Pat Robertson, Who Gave Christian Conservatives Clout, Is Dead at 93

His strengthened faith prompted him to sell his family’s furniture and other belongings, and give the proceeds to Korean orphans. He did this while his wife and children were visiting her family in Ohio. She was furious. Years later, she offered advice to women in similar situations: “God can be your husband,” she said.

Birth of a Network

Mr. Robertson moved the family into a rat-infested brownstone parsonage next to a brothel in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. He was a minister to that community when his mother told him that a small, decrepit, off-the-air UHF television station in Portsmouth, Va., was for sale. By his account, he spoke to God, who advised him to offer $37,000, much less than the $300,000 the seller wanted.

His bid was ultimately accepted, and Mr. Robertson gathered cash from family and friends to start in 1960 what he boldly called the Christian Broadcasting Network.

It went on the air on Oct. 1, 1961, as WYAH-TV, a name taken from the Hebrew word for God, Yahweh. An early fund-raising drive involved asking 700 people to pledge $10 a month each, a lot for the time and place. His request was fulfilled. In 1966, that success gave birth to “The 700 Club,” which became Mr. Robertson’s signature program. The network soon had a game show and a daytime drama, “Another Life,” which the station promoted as “the soap with hope.”

Mr. Robertson avoided the fire-and-brimstone approach of television preachers like Jimmy Swaggart and the shoot-from-the hip ways of Jerry Falwell. He did a couple of PBS-style telethons a year, rather than constantly asking for money.

“Television is a mass communications vehicle,” Mr. Robertson said in a 1995 interview with CNN. “It’s not a church service.”

Mr. Robertson became one of the first broadcasters to syndicate shows nationally, and one of the first to use satellite transmission, and he started one of the first basic cable networks of any sort.