Southern Voice October 1, 1993 copied with permission from Southern Voice FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE Religious fervor, political savvy and media access can make for a potent combination - and a frightening one when you are the person at whom those forces are aimed. this week, and for the next three weeks, Southern Voice staff writer K.C. Wildmoon takes an in-depth look at four of the Christian right's most powerful leaders - Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, James Dobson and Don Wildmon. For the lesbian and gay community, they may be the Four Horsemen of our Apocalypse. PAT ROBERTSON: FATHER OF THE STEALTH CAMPAIGN Perfect government comes from God and is controlled by God. Short of that, the next best government is a limited democracy in which the people acknowledge rights given by God. -Pat Robertson Five years ago, the Christian Right was reeling. Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority was on the brink of dissolution, and Pat Robertson's campaign for the Republican presidential nomination had been skewered by Southern voters who pulled the lever for George Bush. And then there was that nasty Jim Bakker/PTL affair just a year earlier. Televangelism, where the Christian Right drew most of its followers - and money - appeared sunk in the mire of its own greed. Moderates and progressives alike rejoiced at what they saw as the end of an assault from religious extremists ben on turning the country "back to God." But it was a short lived respite. Just two years later, voters in San Diego county, California awoke on the morning after election day to learn they had installed a chilling new slate of public office holders. Sixty out of 90 low-level state and local posts had been won by right-wing candidates who had not overtly advertised their extremist positions. The stealth candidacy was born. The man behind the stealth candidacy is none other than that former presidential candidate, the Rev. Pat Robertson, an ordained Southern baptist minister and head of the multi-million dollar International Family Entertainment, Inc. His company operates the Family Channel (formerly the Christian Broadcasting Network), which features "The 700 Club," as its touchstone. And it is from the soundstages of "The 700 Club" where Robertson espouses his vision of america - a conservative Christian nation, founded by conservative Christians for conservative Christians and ruled by conservative, God-inspired Christians. Simply put, televangelist Pat Robertson believes in the divine right to rule. As he once told a "700 Club" audience, "individual Christians are the only ones [fit for government office] really, and Jewish people." "Anyone whose mind and heart is not controlled by God Almighty is not qualified." In 1988, Robertson sought the top honors for himself, launching a campaign for the presidency that put the fear of God into front runner George Bush with surprisingly good showings in Iowa and Michigan early in the campaign. But then came Super Tuesday, when Bush soundly defeated the Virginian in what should have been his natural territory - the Bible Belt of his native South. By the time the primary season was over, Robertson had amassed only 120 delegates to the Republican National convention. The Freedom Council, a lobbying and political action group he formed to promote conservative issues, had been dissolved in the wake of an Internal Revenue Service investigation spurred by allegations that the group had misused its tax-exempt status to support Robertson's presidential campaign. Humbly conceding defeat, he returned to the airwaves of the Christian Broadcasting Network, where he continued to trumpet "traditional family values," and to rake in the money his viewers willingly sent to support his efforts. But Pat Robertson was not through with politics. The Freedom council's extensive grassroots mailing list, which has provided Robertson's campaign with supporters in every state and many local jurisdictions, became the basis for the Christian Coalition, a new grassroots organization with a new mandate - to build a Christian America from the ground up. "The Christian community got it backwards in the 1980s," said the Christian Coalition;s executive director Ralph Reed, a Toccoa native and graduate of the University of Georgia and Emory University. "We tried to charge Washington when we should have been focusing on the states. The real battles of concern to Christians are in neighborhoods, school boards, city councils and state legislatures." It was the Christian Coalition, working through the California Pro-Life Council, that laid the foundation for electing two-thirds of the right wing candidates in San Diego County in 1990. That strategy is spreading. The Coalition now has nearly 800 chapters in all 50 states (35 in Georgia) and boasts a membership of 350,000. In the metro area, Cobb, Fulton, Clayton and Gwinnett counties have chapters, and the coalition is trying to organize in DeKalb County. Athens-Clarke County also has a chapter. The numbers are growing. The organization's goal is to double its membership to 700,000 by the end of 1993. The newest strategy to make that happen is to use the issues of abortion rights and lesbian/gay rights to drive a wedge between minority groups and attract African-American and Hispanic members. And Pat Robertson is leading the charge. I believe that during the next couple of years, there will be a fierce struggle between the militant leftists, secular humanists and atheists, who have dominated the power centers of American culture for the past 50 years, and the Evangelical Christians, pro-family Roman Catholics and their conservative allies. The radical left will lose its hold, and by the end of this decade control of the major institutions