The televangelist ran for president in 1988 and founded the Christian Coalition.
Pat Robertson poses a question to a Republican presidential candidate during a forum Oct. 23, 2015, in Virginia Beach, Va. | Steve Helber/AP PhotoThe Rev. Pat Robertson, an influential and often inflammatory voice of conservative Christianity who ran for president in 1988 and helped organize the political strength of evangelicals, has died. He was 93.
“Christians really became mobilized,” wrote William Martin of Robertson’s 1988 campaign in “With God On Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America.” “They had a cause now, they had a champion who was speaking to their pain, speaking to their hearts and was willing to speak out loud.” Marion Gordon “Pat” Robertson was born March 22, 1930, in Lexington, Va. His father was Virginia political leader A. Willis Robertson, who served in the House from 1933 to 1945 and then in the U.S. Senate from 1946 to 1966, and was a foe of any and all civil rights legislation. The Robertson lineage included two American presidents, William Henry Harrison and Benjamin Harrison.
A traveling minister named Cornelius Vanderbreggen — some characterize him as a mystic — offered Robertson a path forward, a personal connection with Jesus Christ, that Robertson accepted. “It was as if I had walked through a curtain, which had separated me from God,” Robertson later wrote. But as influential as he was within his faith community, Robertson’s impact was not necessarily felt at a national level. Sometimes, though, in an era before technology easily allowed for outrageous statements to go viral, he said things that drew widespread attention. In September 1985, for instance, he claimed that prayer had diverted a massive storm from his home turf.
Four months later, Robertson did stunningly well in the Iowa caucuses, finishing in second place, well ahead of Bush, the sitting vice president. “George Bush’s vision for American, ladies and gentlemen, is one of faith in God, strong families, freedom, individual initiative, and free enterprise,” he said in the 1992 speech, in which he accused Democratic nominee Bill Clinton of having “a radical plan to destroy the traditional family and transfer many of its functions to the federal government.”
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