Why Pat Robertson is burning in Hell and why he deserves to

The Haitians “were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III or whatever,” Robertson said on a broadcast of his “700 Club” TV show. “And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, ‘We will serve you if you will get us free from the us free from the French.’ True story. And so, the devil said, ‘OK, it’s a deal.'”

“You know, the Haitians revolted and got themselves free. But ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after the other.”

Actually, the “curse” was a global economic embargo imposed by the United States and Europe against the new Haitian republic, whose uprising was viewed as a dangerous example. France demanded reparations, saddling Haiti with debts into the 20th century. But Robertson’s take was in character for a man who concurred with Jerry Falwell in assigning blame for the 9/11 terrorist attack on America to “abortionists,” feminists, gays and lesbians, and the ACLU.

Robertson, who died Thursday at 93, leaves an indelible print on America as a man who used the media to rise to power, fused religion and politics, and helped set the precarious table upon which the fragile china of our democracy sits.

“Pat Robertson is part of that post-World War II wave of evangelical conservative Christians who sought not only to expand their religious ranks, but who saw it as part of their religious calling to change the very culture and fabric of American society,” says Corey D.B. Walker, interim dean of the Wake Forest University School of Divinity.

“He also did it in a very unique way by really harnessing the nascent power of television and other forms of visual media to not only advance evangelical conservative Christianity … but also a new style of conservative politics that really did not believe that there should be a separation of church and state,” said Walker, formerly of the University of Richmond and Virginia Union University.

It appears this project succeeded. Walker called Robertson and his fellow wave of evangelical conservatives “the architects of what we now call Christian nationalism.”

Thanks for nothing, guys. It’s only natural that Robertson died as news broke that former president Donald Trump has been indicated. Robertson’s media-fueled rise, the attacks on the marginalized, the cult of personality, the weaponization of religion as a political cudgel, created a template for Trump and Trumpism.

“He’s one of those real pioneers in transforming the very terrain of American democracy,” Walker said, adding that Robertson’s “is really a narrow vision of what democracy is.”

That vision is at loggerheads with America’s founding ideas of the role — and limits — of religion on American life, as enshrined in the Constitution. Ironically, these latter-day men of faith ushered in a divisive form of politics, “a politics of political annihilation of opponents, a politics fueled with denigration,” Walker said. In the process, they introduced “a deep, antidemocratic element in American politics that we’re going to have to continue to wrestle with now and into the long future.”

Think about it: A president who relentlessly peddled the lie of a stolen election, and stoked a violent insurrection to keep himself in office, somehow remains eligible to again be handed the keys to the White House and is attempting to game the democratic process to avoid conviction and imprisonment. If he somehow manages to be re-elected president before the legal process can play out, he’ll likely end his prosecution altogether.

If that plays out, we will no longer be a government of laws, but of corrupt men. America, as we know it, will be officially broken.

Not that religion has been unscathed by Robertson’s influence.

The rise of evangelical Christianity has coincided with the decline of denominationalism and religious affiliation in American public life, Walker said. “We’re now in the age of the religious ‘nones’ — those who don’t identify with the dominant mainline institutions of American Christianity.”

A younger generation in particular is turned off by the denial of humanity to LGBTQ people and immigrants and the attack on women’s reproductive rights. “American society has fundamentally shifted in support of being more open and inclusive, but (these evangelical conservatives) have been the opposite and the antithesis of that openness and inclusion.”

That message is not resonating with a younger audience, who “are not only voting in the ballot box; they’re also voting with their feet by not showing up in the pews of those once-robust churches.”

This nation’s founders were imperfect and too often, hypocritical. But they were infinitely wise in assigning the church a separate space from the state.

Robertson and Falwell ushered in a religious takeover of one of our nation’s two major political parties. The result debased both religion and government, and jeopardized the future of America’s experiment with a multiethnic, pluralistic democracy.

This unholy pact between Christian nationalists and the political right is Robertson’s legacy. The curse could be right around the corner.