University of Virginia Library

Pat Robertson

Marion G. "Pat" Robertson is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of

Washington and Lee University, was a Marine captain in Korea, graduated from Yale Law School, and was formerly a businessman. He is also an evangelical preacher of the first rank, a faith healer, a speaker in tongues, and a hearer of direct revelations which he calls "Words of Knowledge" from God.

Robertson is the host of "The 700 Club," a ninety-minute daily religious talk show. More than that, however, he is the president and chief executive officer of the Christian Broadcasting Network, which owns four television stations and five radio stations, has a staff of 800, and aims to become, through satellite distribution, this country's fourth commercial television network. CBN already programs a channel twenty-four hours a day with old family sitcom reruns and a variety of religious programs from many sources. The channel is distributed by satellite to any cable TV system in the country that will accept it. But CBN means to stake out a 10-percent share of the total U.S. TV audience with a full schedule of news, drama, sports, game shows, soap operas, variety shows, and commercials. The difference between CBN and the other three networks is that CBN plans to do all this from an explicitly Christian perspective. CBN people have even been developing a Christian soap opera, "The Inner Light"—their answer to "The Guiding Light" and "As the World Turns."

By his own admission, Robertson was a tortured man after finishing Yale Law School. He failed to pass the New York bar exam, claiming his heart wasn't in it. He was engaged in an electronics components business when he felt called to go into the ministry. He chose Biblical Theological Seminary in New York, where he was part of a tongues-speaking fellowship. After graduation in 1959, he was still unsettled and uncertain about his life. For several months he and his wife and children existed in a charismatic commune in a Brooklyn slum. Later that year, Robertson heard about a defunct UHF television station for sale in Virginia Beach. Incredibly, he arranged to buy it for a fraction of its value. Even that was a venture of faith, however, for Pat had no money at all. Somehow he managed to survive for several months by preaching in Virginia churches, and he finally corralled enough donations to put the station back on the air on October 1, 1961. The first broadcast day lasted two and a half hours.

On a 1963 fund-raising telethon, Pat asked for 700 people to pledge $10 a month to meet the monthly operating budget of WYAH. That was the birth of the 700 Club. (Dues today have risen to $15 per month.) Sometime later, CBN employee Jim Bakker started a talk show that was named "The 700 Club." The rest is history. CBN today occupies a $50-million headquarters complex and has an annual budget of about $55 million. All this growth has been accomplished through the generosity of viewers who give according to Pat's "Kingdom Principles," which Pat frequently explains. Basically, the more you give to God, the more God will give back to you. The best and quickest way to get the process started is to send a gift to "The 700 Club."

Robertson is a gentle-voiced, smiling fellow. He teaches more than he preaches, and he prays often on the program. His guests tend to be evangelicals who have stories to tell of miracles in their lives or of ministries they are carrying out with decisive effects on the lives of others. Many are Christian authors touting their books on the salvation circuit, or singers with religious records to hype.

Pat's co-host of "The 700 Club" is Ben Kinchlow, whose role is much like that of the sidekick of secular talk shows—cheer leading and picking up the ball if he senses the host is about to have a lapse. He also sets Robertson up with questions when he thinks that his boss has not yet finished expounding on some particular topic. When Robertson is absent, Kinchlow, a tall, handsome man whose deep black hair is turning gray, hosts the program himself. Kinchlow could one day become the first black to host a syndicated talk show. That this may be in the offing is suggested by the fact that in 1978 CBN asked a sample of regular "700 Club" contributors what they thought about the idea. Robertson's popularity and the still shaky financial foundation of the ever expanding CBN enterprises are not likely to make this a reality soon, however.

Pat Robertson is easily the best educated of the video vicars. So incredible is his command of facts in so many areas that a skeptical viewer would find it difficult to believe that Robertson doesn't work from cue cards after extensive briefings. He is briefed about his guests, but he does his own homework. His spontaneous lecturettes on all sorts of subjects amaze both his

guests and his staff, who have worked closely with him for years. Robertson's political and economic views are conservative, and more frequently than not his guests share his conservative philosophy. By late 1979 Robertson was talking and writing in his newsletter, Perspective, like a man who was about to make a move into politics. But he came back from his yearly retreat and told his closest associates that God wanted him to back away from politics.

That wasn't an easy task. He was already committed to being program chairman of Washington for Jesus, a two-day rally for prayer and repentance, which aimed at attracting a million participants. As the rally approached, he worked hard to disavow any political agenda for the gathering. The organization did reject some of the more overt political activities that had earlier been a part of the schedule. Still, everyone knows that no one brings a crowd to Washington, save the chaperones of the droves of high school students who descend on the nation's capital each spring, without a political purpose.

Robertson was clearly uncomfortable with the overtly political agenda of the National Affairs Briefing in Dallas in August 1980. Shortly thereafter he quietly resigned from the Round able, the organization that had sponsored the gathering, and canceled an appearance at a meeting of the National Religious Broadcasters when of the three presidential candidates only Ronald Reagan agreed to appear.

His efforts to withdraw from politics notwithstanding, Robertson cares deeply about the direction in which this nation is moving economically, socially, and politically. He tells his audiences that the best thing they can do about the nation's problems is to pray. Indeed, he proclaims that prayer is the only thing that can be done, but almost in the same breath he encourages his listeners to write their congressmen. It is by no means certain that God will not one day tap Pat Robertson, the son of a once powerful United States senator, on the shoulder for a more overtly political assignment.