Pat Robertson

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company

Contents

Preface..........................................................................................viiAcknowledgments..................................................................................xii1. Origins.......................................................................................12. Christian Broadcaster.........................................................................263. Personal Life: Family, Fame, and Religious Identity...........................................624. From Television Entrepreneur to Presidential Candidate........................................785. Completing the Political Journey: The Christian Coalition.....................................1256. Rebuilding the Christian Broadcasting Network.................................................1797. New Frontiers: WorldReach and Operation Blessing..............................................2128. Home Front: Regent University and the American Center for Law and Justice.....................2419. Multiple Incarnations: Entrepreneur, Author, Controversialist.................................27310. Religious Life: A Charismatic Middle Way.....................................................30811. The Man, the Empire, the Legacy..............................................................334Bibliographical Note.............................................................................353Endnotes.........................................................................................357Index............................................................................................417

Chapter One

It has been a matter of pride and meaning in the thinking of Pat Robertson that the "first landing" of English-speaking settlers in the New World, planting the seeds that would grow into the most powerful nation in the world in the twentieth century, was in Virginia, not Plymouth or Massachusetts Bay. At Cape Henry, on April 29, 1607, a group of English settlers came ashore and planted a cross on the Atlantic coast in what is now Virginia Beach. Reverend Robert Hunt knelt in prayer and claimed "this nation for the glory of God and propagation of the gospel from these shores to the uttermost parts of the earth." That remembrance of beginnings has surfaced repeatedly in the thinking and rhetoric of Robertson; to him, it is a matter of great consequence.

Home and Family

Robertson's childhood memories of Virginia are rooted in the village of Lexington, situated near the center of the Valley of Virginia in a setting rich in both beauty and history. In 1774 Thomas Jefferson was granted a land patent that included the nearby natural rock bridge, a site where as a young man George Washington had carved his name. In 1796 Washington end owed a college that had been established in Lexington forty-seven years earlier, whereupon grateful trustees renamed the school Washington College. In 1839 Virginia Military Institute joined Washington College in Lexington; it became the oldest state-supported military college in the nation.

Other names forever associated with Lexington made it a hallowed place in Southern history. Thomas J. Jackson became professor of natural philosophy at Virginia Military Institute in 1851 before becoming one of the martyred heroes of the Confederacy. After the Civil War, Washington College became the last home and final resting place for Robert E. Lee. He accepted the school's presidency in 1865, and after his death and interment on school grounds in 1870, trustees changed the college's name again, to Washington and Lee. Thereafter, the adjoining campuses of VMI and Washington and Lee stood sentinel over the memory of the Confederate cause for generations to come.

In the years that followed, change came slowly to Lexington, befitting its status as a repository of cherished regional memories. In the census of 1930, the population of Lexington was still less than 3,800. It took another twenty years for the town to install its first traffic light. Churches raised money to support Bible teachers in the local public schools. The Lexington Gazette featured generous helpings of Christian teaching along with a regular column on "The American Way."

In spite of the deepening Depression around the world, on March 25, 1930, the weekly edition of the Gazette related mostly Lexington's local news. The weather had been unseasonably warm, Virginia Military Institute had begun its spring sports activities, and local merchants were disturbed by the recent invasion of "chain stores." Anticipating the coming Easter season, the weekly Sunday School lesson featured in the newspaper took its "Golden Text" from Isaiah 9:6: "For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder...." And a brief note in the "Personals" section reported that "Mr. and Mrs. A.W. Robertson are the proud parents of a son, who arrived Saturday, March 22nd."

Senator Absalom Willis Robertson, Pat Robertson's father, was born in Berkeley County, West Virginia, in 1887 and moved to Lynchburg, Virginia, at age three. From the beginning, Absalom Willis Robertson was a larger-than-life figure. Physically, he was an extraordinary specimen - tall and muscular, a college athlete who in later years was often seen in the United States Senate gymnasium. He was a lifelong outdoorsman who loved hunting and fishing. His affection for the outdoors extended to his political life; he introduced legislation establishing the Commission of Game and Inland Fisheries in his first year in the Virginia Senate, where he served from 1916 to 1922, and ten years later he was appointed chairman of the commission. He was formal but warm and charming, known to close associates as a captivating storyteller and to audiences around Virginia as a spellbinding orator. It was his personal charm in such settings that accounted for what would prove to be a long career in politics; one local journalist commented that by the end of his career Robertson had "hunted and prayed with everyone in the state." Never part of the Virginia Democratic Party machine, he nonetheless managed to serve six consecutive terms in the United States House of Representatives and three in the U.S. Senate, winning his final term with an unprecedented 81 percent of the vote.

