Conservatives Without Conscience

Christian conservatives’ primary tool in reinforcing authoritarianism is preaching fear, and no one does so more consistently than the head of the Christian Coalition, Pat Robertson. I met Robertson in 1982, when he invited me to appear on his television program, The 700 Club, the ostensible reason being to promote my recently published book, Lost Honor. I was told that his Christian Broadcasting Network reached over one hundred million homes, and that The 700 Club had a large following. While authors do not pass up such opportunities, I knew the book was not exactly normal fare for his audience, and I had little doubt that I was being checked out, for it was subtly suggested there was a place for me in this politically active Christian world. For my part, I certainly gave no sign that I was interested in the politics of Christian conservatism, for I had long believed that both religion and politics suffer when they are mixed. Robertson was a congenial and engaging host who wears his Cheshire cat grin both on and off camera. Even back in 1982 it was apparent that CBN was a substantial operation that was likely to grow, for viewers kept sending Robertson money. I was given a tour and saw a small army opening mail to retrieve five dollars here and five hundred dollars there, which arrived daily by the truckload. In the end, all that came of my appearance on The 700 Club was that Pat Robertson, of whom I had been only vaguely aware, was now on my radar. I have now been observing him for over two decades.

The Americans United for Separation of Church and State has also long been monitoring Robertson’s assorted publications and The 700 Club. In 1996 Robert Boston, assistant director of communications for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, published The Most Dangerous Man in America? Pat Robertson and the Rise of the Christian Coalition. From this account, and from my own knowledge, Robertson seems to possess all the key characteristics of a Double High authoritarian.[*]

According to Boston, Robertson’s domineering personality was apparent from the earliest days of his born-again experience, when he headed off to a month-long religious retreat in Canada while his wife was seven months pregnant. Despite the fact that she had another small child to care for and the family was desperately poor, Robertson insisted on taking the trip. Later, when he went to purchase the UHF television station that would become the base of his operation, “with considerable bluster, Robertson confronted the owner…with the announcement, ‘I’m Pat Robertson. God has sent me here to buy your television station.’”[69] Since 1987, Robertson has been calling for the government to assassinate foreign leaders he does not like. For example, he has said, “I know it sounds somewhat Machiavellian and evil, to think that you could send a squad in to take out somebody like Osama bin Laden, or to take out the head of North Korea. But isn’t it better to do something like that, to take out Milosevic, to take out Saddam Hussein, rather than to spend billions and billions of dollars on a war that harms innocent civilians and destroys the infrastructure of a country? It would just seem so much more practical to have that flexibility.”[70]

As with most Double Highs, Robertson does not view women as equals. On one occasion he proclaimed, “There’s never been a woman Grandmaster chess player. And if, you know, once you get one, then I’ll buy some of the feminism, but until that point,” he was having nothing to do with the female mind.[*] He contemporaneously issued a fund-raising letter declaring that 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.”[71] Robertson has an unequivocal view of a woman’s true role: “The woman should be in submission to the man,” he declared flatly. On racial equality, Robertson remains silent. His father, Willis Robertson, who served fourteen years in the House of Representatives and twenty in the Senate, made a career of blocking civil rights legislation. He was one of nineteen senators to sign the infamous Southern Manifesto criticizing the Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. Pat, a bit less blatantly, “supported the apartheid government in South Africa until the very end.”[72]