2023-06-08 15:32:18
The famous conservative televangelist Pat Robertson, with often extreme positions, died Thursday at the age of 93, following having contributed to the rise of the religious right on the American political scene. His death was announced by the television channel The Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), which he founded in 1960 and on which he hosted an ultra-conservative daily program for years. The 700 Club widely followed around the world.
Pat Robertson “television presenter, educator, humanitarian and former presidential candidate, died at his Virginia Beach residence early Thursday morning,” she wrote in a statement without specifying the causes. of his death. Born in 1930 in Lexington, Virginia into an influential milieu (his father spent 34 years in Congress), Pat Robertson was enlisted in the Marines before graduating from the prestigious Yale University. He was one of the first evangelists to take religion out of the private sphere and put it at the heart of ultra-conservative, often radical political discourse.
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“Pat Robertson was a televangelist who knew politics well,” commented on Twitter Larry Sabato, professor of political science at the University of Virginia. He personally ventured into the electoral arena only once, in the 1988 presidential election, but failed to win the Republican nomination But he founded the Christian Coalition, an organization known for its fierce opposition to abortion and its fight in favor of prayer at school, which in the 1990s became an essential political pressure group. The Christian Coalition numbered nearly 4 million in 1994, according to the New York Timesbut had lost half of its membership by the 2000s and lost much of its influence.
A media empire
In a courteous, polite tone, he nevertheless aroused controversy with extremist remarks. In particular, he claimed in 2002, a year following the September 11 attacks, that Muslims were worse than the Nazis and in 2005 called for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, whom the televangelist accused of having financed Osama bin Laden. . In 2003, he aroused the disapproval of the State Department by suggesting: “Maybe we should launch a small nuclear bomb … to stir things up” on the diplomatic level.
In 2016, Pat Robertson put his influence at the service of Donald Trump, helping this divorced billionaire to conquer evangelical voters. He distanced himself from it when the Republican denied his defeat in the 2020 presidential election once morest Democrat Joe Biden. “The president still lives in an alternate reality,” he said at the time.
In addition to the CBN channel, he had founded a media empire present in the publishing of books and videos in particular, which reported, according to the Washington Post, up to 300 million dollars a year. He had also founded a Christian university, the CBN University renamed Regent University, in the State of Virginia, which provided many collaborators to the republican governments. 2024 Republican primary candidate Nikki Haley on Thursday honored a man who “fought for America, and more importantly, for truth and faith.”
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