By the dawn of 1980, Pat was deeply troubled by the rampant secularism that, like a cancer, was devouring the life of our society. Americans had allowed a small elite of lawyers, judges, and educators to define such a tortured view of the Establishment of Religion clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution that it was termed by one United States senator "an intellectual disgrace."

The nation had allowed organizations like the ACLU, using the cloak of maintaining "neutrality toward religion," to initiate thousands of court cases threatening the fundamental constitutional rights of Christians. Across America:

• Children were being forbidden to pray over their lunches in school.
• Through spurious charges of "child abuse," families were being destroyed for trying to maintain proper discipline in the home.
• Groups of believers were being persecuted for holding Bible studies in their own homes on the grounds that Bible studies made these homes "churches" in violation of zoning laws.
• Instead of absolutes, Americans had allowed the youth to be taught situational ethics in public schools.

Pat understood that the only way to turn the country back toward God was if there were a rebirth of faith and freedom in America—a renewal based upon the application to society of the living, eternal principles God had built into this world to bring order to it. It was only by embracing the principles of the Word of God, upon which the nation had been founded, that America would be transformed.

It was for this reason that on April 29, 1980, Pat served with Bill Bright of Campus Crusade as co-chairmen for Washington for Jesus, a gathering of nearly a half-million Christians in the nation's capital. On the mall, between the Washington Monument and the Capitol building, government and spiritual leaders and citizens from all walks of life spent the day in prayer, fasting, and repentance on behalf of the nation.

"I believe posterity will remember that day as a landmark in our nation's history," Pat would later write. "I believe that day began the binding up of our wounded society and prepared the way for the revival for which so many in the Christian community had been interceding."

"At that time I determined to do all within my power to encourage godly men and women to be 'salt and light' to society, through their witness for Christ on a personal level, through their active involvement as citizens in our system of government, and, as God called them, through their acceptance of the responsibility of leadership in society, including in the area of civil government."

For this purpose, in 1981 Pat founded the National Legal Foundation to do battle in the courts against the assaults on religious liberty. This organization would eventually grow into the American Center for Law and Justice.

Beginning in 1980, The 700 Club format added coverage of public affairs, with news and commentary for the first half hour of the show. Pat increasingly interviewed public figures, writers, and professionals who were making an impact on society.

Commenting on this change in direction for CBN, Pat noted: "If all was well, if the government and the church did what they were supposed to do, everything would be fine. But the government is involved in laws that force churches to hire people they don't want to hire. The government is involved in laws that prevent Christian people from praying in certain places and exercising their faith. And what's happening is the government is moving into an arena that it used to stay out of. And, as a result, it isn't that we're getting into politics, they're getting into religion. And all we want to do is get them out. I mean it's that simple."

Throughout his life, Pat Robertson never strayed far from the political scene. His political career began when, as a seventh-grader, he formed a "Robertson for Congress" committee for his father A. Willis Robertson. "My father went to Congress when I was two, and I've been brought up in politics all my life."

For a time, however, Pat steered clear of government and focused on ministry and the Christian Broadcasting Network. But between 1960 and 1980, Americans had allowed the removal of virtually all mention of God from public classrooms and textbooks. The nation permitted the use of public funds in the development of systems of teaching that consciously undermined the historic Judeo-Christian faith of the nation. As the federal courts handed down one decision after another that ran contrary to the values upon which America was founded, Pat found himself being compelled to become more involved in public affairs.

Beginning in the 1980s, Pat developed a renewed interest in government and the political process, including the endorsement of various candidates for political office.

"It could be said that, for me, involvement in the affairs of government, foreign policy, fiscal policy, and politics itself is as natural as breathing," Pat said.

On October 1, 1987, from the steps of the Bedford Stuyvesant (Brooklyn, New York) brownstone where he lived and ministered for a time among the poor, Pat declared his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination.

During the campaign, Pat spoke about the role of the public servant in the plan of God. "The Apostle Paul, in Romans 13, said that the rulers are ministers of God. I think that those who are in public service are serving God, as well as those who are in the pulpit. I believe my calling is to serve God and serve man."

