblical morals. He will be greatly missed.
Discover more from The Conservative Christian Apologist
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
