If you look at the headline and the art for this post, it’s obvious that this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in) focused on media coverage of the Rev. Pat Robertson’s retirement as host of the “700 Club.”
Try to forget that. Work with me here, for a moment.
What if I told you that the man at the heart of this story grew up in Washington, D.C., as the son of a U.S. Senator. Then he did his undergraduate work at a quality school known for its academic rigor, graduating magna cum laude while studying history at Washington and Lee University.
Later, he earned a Yale Law School degree. After that — think low New York bar exam scores and a big religious conversion — he earned an MDiv degree from New York Theological Seminary.
Somewhere in that mix, he served in the U.S. Marines. Later, he founded a multi-million-dollar broadcasting empire and started a graduate-school university and a law school.
Does it sound like someone with a pretty good shot at having an impact on American life and culture?
Well, that’s Pat Robertson — sort of. It's clear that, for most journalists, this resume doesn’t have much to do with the man’s life and work. This is, after all, the religious broadcaster (as opposed to televangelist) who, for decades, served up “spew your coffee” soundbites that launched waves of embarrassing headlines and late-night TV jokes. He was important because this was the kind of wild man who helped lead the Religious Right further into the heart of Republican Party politics.
The minute anything crazy or scary happened in the world — from politics and pop culture to hurricanes and earthquakes — the press turned to Robertson for what was billed as semi-official “evangelical” reactions, even as his words frequently left mainstream evangelical leaders sad, puzzled or furious.
Robertson was one of the official alpha-male media voices of evangelicalism, even after he women and men had emerged who had more clout and connections in the movement.
I was never a Robertson fan. However, it was always clear to me — thinking in terms of church history — that he wasn’t really an “evangelical,” strictly defined, even though he was an ordained Southern Baptist minister. The key is that he was a leader in the rising tide of charismatic and Pentecostal Christianity in America and the world at large (see this Pew Research Center resource page).
Does that matter? Well, Pentecostal Christianity very diverse, in terms of race and class, and is the fastest growing for of religious faith on the planet.
