Pat Robertson Cause Of Death and Obituary, A Religious Broadcaster, Dies at 93
Pat Robertson, the religious broadcaster who turned a tiny Virginia station into the Christian Broadcasting Network, tried a run for president and helped make religion central to Republican Party politics in America, died early Thursday at his home in Virginia Beach. He was 93, CBN said. The cause of death was not immediately clear. The news shook the evangelical community, where Robertson had been a leading force since the 1970s in making socially conservative religious conservatism a powerful force within the Republican Party. Along with Moral Majority founder Jerry Falwell, he led the way in turning conservative evangelicals into a force in American politics.
In his heyday in the 1980s, he had a massive TV following and founded a number of organizations and businesses that have become a part of the modern culture of right-wing politics and Christian activism. He was also a prominent leader of the Christian Coalition, which was created to help Republicans solidify their ties with religious voters.
After graduating from the McCallie School military prep school in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Robertson enrolled at Washington and Lee University, where he earned a law degree. He married his first wife, Adelia “Dede” Elmer, in 1952. He then went to New York Theological Seminary and bought a bankrupt UHF TV station in Virginia. He called it the Christian Broadcasting Network, and it debuted on 1 October 1961. It soon became one of the largest religious television networks in the world, according to its website. He launched The 700 Club five years later, and it quickly became a success by using the modern TV talk show format to draw viewers in. The program featured celebrities and political guests, a far departure from the traditional church services and preacher sermons on other religious TV programs.
Robertson was an early leader in urging Christians to vote for conservative candidates and to form the Christian Coalition to advance their cause. In his 1988 bid for the Republican presidential nomination, he pioneered a now-common strategy of courting Iowa’s large network of evangelical Christian churches. He won second place in the Iowa caucuses, behind George HW Bush, and endorsed him, whose victory that fall cemented the Republican Party’s enduring alliance with evangelical voters. Robertson also cultivated his own vast network of followers by insisting that 3 million people across the country sign petitions before he would decide whether to run for president, a tactic that gave him an army, sociologist Jeffrey K Hadden of the University of Virginia told The Associated Press at the time.
He was also a prolific writer, with 24 books that made the New York Times best-seller list. He penned such titles as Answers to 100 of Life’s Most Probing Questions and The Secret Kingdom, which was the number-one religious book in America for two consecutive years. In recent years, he was a vocal critic of abortion rights, pornography and the separation of church and state. He also made headlines with claims that Hurricane Katrina was God’s wrath over abortion and that Islam is a violent religion that wants to doom America.