"It's a question of the arena. The calling is a lifetime matter. But the arena is up to the choosing of God. He chose me for the broadcasting arena. But He could also choose for me the arena of government. It's up to him. But in any case, it is a question of service. If that is the attitude, then it's not an abandoning of one calling for the other. It's a question of how God wants you to serve."

Pat surprised the political establishment by coming in second place in the Iowa caucuses behind Senator Bob Dole and ahead of then Vice President George H.W. Bush. His best finish was in Washington, winning the majority of caucus delegates. He also had a strong showing in the state of Michigan, where the controversial outcome was disputed.

After losing to the front runner, Vice President George Bush, on Super Tuesday, Pat decided to end his campaign. He was invited by the Bush campaign to speak at the 1988 Republican National Convention in New Orleans where he encouraged his remaining supporters to cast their votes for George H.W. Bush, who ended up winning the nomination and the election.

Some people questioned Pat Robertson's run for the White House after he was not elected. After a time of reflection, he answered these questions in his book, "The Plan."

"Could it be that the reason for my candidacy has been fulfilled in the activation of tens of thousands of evangelical Christians into government? This campaign taught them that they were citizens with as much right to express their beliefs as any of the strident activists who have been so vocal in support of their own radical agenda at every level of our government."

"For the first time in recent history, patriotic, pro-family Christians learned the simple techniques of effective party-organizing and successful campaigning. Their presence as an active force in American politics may result ultimately in at least one of America's major political parties taking on a profoundly Christian outlook in its platforms and party structure."

In 1989, Pat founded The Christian Coalition, and served as the organization's president until February 2001. Pat appointed Ralph Reed as Director to oversee the day-to-day operations of the Coalition in 1989.

From 1989 through 1997, the Christian Coalition wielded tremendous influence. In 1992, the Christian Coalition began producing non-partisan voter guides which it distributed to Christian churches. That same year, the Coalition played a significant role in electing conservatives to Congress, returning the Congress to Republican control after several decades of Democratic rule.

Under the leadership of Pat and Reed, the Coalition quickly became one of the most prominent voices in the conservative Christian movement in America.

Synopsis: In this Jan. 31, 1986 speech, Pat Robertson tells conservatives that the ideals they aspire to will survive and come to dominate the American agenda once again. Conservatism depends on the people who espouse those ideals and not Ronald Reagan, the leader who implemented them so effectively during his presidency. Pat urges conservatives to take up the standard and continue the battle for a strong America. - Conservative Political Action Center, January 31, 1986

The conservative agenda, which you have targeted and on which all of us have long labored-is about to be completed ... unless we are defeated in our minds and hearts. We will win -- unless for reasons of political expediency or tactical compromise, we let certain objectives and ideals be sacrificed. Conservatism a Passing Fancy?

The pundits, columnists, and editorialists are this day wagering their word processors that conservatism is only a passing fancy. They are betting that Reaganism cannot survive Reagan. They are betting that the conservative cause cannot last without the charisma of a leader.

They are wrong because if principles lived only as long as the proponents who advanced them, the Declaration of Independence and the ideals it inscribed would have died on July 4, 1826, that 50-year anniversary date on which the last signers, Adams and Jefferson, died. They are wrong because ideals transcend leaders.

Conservatism does not depend upon holding the White House, but rather upon the millions who chose President Reagan to occupy it.

I remember the first time I ever visited the White House. My father, who was then Senator from Virginia, took me along to see Harry Truman in an exercise of senatorial privilege. In subsequent visits the magnificent simplicity of the President's Oval Office has never lost its impact.

An Unfinished Portrait

One of the most curious items to see in a visit is a portrait. This painting which was supposed to depict the Signers of the Declaration, hangs just outside the Office. The painting attracts your attention because it is unfinished. The artist who was commissioned by Congress died before he could complete it. The result is a work one quarter done and the rest stark gray canvas. A few completed sketches of figures sit in the foreground. The rest of the figures are only dimly penciled in the background.

One President, Dwight Eisenhower, suggested that the unfinished portrait might reveal the hand of Divine Providence. For in that uncompleted painting there is revealed a message for all of us -- that it is not just the Signers, or the Presidents, or Congress who have the responsibility of preserving our freedoms, but all of us. All of us belong in that picture. That space in the picture is for all of us. That preservation of democratic rights depends not on leaders, but on us. That the greatness of a democracy depends not upon an extraordinary leader, but on ordinary men doing things extraordinarily well.