of society will be firmly in the hands of those who share a pro-family, religious, traditional perspective. -Pat Robertson Marion Gordon "Pat" Robertson, born on March 22, 1930, comes by his political and religious backgrounds naturally. He was just two when his father, A. Willis Robertson, was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, beginning a political career that lasted until his re-election bid for the U.S. Senate failed in 1966. Robertson likes to joke that his first words were "Mama," "Daddy" and "constituent." His mother, Gladys Churchill Robertson, was a devoutly religious woman who proudly pointed to her genealogical lineage - including several U.S. presidents and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill - as evidence of her family's birthright of greatness. "Her whole approach was to convince me that I was born for leadership, and that she would be disappointed with anything less," Robertson said. He grew up in Lexington, Va., home of the virginia Military Institute and the Confederate General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson. But despite a strict upbringing in the political spotlight, Robertson developed what even his "authorized" biographer, John B. Donovan, called a marked "rambunctiousness." By age 13, he had discovered smoking, drinking and girls. "We would go off on the highway somewhere, park, and do what we could do," Robertson told Donovan. "My mother never said anything about my being out until three o'clock in the morning. I would never have permitted even my own children to do anything like that." Robertson's "rambunctiousness" caused him some problems when he was sent to a military school in Baltimore in the eight grade. There, he frequently sneaked out of the strict school to head to a nearby racetrack. The military school venture lasted only that one year, and Robertson subsequently returned to Lexington. After starting high school in his hometown, he finished his secondary education at another military school, McCallie in Chattanooga, Tenn. >From there, he enrolled in Washington and Lee University, also in Lexington, where he continued the party lifestyle he began in his early teens. But in his authorized biography, Robertson recalls that he "never really felt at home" with the party crowd. "I guess we change our standards to suit our lifestyles," he said, "and so I didn't feel there was any clash between my upbringing and my college lifestyle. In never questioned my lifestyle, but I had a sense of not belonging." At Washington and Lee, Robertson joined the ROTC program and, upon graduation, the U.S. Marine Crops. His service during the Korean Was later would later cloud Robertson's bid for the Republican presidential nomination. A former Republican congressman, Paul McCloskey, Jr., who served with the future preacher in Korea, claimed the Robertson had bragged that his father "had gotten him out of combat duty." Robertson vehemently denied the claim, as did his father. The record shows that the future televangelist served as an assistant adjutant on the front lines, but he was never in combat. After the war, Robertson entered law school at Yale University, where he developed a striking disdain for the U.S. Supreme Court. "We would analyze cased of the Supreme Court and many times show the absurdity of what had been written," he said. "When we saw the fallacy in the court's reasoning, it was hard to understand why that body was superior to the president and superior the the congress." While at Yale, Robertson met Adelia "Dede" Elmer, a graduate nursing student at a nearby college for women, Elmer and Robertson were married on Aug. 27, 1954. Ten weeks later, adding a special Robertson dimension to "family values," their first son was born. According to Robertson's biographer, "they have always celebrated their wedding anniversary on Pat's birthday, March 22, because of the strong traditional views they later developed about marriage and family, in addition to the desire to protect their children." After a short stint in the corporate world, Robertson abruptly found religion and entered a seminary in New York City. The next few years were difficult for the Robertsons. They fought constantly and struggled to make ends meet. After graduation, the couple lived with another minister and his wife in Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, where Robertson did his best to spread the Gospel for little or no money. He approached his ministry with a strength of conviction seriously lacking in his earlier life. God knew what was best, he believed, and he was determined to devote his life to God's work. He adopted a stridently conservative world view, repudiating his earlier "party lifestyle," and even going so far as to remove a Modigliani nude from his living room wall. And then, a former schoolmate told Robertson about a dilapidated television station in Portsmouth, Va. "Would Pat be interested in claiming it for the Lord?" he asked. Robertson was, and in 1959, he began what would become his life's work. He bought the station for a song, bluffing with the station's owner until he had negotiated the purchase, even though Robertson had only $70 to his name at the time. WYAH-TV went on the air on Oct. 1 1961, and the Christian Broadcasting Network, now The Family Channel, was born, held together by rubber bands and, yes, prayers, for the first few years of its existence. In 1976, he became one of the first broadcasters to sign onto the burgeoning satellite technology in the television industry, and satellite transmission alloyed "The 700 Club," and Robertson's views, to be aired around the world. Cable expanded the broadcasting empire even further. How large is his reach? His company, which boasts millions of viewers, bill itself as the