Know Your Enemy - The Prayers and Prophecies of Pat Robertson [TEASER]

Matt and Sam talk Pat Robertson (RIP), James G. Watt (RIP), and how they shaped the Christian right. Subscribe on Patreon to hear the rest.

Duration: 3m
Broadcast on: 17 Jun 2023
Audio Format: other

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Last week, televangelist, businessman, conspiracy theorist, and former Republican presidential candidate Pat Robertson died at the age of 93. Though mostly known today for his deranged comments about homosexuality, abortion, feminism, and other "sins" causing everything from natural disasters to 9-11, Robertson had a major influence on the evolution of the Republican Party and the religious right. Where did Robertson come from, and what was distinctive about Robertson's theological and political views? What were the innovations of the Christian Coalition, the group he founded in 1987, in organizing conservative believers for the GOP? How did he respond to the end of the Cold War and adapt his message for the 1990s and the supposed advent of a "New World Order"?

In this episode, Matt and Sam take up these questions and more, plus offer a discussion of James G. Watt, Ronald Reagan's first Secretary of the Interior, who died in late May. An evangelical Christian known for railing against the Beach Boys, his offensive comments about Native Americans and others, and using the supposed imminent return of Christ to justify destroying the environment.

Sources:

Pat Robertson obituaries: NYT, Washington Post

James G. Watt obituaries: NYT, Washington Post

Daniel Schlozman, When Movements Anchor Parties: Electoral Alignments in American History (2016)

Jacob Heilbrunn, "His Anti-Semitic Sources," New York Review of Books, April 20, 1995

Pat Robertson, The New World Order (1991)

James Conaway, "James Watt, In the Right with the Lord," Washington Post, April 27, 1983

John Taylor "Pat Robertson’s God, Inc." Esquire, Nov 1994.

- So everything I've said so far could be said by any kind of crank conspiracy theorist, right? But one of the distinctives that Robertson brings to it is of course, he's a Christian who believes in end-time prophecies. So all this, this cabal of people working to enslave us all who have been working this plan out for two centuries, basically. They're being guided by Satan, right? And I think it's important to note the kind of way that these two things relate to each other because Robertson had a pre-millennial view of the end-times, meaning Jesus would come back before the millennium and defeat the forces of evil. And then that starts the millennium, which is a thousand years of peace and prosperity and happiness on earth. So you have to have basically a one-world government, right? Kind of run by Satan that Jesus comes back to defeats. - So whether it's the United Nations or the Pope or Jewish banking internationalism or Soviet internationalism, something has to bring everything together. - Yes. - So a quote from the book that sort of summarizes this view, including the wiggle room he gives himself. It says, "It may well be that men of good will, "like Woodrow Wilson, Jimmy Carter, and George Bush, "who sincerely want a larger community of nations "living at peace in our world, "are unwittingly carrying out the mission "and mouthing the phrases of a tightly knit cabal, "whose goal is nothing less than a new order "for the human race under the domination of Lucifer "and his followers." - And again, part of what made the book a fascinating thing to read was the way it just picks up with stuff ripped from the headlines. - Right, right. - And I think that's part of its seductiveness because it's kind of like, isn't the world confusing? What's going on? The other kind of aspect of this book I just want to say was he does early in the book say, "Why is half the world living in misery?" I've seen the poverty and misery that people around the world live in. Like, why does this system persist? Who's benefiting from this? Wouldn't any rational system of governance

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Matt and Sam talk Pat Robertson (RIP), James G. Watt (RIP), and how they shaped the Christian right. Subscribe on Patreon to hear the rest.