Abraham Lincoln said much the same thing. He was making his way by train to the inauguration in Washington, On February 22, he was in Philadelphia and at Independence Hall and he stopped to say a few words for the festivities honoring the first President.

"Finally, my fellow citizens, it is not the Presidents, not the Congress, not the office seekers, but to you whom the question remains, "Shall the liberties be preserved until the next generation?"

Conservatism Will Survive

George Washington, by the way, was one of the first to coin the word "American" to describe the settlers of the thirteen colonies. Well, Lincoln was saying in effect that Americanism did not stop with George Washington. Today we say that Conservatism will not stop with Ronald Reagan. And we say with Winston Churchill "This is not the end of (conservatism) nay, not even the beginning of the end, but it is perhaps the end of the beginning." Conservatism is beginning a new era, a new chapter that will bring a new challenge to our resolve, our stamina, and our unity.

Some two centuries before the Thirteen Colonies met to establish a nation, there was another confederation created - the Long House confederation of Indian tribes that stretched their hegemony from Canada to Chesapeake Bay where I have established my roots.

The Susquehanna River, which begins in New York State and empties into the Chesapeake, would become the water highway of that nation. And on an island in that river, the various tribes met to consider the advantages of union. Chief Hiawatha took five sticks, representing the five nations, and asked each of the chiefs to break the bundle of tide sticks. None could, and then Hiawatha untied the sticks and broke each stick separately. So Hiawatha persuaded the tribes on the advantages of unity.

I mention that today because the Conservative Movement is more than a collection of constituent causes. Conservatism is greater than the sum of the many rights we protect and defend.

Our Priorities Vary

Some of us may feel more fervently about moral rights: the right of unborn children to live, the right of our school children to pray, or the right to be free of pornography and drugs.

Others may be more concerned about civil rights -- the right to have a protected home, or the right to walk our streets and neighborhoods safely at night.

Those of us who have families in Communist lands might want most to champion political rights-the right of Polish workers to a solidarity movement, or the rights of freedom fighters in Nicaragua and Angola to democracy and political justices or the rights of our citizens traveling abroad to be free of international terrorism.

Still others may be aroused by economic rights -- the right to pay only fair taxes, the right of our posterity to be freed of monstrous deficit, or the right of citizens to be submitted a balanced budget by its government.

But whatever our special goal, we will risk defeat if we allow our adversaries to engage us singly, one by one, cause by cause. There is nothing our opponents want more than for us to disassociate disintegrate and disband and then break each of us separately by labeling us as some ""kook" unrepresentative pressure group.

Or as Benjamin Franklin so succinctly put it to the Continental Congress, "If we do not hang together, we may all hang separately."

But it is more than a question of strategy; it is a question of soul. We in the conservative movement will prevail unless we fail to see the spiritual chord that binds and wraps our causes in a crusade. Abraham Lincoln sensed it when he quoted from Shakespeare, "There's a rough divinity that hews and shapes our ways."

Judeo-Christian Ethic Central

After all, we are a nation whose purpose in government is graced by the Judeo-Christian ethic. When we landed at Plymouth Rock, the first words expressed in the Mayflower Compact were "In the name of God Amen." Benjamin Franklin at the Constitutional Convention two centuries ago in petitioning for prayer said, "If no sparrow can fall from the sky without his notice, surely no nation can rise from the ground without his assistance."

The last addition Abraham Lincoln made to the Gettysburg Address while Edward Everett was delivering the main address of the day was to insert "under God"-"That this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom."

So as we fight for our rights, let us remember where our Founding Fathers believed those rights were derived. Thomas Jefferson writing in that rooming house on Cherry Street in Philadelphia wrote: "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are endowed by their creator with certain" ... and what is the next word? Some of you say 'inalienable' and some say 'unalienable.' In a way you're both right!

