Pat Robertson

         The following post is a book review from August of 2010:

       1982 was the year when something wonderful happened to me and I was born again. I don't know the day, nor do I know the month. There was no sinner's prayer that I remember. What there was was weeks, if not months, of inquisitiveness, turned to outright research, turned to amazing joy. Many people are in the equation here, not the least of which is Pat Robertson. I did not tune into the 700 Club and then become inquisitive; rather I tuned in as part of what was happening to me. I then called them seeking referral to a church where I could hear something that was akin to this glorious news I was hearing.....the Gospel. They recommended a church which my wife and I, and later our son, attended for about eight years. We were members of the 700 Club for years. We visited, and stayed, at the Founders Inn in Virginia Beach twice and more recently visited it while our son was in the midst of a law school search.
          David Edwin Harrell Jr. recently wrote a biography on Pat Robertson called Pat Robertson, A Life And Legacy which I highly recommend if you are interested in this iconic figure. Many people do not know that Pat's father was a United States Senator from Virginia. A young Pat Robertson was going to take the world by storm, and have fun doing it. He was prep school educated before graduating magna cum laude at Washington and Lee University. Next came Yale Law School culminating in a failed bar exam and entry into the business world to get his fortune. This was interrupted by service in the Korean War as a Marine officer.
         Eventually something wonderful happened to him followed by being born again. What follows might be good lyrics for a country song "he buys a radio station, becomes a star, runs for president and gets pretty far.....starts a college, and a law school too, knows the "secrets of the kingdom" and would like to give them to you. "
         As a avid reader of biographies, I found this book very well written. It gave a lot of answers to questions I have had over the years. It is, as someone described, a sympathetic biography but as someone who knows from the inside what goes through the mind of the latter 20th century evangelical mind, it is also accurate. The reader is taken through the early years when Jim Bakker was on staff, to the headiness of reaching so many people through the flagship program 700 Club, to the apex of financial success, to his campaign for the Presidency, and then in and out of the financial misadventures and turmoil that any major CEO would experience over time.
          As a young man he may have seemed flighty to some, but then so did Ted Turner, His gift was in presenting the love of Jesus Christ to people who would tune in the 700 Club. His ability, something very different, was to raise enormous endowments for his projects which include a university and law school, enormous compassionate enterprises in medicine and disaster relief and broadcasting throughout the world. His genius was as an entrepreneur with a dual major in the political sphere, as his American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) is a strong, maybe the strongest, legal deterrent today to the secular religionists.
         The problem with this incredible life and legacy is not in ethics as some would have it, for this man is no lover of money...it is theological. His strong Charismatic Theology may be partially responsible for his financial misadventures, of which were many, and also his numerous... seemingly never-ending string of oratorical gaffes, all documented in the book. One failure of the book is in not challenging the claims of the millions of salvations throughout the world due to Charismatic ministries, for choreographed healing ministries say little about actual conversions, and signing a card may make one a Republican but not born again.
         More than one person, multitudes maybe, can give a testimony similar to mine where Pat Robertson's face on a television played a part in a metamorphosis; but the validation is of God not the ministry...and of the gospel itself, not necessarily the messenger. He has, all too often, ventured beyond his gift. The unsound and even heretical extremes of the Charismatic Movement come into the equation, as does also the malignancy of ecumenism gone wild.
         It was one thing to have Roman Catholic scholar and lawyer Keith Fournier head Robertson's ACLJ, a legal mission that gave no pretense to doctrinal adherence; but another thing altogether was in Mitt Romney being given the podium as commencement speaker at Regent University, a Christian university, tolerant of doctrinal diversity, but that diversity should not extend into Mormonism. Oddly, the book only describes reaction to this misadventure as.... ruffled feathers. It is more than ironic that Mr. Fournier left the ACLJ because he refused to be part of an ecumenical communion service. He was true to his beliefs where Pat Robertson's vision sometimes compromised his.
         Pat Robertson should be looked at as ambitious and greatly talented and dedicated man, devoted to his God, but a man none-the-less. The few times I get to see the 700 Club today, I find myself praying for those watching it; not praying that they are not taken in by words of knowledge or Charismatic theology, but praying that the portrait given of a Savior might bring the same joy and awe that it did for me. That was the purpose in the beginning of the 700 Club and the ministry of Pat Robertson. His work in education, constitutional law and compassion ministries are by-products of this. His political and financial ventures around the world were often gross miscalculations of his original mission. As the author laments, many may define Pat Robertson by his mistakes but those like me will, hopefully, ultimately, define him by the 700 Club, and by his gift of preaching Jesus Christ in front of a camera to lost and hopeless souls.