largest religious broadcasting network in the world. Though International Family Entertainment recently failed in a bid to by the United Press International wire service, it did purchase London-based TVS Entertainment, which owns such television shows as "Hill Street Blues," "Mary Tyler Moore," and "St. Elsewhere." Still, "The 700 Club" remains Robertson's mainstay. The network estimates that nearly 30 million people watch the show at least once per month. I found something worthy of the dedication of my life wholeheartedly, forever, and no amount of stress would be too much in this endeavor. I found what I was looking for, and, our of that, I got back everything I wanted - the chance to start a number of businesses...the chance to go all over the world. -Pat Robertson Robertson began "The 700 Club" early in CBN's history as a Christian call-in television show. Early shows featured healing and prophecy. Robertson is a charismatic who speaks in tongues, although the charismatic overtones have been dramatically reduced since his presidential campaign. With several transformations through the years, the show now has expanded to include news with a Christian emphasis, interviews with world leaders, and, as always, Robertson's almost folksy ruminations. As with all the christian right leaders, homosexuality is a common topic. "When you see the rise of blatant open homosexuality and lesbianism, what you know is god has given a society up," he said on april 26, commenting on the March On Washington. "No amount of gay marches are going to make the word of God change. It's forever written in heaven. They can't change it on earth. they can have 50 million of them up there, and they still can't change God's immutable law." And Robertson's viewers love such stuff. They write, they call, they send money. Their names go on mailing lists. And the mailing lists go to the Christian Coalition. "They get voter rolls and church rolls, and they match those up," said Cathy Woolard of the Human Rights campaign fund in Washington D.C. "And then they create a voter list of their own. They are putting together a nationwide infrastructure that imitates the Republican and Democratic parties and in many ways exceeds them" That's how the Christian right candidates succeeded in San Diego county in 1990. volunteers made phone calls and distributed literature, and, on the Sunday before the election, they put leaflets with a voters' guide on cars in every church in the area. The end result - a county filled with Christian supremacist public officials. The North Carolina Christian coalition accomplished the same thing during U.S. Sen Jesse Helms' 1990 re-election bid. Helms, trailing in the polls to former Charlotte Mayor Harvey Gantt, contacted Robertson, and Robertson set his forces in motion. On the Sunday before the election, 750,000 flyers supporting Helms were inserted into church bulletins and slipped onto cars in church parking lots. Helms won. "The press has no idea what we were doing," bragged Judy Haynes, state director of the Christian coalition in North Carolina. "And they still don't know what we did. But it worked." "Woolard says that what worked was simple grassroots politics, with a different philosophical bent. "The goal, really, is that the Christian Coalition leadership understands that the way to control politics is to control precincts," she said. "If you take their rhetoric out, it's pure politics. They didn't make this up. There's nothing magic about it." According to Woolard, who attended the coalition's national convention earlier this month, the group is striving to attract 10 to 15 "friendly" people in each precinct in the country (there are about 17,000 precincts) and increase its current $12 million budget to between $100 million and $250 million. But even that $12 million figure - which does not include monies raised by individual chapters - is already enormous in comparison to the budgets of lesbian/gay groups fighting the coalition. It's about twice the annual budget of the HRCF and about the same as the budgets of the six largest gay/lesbian groups combined. And the Christian coalition isn't the only game in town. Other right wing groups, buoyed by the Coalition's success, are adopting its strategy of attacking quietly and without fanfare. "Their twist on the media is that they don't want to get media until they win," said Woolard. "It's more than a stealth candidacy. It's a stealth political movement." It is a movement, with Pat Robertson, fueled by his drive for leadership and conviction of beliefs, at its helm. "We are probably right now the most effective political organization in American because people like you and me say, `Hey, you're right! We've got a problem, and we've got to fix it!'" Robertson told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in March (he declined Southern Voice's request for an interview). "There's got to be a change in policies, a change in our think. There's got to be a clarion call to the people of this nation. This country is at risk." "We have enough votes to run this country," Robertson has said. "And when the people say, `We've had enough,' we're going to take over." The challenge for progressives and moderates, of course, is to stop that from happening before it's too late. "People should be scared off their butts to get involved," said Arthur Kropp, president of People for the American Way, a progressive organization that monitors the activities of the right. "Today is not a day for complacency. Either we're going to meet this challenge head on or we're going to be run over by it." Pat Robertson and the Christian coalition have mobilized hundreds of thousands of Americans who felt disenfranchised by their government. Those who see America differently will have to do no less.