Senator Robertson's political career followed the arc of Southern regional politics. An early supporter of the New Deal, by 1935 he became deeply suspicious of the deficit spending the program required, and thereafter he kept a careful eye on government expenditures. Over the course of his career he claimed credit for removing billions of dollars from the federal budget, and his staff annually notified his constituents of just how much money he had saved taxpayers that year. Still, in the years immediately following World War II, he supported the Truman Doctrine granting aid to Greece and Turkey and the Marshall Plan for rebuilding Europe. Writing to his close friend Douglas Southall Freeman, editor of the Richmond News Leader, Robertson revealed the deeply moral context of his support for postwar economic aid for Europe:

Like yourself, I am an Internationalist, believing that it is our manifest destiny to assume world leadership. Like yourself, I believe that a Christian nation should be influenced by humanitarian principles, as well as an enlightened self-interest, to give support and encouragement to Democratic institutions elsewhere in the world when threatened by economic distress or financial chaos as in Greece.... Naturally, I had hoped that after the end of the most destructive war of history ... we as the greatest and most powerful Christian nation on earth would attempt to lead the world in a practical application of the principles of Christianity.

Willis Robertson was a lifelong conservative. He opposed the repeal of right-to-work laws and proposed antitrust legislation to control labor unions. He opposed the 1954 Supreme Court decision outlawing public school segregation, signed the 1956 Southern Manifesto (along with more than 100 other Southern congressmen) which denounced the decision, and remained a staunch opponent of civil rights legislation during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, though he always couched his opposition to such legislation in constitutional language. He considered himself a constitutional watchdog as well as a fiscal one. He shared with his Southern colleagues deep-seated resentment of the federal government's encroachment on the cherished ideals of states' rights. When the Supreme Court ruled against prayer in public schools in 1962, Robertson introduced a Senate resolution challenging the ruling.

Senator Robertson was as frugal in his personal life as he was with the taxpayers' money. Throughout much of his Senate career he lived alone in a basement room in a Washington hotel while his wife kept the children in the family home in Lexington. He kept careful check on the gasoline mileage of his automobile and regularly passed down clothing to his sons. He once reminded Pat that his collect telephone calls to his mother cost about fifteen dollars each, and that four calls a month resulted in an average of two dollars a day. When the senator thoughtfully arranged a vacation for his floundering son in 1958, he considered the expense justified only because he feared Pat might suffer a breakdown that would lead to medical expenses and a loss of time from his work. All in all, he was a "formal father," recalled his grandson Timothy Robertson, a product of the "old school.... Women waited on him. The children were there when he wanted to see them." The Robertson family dynamics were probably somewhat dictated by age separations: the senator was married at age thirty-three and was ten years older than his wife; his first son was born when the senator was thirty-six; his younger son, Marion Gordon (Pat), was born when he was forty-three.

In 1920, Willis Robertson married his cousin, Gladys Churchill Willis. She was reared in Alabama, but her father died when she was a young girl and she moved to Roanoke, Virginia, to live in the home of her brother, Holman Willis. She graduated from Hollins College with a major in music. Mrs. Robertson had a lifelong interest in genealogy, carefully documenting her ties to such colonial luminaries as James Gordon of Orange County, the wealthy and politically powerful Robert "King" Carter, and Winston Churchill. She was a member of the Colonial Dames of America, the Jamestown Society, and the Daughters of the American Revolution. In later years, her son Pat recalled that his mother "would always be talking to me about such-and-such nobleman or king who was a part of my ancestry."

Gladys Robertson proved to be a charming Washington hostess, but she was always most comfortable in the large ten-room home the senator had built in an apple orchard on the outskirts of Lexington. The outbreak of World War II turned her preference for living in Lexington into a necessity. Up to that time, Washington had been the family's primary residence, but the outbreak of the war made it almost impossible to find adequate housing for the family in the city, so Mrs. Robertson and her two sons returned to Lexington. Thereafter Senator Robertson became a solitary figure in Washington, returning to Lexington and his family on weekends and when Congress was not in session. In a rare public interview, Mrs. Robertson insisted that she could best help the senator by staying close to his constituents in his home town. But in fact by that time she had become quite reclusive; as early as 1958 the senator expressed concern to his son about her health and almost total confinement to their home in Lexington.

She remained in close contact with her husband and often read his speeches before they were delivered, but her change in residence signaled deeper changes in her personality and religious outlook. "After she found the Lord," recalled Pat, "the lure of glamorous parties and travel and the social scene just didn't terribly appeal to her anymore. She loved her home." In her later years Mrs. Robertson declined invitations to the White House and refused an invitation to christen the submarine James Madison. Increasingly, religion came to dominate her mind. She embraced conservative evangelical thinking and grew increasingly disgusted with the minister of the Baptist church in Lexington where she and the senator were members. In 1949, she wrote to her friend Louise Lumpkin, "He looks at most things thru the eyes of logic. If Reinhold Niebuhr puts his seal of approval on a thing ... nothing more need be said.... Putting God on an entirely intellectual basis restricts me completely and smothers the free beautiful joy of sharing God." In a 1966 interview a Richmond reporter found her "outspoken about her religion," which she candidly described as "fundamentalist." She distributed tracts to the students in Lexington's colleges and befriended an array of local fundamentalist ministers, often calling them on the telephone to engage in marathon discussions on theological issues and to discuss her spiritual concerns for her husband and sons.

