Christian Coalition and Christian Broadcasting Network founder Pat Robertson, who died Thursday at the age of 93, is best known for his failed foray into the 1988 GOP presidential primary, his training of evangelicals to be both successful candidates and reliable voters, and his decades-long highlight reel of homophobia, misogyny, racism, conspiracy theories, apocalyptic warnings, and pronouncements of God's impending wrath on America for the sins of the left. Less well understood, though, was Robertson's significant contribution to the Christianization of the legal profession, and the development of a Christian nationalist legal brigade that has set its sights on ending the separation of church and state, abortion and LGBTQ rights. In 1986, he came to the rescue of a fledgling Christian law school, over the years turning it into the powerhouse Regent University School of Law that has produced lawyers who have gone on to become state court judges, appellate litigators, Republican lawmakers, and political appointees in Republican administrations. The roots of Robertson's law school can be traced to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where, in 1979, his friend and fellow televangelist Oral Roberts founded its original iteration at his eponymous university, with seed money from O.W. Coburn, a local entrepreneur and father of future Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn (R). Also key to the development of a law school that would teach the law from a "biblical worldview" was Herb Titus, a Harvard-trained lawyer who became an acolyte of R.J. Rushdoony, the founder of Christian Reconstructionism, the radical movement at the core of Christian nationalist legal thinking that asserts that biblical law must govern every facet of public and private life. Rejecting secular law after reading Rushdoony's seminal book, The Institutes of Biblical Law, Titus believed he had a "dominion mandate" to "restore the bible to legal education." One of the law school's first students was future GOP congresswoman and presidential candidate Michele Bachmann, who is now the dean of the Robertson School of Government at Regent. | 
Previous Article
Share your views...
0 Respones to "How Pat Robertson Helped Create The Christian Nationalist Lawyer Brigade Reshaping American Life"
Post a Comment