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The son of longtime U.S. Senator A. Willis Robertson, Pat grew up in Lexington, Va., and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from hometown Washington and Lee University. After a hitch as a Marine combat officer in Korea, he graduated from the Yale Law School, flunked the New York bar exam and was a partner in a small business. Then at age 26 he had a conversion experience ("At my desk in my office, I leaned back in my chair and burst out laughing . . . I had passed from death into life") and entered the Biblical Seminary in New York City.
Robertson's career took a dramatic turn in the late 1950s when he became an early convert to the Neopentecostal, or Charismatic, movement, which carried the beliefs of the older Pentecostal denominations into more sedate mainstream churches and independent congregations. These groups believe in baptism in the Holy Spirit as a necessary follow-up to personal commitment to Jesus Christ. Typically, this experience follows the laying on of hands by believers who already have been Spirit-filled, and results in speaking in tongues, a form of prayer language. Also emphasized are other Holy Spirit "gifts" mentioned in the New Testament, including faith healing.
In his new enthusiasm, Robertson felt God telling him to apply literally the exhortation of Luke 12: 33: "Sell your possessions, and give alms." While Wife Dede was in Ohio nursing a sick brother, Robertson sold virtually everything the couple owned and gave the money to the poor. According to Robertson's 1972 autobiography, Shout It from the Housetops, the marriage went through a tense period before Dede showed "willingness to submit herself to my spiritual headship."
After living as a church worker in a Brooklyn black ghetto, Robertson ( eventually landed in Virginia's Tidewater with $70 in cash, an aged De Soto, and a vision of "claiming" a defunct UHF station for Jesus. The price (divinely ordained, as Robertson saw it): $37,000. WYAH went on the air in 1961 with a weak signal, one camera, and a movie projector that frequently jammed. But America's first Christian TV station was afloat, to be followed by others in Atlanta, Dallas and Boston. After overcoming struggles that Robertson attributed to "satanic oppression," the operation developed money- raising telethons and friendly talk shows.
Even in CBN's flourishing state today, fund raising is pervasive, as it is on all Gospel TV. Sometimes the pitch is blatant, as with California Neopentecostalist Paul Crouch, 51, operator of the all-religion Trinity Broadcasting Network (nine stations, 6 million cable homes, $35 million budget). He tells viewers that a widow has donated her life savings of $7,000 and comments, "Do you realize what an awesome responsibility it is for me to stand here and encourage people to literally give all they have to God? I'm either the biggest fool and idiot and con man in the world or else I'm plugged into heaven."