Passing: Evangelist Pat Robertson, who won Alaska’s Republican presidential preference vote in 1988

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Pat Robertson, a popular televangelist who founded “The 700 Club” as he grew a tiny Virginia television station into the Christian Broadcasting Network, died Thursday at age 93.

Robertson, who ran for president in 1988, was a Southern Baptist minister who advocated for conservative Christians and was influential in Republican politics, particularly as the founder and leader of the Christian Coalition of America.

In the 1988 presidential caucus vote run by the Alaska Republican Party, Robertson won the vote with nearly double the number of votes given to then-Vice President George H.W. Bush. Robertson took 47%, with Bush getting 24% and Sen. Bob Dole coming in third with 20%.

Many of his statements are highly controversial to the liberal media and Democrats, but some of the statements were prophetic. For example, in 1992 he wrote, “The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.”

He held many traditional Southern Baptist ideas, such as men being the head of households, homosexuality being a sin, and more.

The Christian Broadcasting Network announced his death today. Almost immediately, the leftist Alaska social media account known as The Mudflats danced on his grave: “They keep calling him a ‘trailblazer.’ The trail he’s on *now* is blazing, all right.”

But blaze a trail in Christian outreach, he did: According to Robertson’s website, CBN is one of the largest Christian broadcasting group in the world, with programs in 200 countries and 70 different languages. “The 700 Club” is a project Robertson started in 1996. He retired from the show in 2021, when he turned 91.

He was also the founder of International Family Entertainment Inc., Regent University, Operation Blessing International Relief and Development Corporation, American Center for Law and Justice, The Flying Hospital, Inc., and other organizations and broadcast entities.

Marion Gordon “Pat” Robertson was born on March 22, 1930, in Lexington, Virginia, to A. Willis Robertson and Gladys Churchill Robertson. His father served for 34 years in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate. Read his biography at his website at this link.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

33 COMMENTS

  1. The religious right has driven fiscal conservatives away from the Republican Party while public unions, and woke have taken over the democrat party. So that leaves a larger percentage of non-affiliated and independents for both party’s to try to lure in.

  2. Truly a sad moment.
    Looking back at all he has done there were definitely some funny moments. I remember him claiming to leg press 2,000 pounds back when he was in his 70’s. Another time I remember him claiming that AIDS in San Francisco was being purposefully passed through people wearing rings on their fingers.
    I guess no matter how spiritual you are you still take stumbles along the way.
    God Speed Patty R!

  3. Whether you believe in theology expressed in the bible, especially the new testament and Christianity or not, you have to admit the Christian Church, up until recently, has been to keeper of promoting personal morality in regard to promoting family values in our country since its founding and this includes sexual morals.

    Probably one of the two greatest factors in our society’s departure from these values is the Christian church’s move from insisting on these by a majority of the major denominations in order to accommodate popular social trends in the face of declining membership. The exceptions being denominations like the Southern Baptists and people like Pat Robinson.

    The other is the advent of wide spread use of chemical birth control by women in the 50’s and 60’s enabling “pregnancy fear free” sexual behavior for the first time in history.

    Should our nation survive all this, it will be interesting for future Americans to see what historians think about the past 60 or 70 years.

    • You forgot to add “For those involved in these Christian churches, it sure does seem like,” before adding this part-“Christian Church, up until recently, has been to keeper of promoting personal morality in regard to promoting family values in our country since its founding and this includes sexual morals.“

    • Some who “don’t” (didn’t) need religion were/are Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao Zedong, Kim Jong Un, Kim Tok-Ung.
      Why would they want organizations that preach morality getting in the way of their power?

      • Adolph Hitler was a Catholic and never repudiated his religion. In Mein Kampf, he said he was doing god’s work in exterminating the Jews. If you were a Nazi soldier you wore a belt buckle that said “Gott mit uns” (God with us). The first treaty Hitler ever signed was with the Vatican, so there is never any division between Hitler and the Church, especially since antisemitism was an official doctrine of the Catholic Church for 2000 years until 1964.

        Now to Stalin. He was educated in Georgian seminary, and once he came to power he held heresy trails, and other assorted witch hunts, promoted miraculous discoveries like Lysenko’s biology. Stalinism (and the USSR) wasn’t an atheist state, it was a manmade cult of personality, a secular religion not at all distinct from a traditional faith-based belief system.

        North Korea is probably THE most religious country in the world, with everyone forced to worship the Dear Leader from dawn till dusk; another cult of personality with no functional difference from a religion. The same can be said of Pol Pot or Mao Zedong, who thought that a heroic struggle would bring forth an ultimate end to this world and bring forth a new one, just like end times Christian theology.

  4. Following the God of Israel isn’t a religion. He’s the way to life. humanism corrupt our knowledge of shod into religions. Probably the greatest enemy to the Christian Churches is humanism putting ourselves before God. For the “unreligious” which you can’t be unreligious while your world revolves around you- you become your own religion.

