More than 30 years ago, a Baptist television star had a vision.
Pat Robertson envisioned a nation where conservative Christian values reigned supreme in the halls of power. Abortion would be illegal. Prayer would be restored in public schools. The crosses would be prominently displayed in town halls and courts. Conservative Christian believers would no longer be ignored, as he thought they were.
Mr. Robertson ran for president in 1988, hoping to channel the evangelistic popularity of his growing television empire, the Christian Broadcasting Network, into Republican political power. Eventually, even devout Christians failed worried about the intensity with which the famous minister mixed church and state.
And yet, by the time of his death Thursday, the vision he championed had gained more power than he ever thought possible. The alliance between evangelical Christianity and Republican politics has coalesced even as America has become increasingly secular. The polarizing rhetoric of his often inflammatory views has become a defining feature of American politics.
Mr. Robertson lived to see the Supreme Court strike down the right to abortion established by Roe v. Wade, a president was moving the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, and a whole mass of conservative Christian voters were resisting what they believed to be their declining place in Israel. American life by electing Donald J. Trump, a man who promised to restore his power.
“I saw the Republican Party, as we do today, as the party most in line with Judeo-Christian values,” said Bob Vander Plaats, president of Family Leaders in Iowa. “The party will not save us, but the party can be a vehicle where we can influence and influence change.”
Former President Trump, like Mr. Robertson, a popular TV star with widespread grassroots appeal, tested how far fusion could go.
Mr. Robertson became an uncompromising figure. He claimed that the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 were God’s punishment for homosexuality and secularism and suggested that natural disasters were divine retribution for abortion. He has made compromises on his own when necessary: Weeks before the 2016 election, he defended Mr. Trump after a video showed him making vulgar comments about women.
Mr. Robertson deserves credit for creating the infrastructure for today’s Christian conservative movement, from his media empire to his creation of a Christian university and the way he “changed the face of evangelical Christianity with respect to Israel,” he said Rick Santorum, Ex. Republican senator from Pennsylvania and presidential candidate.
Despite the political successes of conservative Christianity, its influence on culture is much less assured. And Mr. Robertson has left a mixed legacy.
Some younger conservative Christians now reject the idea of such a close marriage between religion and politics, arguing that politics is a corrupting force in spiritual matters.
Other conservative Christians, such as Mr. Santorum, they still feel that much of Mr. Robertson still has some catching up to do, especially as many Americans embrace rapidly changing attitudes toward sexuality and gender.
“We’ve been miserable failures,” said Mr. Santorum on the religious right and its place in the culture wars. “The country has continued to change dramatically.”
The Christian Coalition that Mr. Founded by Robertson to harness evangelical fervor for political gain, it was successful in the early 1990s before losing prominence to organizations that took on similar missions.
However, the work of Mr. Robertson spawned many of today’s conservative evangelical political actors, who worked to cement the alliance between evangelical voters and Mr. trump
Ralph Reed, whom Mr. Robertson appointed to lead the Christian Coalition, guides presidential candidates on how to win over the evangelical base. Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, a conservative think tank and lobbying group, credited Mr. Robertson the “vision and courage” that shaped his own introduction to political action.
Republican politicians have come to see the Christian media, which Mr. Robertson pioneered, as a powerful tool for their ambitions and agendas. While Mr. Trump railed against “fake news,” he often gave interviews to the Christian broadcaster’s David Brody. Mike Pence turned to the network to shore up grassroots support after White House crises such as revelations about Mr Trump and a $130,000 payment to a porn actress.
Mike Huckabee, a former governor of Arkansas who ran for president, gave political commentary on his own show on the Trinity Broadcasting Network, which began to rival the success of the Christian Broadcasting Network.
The institutions of Mr. Robertson shaped the legal landscape of the Trump era. Regent University, the school he founded in Virginia Beach, started a law school that now feeds many court clerks, which reflects the conservative hardening of the country’s judicial system. One of the main lawyers of Mr. Trump in his first impeachment trial was Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice, which Mr. Robertson founded in part to push back the American Civil Liberties Union.
Mr. Robertson, with allies like Jerry Falwell Sr. from Liberty University, saw early on how Christians could use television to reach new audiences. It revolutionized evangelical communication, both by showing the wider political world how large and powerful the Christian community was, and by teaching Christians how to use new technologies to their cultural advantage.
In the 1970s, his television network he saw himself as part of a “new charismatic renewal movement,” which had not yet become widespread in America. The network produced countless shows and programs to shape how evangelical communities across the country should respond to the world around them.
“They see what’s going on in the culture from a Christian worldview, and that helps people understand how to get involved, maybe not just in national politics, but especially in local politics,” said Troy Miller, executive director of National Religious Broadcasters.
Mr. Trump rose to power with the early support of prominent charismatic televangelistsmany of whom built businesses out of the strength of Robertson’s Christian television legacy, signaling a new moment of political maturity for this brand of Christianity in American public life.
The fate of the empire that Mr. Robertson helped build remains an open question.
Many young evangelicals are increasingly frustrated with this political alliance and the moral failures of previous Christian generations on issues such as sexual abuse, said Karen Swallow Prior, a professor at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. Some seek reform, using the social media tools of their own day to push back against the politicization of religious faith, even as conservative Christian institutions try to double down on their political power.
“What we’re seeing now are the younger generations of Christians who are using their technology to crack the foundation of what they built,” Ms. Swallow Prior.
