Marion Gordon “Pat” Robertson—religious broadcasting pioneer, philanthropist, educator, Christian leader, businessman, and author—died on June 8, 2023, in his home, surrounded by his family. He was 93. His death was announced by The Christian Broadcasting Network.
Dr. Robertson served as the founder and chairman of The Christian Broadcasting Network, Inc. (CBN); co-founder, chancellor, and chief executive officer of Regent University; founder of Operation Blessing Relief and Development Corporation (OB); founder and president of the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ); co-founder and chairman of International Family Entertainment, Inc.; and a leading force behind several other influential organizations and broadcast entities. But he always said that the greatest treasure in life was knowing Jesus Christ and having the privilege of proclaiming Him and His power to others.
Few people realize that Robertson got his start in ministry in Beford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.
Robertson was born on March 22, 1930, in Lexington, Virginia, to A. Willis Robertson and Gladys Churchill Robertson. His father served for 34 years in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate. In 1948, he enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve and served as the assistant adjutant of the First Marine Division in Korea.
After his military service, Robertson went to Yale Law School. There, in 1952, he met his wife Adelia “Dede” Elmer, who was there studying nursing. But he was a Southern Baptist and she was a Catholic. So, eighteen months later, they secretly were married by a justice of the peace, knowing that neither family would approve. Robertson received his law degree in 1955 and told his wife he was interested in politics. Moving to New York City, Robertson threw himself into business and boozing with a little gambling on the side. The experience left him feeling empty inside. But then after hearing an evangelist, he got religion in a big way.
Dede told the Associated Press that he stunned her by pouring out their liquor, tearing a nude print off the wall over their sofa, and declaring he had found the Lord. He became a Southern Baptist, though in 1957 he had an experience of the Holy Spirit that led him toward Pentecostalism.
In his autobiography, Shout It From the Housetops, Robertson related that he moved to Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn from an apartment in another neighborhood after he heard a voice from God telling him to open his Bible to Luke 12:33. Robertson sensed that the verse — “Sell all that ye have and give alms” — was intended for him. The young seminarian quit his job as a junior executive with W.R. Grace in Manhattan and soon severed his partnership in a start-up electronics company. He sold all his furniture and gave away all of his money to Korean orphans — his wife, Robertson wrote later, was “almost hysterical” — and left the apartment. Dede was tempted to return home to Ohio, “but I realized that was not what the Lord would have me do … I had promised to stay, so I did,” she told the Associated Press. She worked part-time at the Boulevard Hospital.
With their three children, the Robertsons moved in with a fellow minister who lived in what has been described as a commune on the third floor of 33 Monroe Street in Bed-Stuy. Robertson stayed at his pastoral friend’s house for about 12 weeks in 1959. By this time, the neighborhood mostly completed its transition from a mixed White ethnic neighborhood to one that was mostly Black with a sizeable number of Hispanics.
About two months later, Robertson relates, he again heard a divine call, this time to read Jeremiah 16:2: ” . . . neither shalt thou have sons or daughters in this place.” He took that to mean he should leave Bedford-Stuyvesant. Robertson received a master’s in divinity from New York Theological Seminary (then called Biblical Seminary in New York) in 1959, then drove south with his family to buy a bankrupt UHF television station in Portsmouth, Va. He said he had just $70 in his pocket, but soon found investors, and WHAY-TV went on the air on Oct. 1, 1961. From this beginning, there arose the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), one of the first cable networks that eventually broadcast in 200 countries in 70 languages.
On October 1, 1987, he came back to his old brownstone — now with a purple-draped speaker’s platform and a jazz band — for his formal declaration of candidacy, hoping to show that a white Republican could be welcomed in the inner city.
Introducing Robertson was Rosey Grier, a former pro-football player who served as RFK’s bodyguard the night he was assassinated. In 1978, he had a spiritual revival and joined a Los Angeles megachurch emphasizing good works, the Crenshaw Christian Center. The church eventually started a branch here in New York City in 2001.
An Orthodox rabbi, who identified himself to The New York Times as Josef Friedman with a group called Jews for Morality, carried a placard declaring “Rabbis Support Robertson for Family Values.
Robertson was at pains to give a vision of America that included “the people of our cities, the poor in Appalachia, the farmers in the Midwest, the steelworkers around the Great Lakes, the coal miners in West Virginia, and the oil drillers in the Southwest.” He said that they would unite to restore family values in America. He cited the problems of a decline in the family unit, teenage pregnancies, high illiteracy rates, troubled schools, drug abuse, and a decline in industrial working-class jobs. Influential in Robertson was one of the most influential figures in American politics, leading millions of evangelical and Pentecostal Christians to an awareness of their political responsibilities in a democratic system.
His wife Dede died at age 94 on Tuesday, April 19, 2022, at their home in Virginia Beach. The couple had four children (Timothy, Gordon, Elizabeth, and Ann), 14 grandchildren, and 24 great-grandchildren, CBN said in a statement.