A Privileged Upbringing

While growing up, the two Robertson sons, A. Willis Jr., called Taddy, and Marion Gordon, nicknamed Pat because of his older brother's penchant to "pat, pat, pat" the new baby boy's chubby cheeks, thought little about the inner dynamics of the family relationships. More than six years apart in age, the two sons had considerably different family experiences. Taddy was nearly grown by the time the family moved from Washington; he became a successful investment banker in Atlanta, where he gained a reputation as one of the city's most eligible bachelors before marrying late in life. He never identified closely with Lexington, and to local residents he seemed "quite reserved" compared to his ebullient younger brother. He remained close to his father, often hunting with him and offering financial advice.

On the other hand, Pat's home was Lexington. He was young during the family's Washington years, and even then he spent summers in Lexington. Later he remembered fondly the "gorgeous views of nearby mountains and the fragrance of apple blossoms in the Spring, and a profusion of apples in the Fall." "[B]eing a youngster in that beautiful little town" was uniformly "pleasant." It was an ideal setting for his family's traditional values to take root. When Robertson received a letter in 1995 from Miss Marguerite Hall, one of his Sunday School teachers, he replied: "Thank you so much for the great work you did in bringing the good news of Jesus Christ and the teachings of the Bible to so many of us who were growing up at that time."

During his early years, Pat Robertson had a respectful, if somewhat formal, relationship with his father, but he was the darling of his mother's eye. As a little boy, recalled his friend Matt Paxton, his mother dressed him so well and kept his childhood tresses so long that Pat needed to become a "little pugnacious" in self-defense. Always big for his age, he played with older boys; Paxton considered him "popular," "a rounder," "mischievous," and a "real social animal." Even as his mother increasingly eschewed social activities, she always created a welcoming environment for Pat's friends.

In school, Pat was a precocious student; he skipped the seventh grade and seemed to revel in competing with older schoolmates. He completed the last two years of high school, from 1944 to 1946, at the McCallie School in Chattanooga, Tennessee, a respected prep school attended by generations of male heirs of the South's finest families, where he proved to be an excellent student. At McCallie Pat roomed with his Lexington friend Edwin Gaines, whose father was president of Washington and Lee. During his years at McCallie, Robertson played on the school's football team and boxed in the Golden Gloves competition. Robertson was never the outstanding athlete his father had been, but he persisted with characteristic tenacity; years later, he recalled that after losing in the finals of the novice division of the Golden Gloves, he "was given a tiny silver glove to memorialize my final moment of glory." Senator Robertson was proud of his younger son. Writing to a friend in 1945, the senator boasted that his son had lettered in boxing at McCallie and was precociously mature for his age. He also boasted that Pat had the highest average of anyone in his class even though he was the youngest student.

In 1946, at age sixteen, Pat returned to Lexington to attend Washington and Lee. During his time there, the university had an enrollment of around 1,250 students. Favored by the best families of Virginia to train their sons, W & L was described by a female student who had visited the campus as "a league of fraternities, bounded by classes and surrounded by women's colleges." Her description of the typical student pretty well captured young Pat Robertson: "Washington and Lee men are very charming, well-mannered, well-dressed, slightly suave and sophisticated, and, we are told, sometimes just too juvenile.... They often carry their own cigarettes and always carry a bottle - both are very carefully guarded. They are fun, witty, fairly good dancers, and very confident of their own charm."

Pat Robertson found Washington and Lee to be a perfect fit; both social success and academic success came easily. Like most of the local boys, he lived at home rather than in a fraternity house, but that did not stop his fraternity brothers from giving him a crash "post-graduate course in wild partying." He was also a member of the Gauley Bridge Hunt Club, which, contrary to its name, was "a good old boy drinking club" which inducted "all of the characters on campus." He was a steady participant in excursions to Sweet Briar and other nearby women's colleges, though he never developed any serious relationships. Yet he continued to excel as a student, earning a Phi Beta Kappa key as a junior and graduating magna cum laude in 1950 at the age of twenty.

On one of these weekend excursions Robertson was a character in a story that has become part of the university's lore. The fact that Pat was a senator's son could hardly have escaped the notice of his friends and acquaintances, but such connections were not extraordinary at Washington and Lee. On their way to Sweet Briar to pick up dates, Robertson and two of his friends were pulled over by a patrolman. One friend was Fred Vinson, son of the chief justice of the United States, and the other was Robert E. Lee IV, known as Bobby.

The state trooper said, "All right, show me your identification cards."

So Pat Robertson pulled his out, and [the trooper said,] "From Lexington? Is Senator Robertson kin to you?"

Pat said, "That's my father."

Then to Fred Vinson, "Young man, what is your name?"

"I'm Fred Vinson."

He said, "That's the name of the chief justice of the Supreme Court."

Fred said, "He's my father."

And he looked in the backseat at Bobby Lee. "Well, I suppose you're going to tell me you're Robert E. Lee."

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Pat Robertsonby David Edwin Harrell Jr. Copyright © 2010 by David Edwin Harrell Jr.. Excerpted by permission.
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