It is engraved 'inalienable' on the wall of the Jefferson Memorial. But in the copy of the Declaration of Independence that can be seen at the National Archives, it reads 'unalienable'. That is because the revision committee-John Adams and Benjamin Franklin-changed Jefferson's word 'inalienable' to 'unalienable.' Inalienable, Unalienable?

Now you ask what difference does it make; Well, perhaps only a lawyer turned preacher would try to find out. (Some of my friends say I went to Union Seminary to undo the sins collected at Yale Law School!)

The phrase 'inalienable' which Jefferson employed is still a current phrase in legal usage which describes something that cannot be involuntarily taken from you-a wristwatch, car, or house. On the other hand, you can voluntarily sell, will, deed or give it away.

"Unalienable' however, is an archaic 18th century word, and it describes the rights given by God-rights you cannot give, sell, or deed away. But rights which you must preserve for your children and children's children.

By the dignity of being God's children, we have unalienable rights-the right to be born, to walk without fear, to pray without interference, and to live in freedom.

There are those of our adversaries, not just abroad, but at home, who deny that dimension of deity in our rights and in our purpose. They are the ones who see the Soviet Union as different from us only politically, but not spiritually. These are the advocates of "moral equivalence" who, in their glib talk of "superpowers," strip Lincoln's democratic mission and purpose from our spiritual Heritage. Perhaps this nation has not always lived up to its ideals, but isn't that because no nation ever wrote higher ideals to live up to.

“Moral Equivalence” a Misnomer

These peddlers of "moral equivalence" remind me of the preacher who once visited a convict. The prisoner who had committed an armed robbery told the parson who had confessed to jay walking "Well, Reverend, we're both criminal; after all we both broke the law."

We see the moral "equivalence" permeates our movies and televisions where Soviet counterparts of our CIA agents seem always to have redeeming qualities, but our American businessmen, on the other hand, have none.

There is a word for this-devised by the late Stewart Alsop. He called it 'spiritual appeasement '-- the selling short of America, and by doing so, the betraying mission and its way of life. There is no more sticky evidence of this disease than the recent rash of spies who sold their country's secrets to pay credit card debts. When we deny our spiritual heritage, we become materialists just as the Marxists.

Today, we see in the Soviet Union attempts at decollectivization. In the People's Republic of China we see the initiatives in economic incentive. In Poland, we see churches once again filled.

In other words, when they are in a sense, beginning to turn our way -- let us not make the mistake of beginning to turn their way!

Remember Our Grand Purpose

A German philosopher once wrote of a passerby who observed three stone masons. He asked the fist, "What are you doing?" He answered, "I am chipping stone." Then the second mason was questioned and he replied, "I'm building a wall." Finally he queried the third stone mason. He responded, "I'm erecting a cathedral."

If each of us will remember that our particular project is part of a grand purpose, that our special cause is part of a grand crusade, no opposition will stay our hand nor stifle our spirit. But each of us in our own project or cause can help America fulfill the dream our Founding Fathers sought. And each of us in our life can bring nobility to America by making our job a vocation, our house a home, our community a neighborhood and our religious creed a commitment.

As great a personality as President Reagan has been, as dynamic a spokesman he has been, we should note that it is not the leader, but the creed that has stirred souls' and mobilized your movement. It is not the candle bearer that gives off light, but the candle itself that lights our path. And, as long as we do not let the flame of ideals flicker out, we shall never lack for those who will bear the torch.

The day President Reagan steps down from the Presidency is seen as a dark one by some conservatives. But I am reminded of a day in Hartford, Connecticut, on June 4, 1780, when an eclipse of the sun made noon of that day dark as midnight.

Keep the Candles Lit

In that day -- more religious than ours -- some thought the Day of Judgment had truly come. In the Legislature there was panic. Legislators were then motioning for adjournment. But Colonel Davenport, Speaker of the House, gaveled down the motions saying:

"Gentlemen of the House, the world is either coming to an end or it is not coming to an end. If it is not coming to an end, there is no need to adjourn. But if it is coming to an end, I want the Lord to find me doing my duty. I therefore will entertain the motion that each of us light candles so that we may enlighten this hall of democracy.

Ladies and gentlemen, our pilgrimage is still unfinished, our journey unended; let us with the candles of our ideals, continue.