  5. Following the God of Israel isn’t a religion. He’s the way to life. humanism corrupt our knowledge of God into religions. Probably the greatest enemy to the Christian Churches is humanism putting ourselves before God. For the “unreligious” which you can’t be unreligious while your world revolves around you- you become your own religion.

    • The greatest enemy of Christian Churches (and in fact ALL religions) is knowledge. That’s why the supposed original sin of Adam and Eve was seeking out knowledge, because the more we come to know about the universe and our place in it, along with science, medicine, etc., the more it becomes patently obvious how ridiculous and immoral much of the monotheisms are. Demagogues like Robertson and Falwell knew this, and used it to further their own desires. They made a living off credulity.

      • I understand where you are coming from. Read a book about Christian Apologetics, and you will see that God revealed things many years ago, that Science now supports.

        • Uh, no. There is no god, no magical dead jew, no benevolent leader in the sky, and no one that revealed scientific data more than 2000 years ago that we’re just now figuring out. You are an atheist; you just don’t know it yet.

          Oh, and nobody awakened from the dead, there were no endless baskets of fish, and no man haw walked on water, ever. While you’re pondering a good “oh, huh” note that there also wasn’t an ark nor a lab on it such that no-see-ums, bacterial cultures, every virus ever known, etc. could take safe passage. There’s not even enough water in the atmosphere to cover the earth’s every mountain top. Absolute crazy talk.

          Read the body of Stan Lee’s work and you will see that Stan can conjure up better story lines and cooler protagonists. You might like to follow him as well. He won’t get you into heaven but then again… neither would the other guy.

  6. Hifijohns obviously a miserable POS, people don’t have to be religious to atleast know that the guy did more to help people in poverty and other serious issues then any of us could possibly imagine doing, that’s why it’s sickening when people like hihijohn open their pie hole just react and post when they don’t know squat about the Topic, their usually miserable souls who have no life, nothing educational or interesting to add tonthe topic, get a life hifijohn, your a miserable Jack rear!

  7. Along with Falwell he blamed 9/11 on the US because of abortion, feminists and homosexuals. A religious nut.

  8. Robertson billed himself as a faith healer during the 80’s AIDS crisis. Didn’t heal anyone in that AIDS work, but ran on it for president.

    Strongly supported Charles Taylor in that horrible Liberian civil war. Iunderstand had some mining investments there then.

    Matthew 19:21-“If you desire to be perfect,” replied Jesus, “go and sell all that you have, and give to the poor, and you shall have wealth in Heaven; and come, follow me.”
    Robertson God takes kindly to the wealthy.

    • Thank you Maureen for your citation today. It is a comfort. I don’t know Robertson but perhaps he took kindly to the poor in spirit as well. The Psalmist said: ” Never have I seen the son of a righteous man beg bread”. If one lives a life respecting The Ten Commandments they lessen exposure to odious diseases of the reproductive systems which makes for a more abundant life.

  9. Many times the measure of a man is not known exactly by his contemporaries as is apparently the case with President Trump. Many attend religious meetings but their seat of emotions are far removed from tenets of faith deep or otherwise and are far removed from any true worship of God. If Mr. Robertson maintained integrity I am happy for him. Integrity takes endurance. Integrity is a good thing.

  10. To err is human. God reads hearts. All of them. He says sometimes: “Was that not a case of knowing me”? Jehovah God was speaking proximately to his Son Jesus about humans on earth. What would you like. To be known by God or not. “He remembers we are dust”. We don’t think we are dust. Some think they are God’s instructors. We are all “cases” before God.

  11. Some think they are beloved children with a right to command and demand eternal babysitting and all your assets be delivered to them fortwith. It’s a spiritual spectrum and a spectre at the same time.

  12. The scripture also says: “Grow up in the Lord”. I think that’s a good idea. Even in alcoholic Alaska. Say: “I have a problem. Let’s get drunk”? Might there be a (slightly) better answer? Just conservatively speaking. Etc.

  13. It is difficult to cope. Especially widout language skills. Pretend you had a computer. Then you tossed several gallons of alcohol into it for a good cause. Then you asked it to compute (“I have $30 dollars and there are 31 days in the month?; wha twill I do?). Brains are kind of like computers except flesh.

  14. Recovery is a thing. A rare thing in AK. But available. Christianity is a step in the right direction. Best wishes, all.

  15. You know? To get turnip juice you gotta squeeze it. When you squeeze a turnip you get:…? Turnip juice not propane. So, if you squeeze something you get? Its essence. They are putting the squeeze on Donald Trump right now. You know what you get? He wishes everyone a “Happy Birthday Day!” whenever it is. He is a good, loving guy. It is his essence. No matter how much you hate him because you are a dirty rotten so and so you cannot change the essence of him. He remains what he is – a good guy to the core. You hate him for that because you aren’t. That’s the thing; isn’t it?

  16. The old Cain/Abel thingy. Spiritual hatred for essentially “the good”. It raises the old “Are you saying I’m not perfict?”. Hmmm.

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