A Network for Yahweh

The format is pure TV talk show; the content is not. In one episode the genial, loose-jointed M.C. welcomes a California real estate salesman named Frank Foglio, who tells a modern version of the loaves-and-fishes miracle: his mother, with 18 mouths to feed one night, prayed over a quarter-pound of spaghetti. God multiplied it so generously that there were even leftovers.

On another show the host listens to Galloping Gourmet Graham Kerr describe how he was "slain in the Spirit" and experienced the event as "going down into a bath full of goose feathers." After such tales come bleaker stories and pleas for spiritual help from listeners who have written letters or who call into a busy bank of phones. "We lift before you the prayer requests in the name of Jesus," intones the M.C., raising aloft a batch of letters. "We rebuke Satan in the name of Jesus."

This is the 700 Club, televised five times a week from Portsmouth, Va., for a growing audience in 38 cities. Says Marion Gordon ("Pat") Robertson, the M.C.: "The idea of programming a simple person, Jesus, as show biz is antipathetical, but people in modern society are accustomed to a certain amount of show. We have to do it to get people to listen to his message."

Off camera, Robertson, 45, is president of the Christian Broadcasting Network, which owns stations in Dallas and Atlanta as well as Portsmouth. There are also 35 affiliated stations round the country on which Robertson buys time to air the 700 Club and his other Christian programs ranging from Bible lessons to Jesus rock. The network is uniquely successful among religious channels, most of which operate primarily with unpaid amateurs and shoestring budgets. So did Robertson at first, but he now has a $10.2 million budget.

Give Alms. The son of A. Willis Robertson, U.S. Senator from Virginia for two decades, Pat graduated from Yale Law School, failed his bar exam and went into the electronics business. Raised a Southern Baptist, he was restless and unhappy until at 26 he decided to become a minister and studied at New York City's Biblical Seminary. There he became involved with Pentecostalists who were claiming baptism of the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues. He also became something of a fanatic: he sold nearly everything he and his wife owned when she was away. His explanation: the Bible directed him to "sell your possessions and give alms."

In 1959, shortly after that event, he felt the call to go back home to Virginia. While his wife and two children subsisted mainly on donated soybeans, he tried to raise enough capital to buy and equip a defunct TV station in Portsmouth that he hoped to turn into a Christian voice. His first attempt failed, but finally, through gifts and loans, Robertson launched the station, which he christened WYAH, for Yahweh. By 1961 he was on the air with one camera and a 2 1/2-hour program of preaching and country hymns.

After a decade of solely religious programming, in 1971 Robertson also began running secular children's shows and reruns of wholesome sitcoms (Leave It to Beaver, Corner Pyle) that lured a larger audience to stay tuned for the religious shows. Listeners are extremely loyal: most of the network's income --$10.7 million this year--consists of their small contributions. The remainder comes from commercials that are screened for good taste and reliability.

Asking God. Apparently there is a ready audience for the high-powered spiritual fare. "A woman told me that this is all the religion her children get," Robertson says. The invitation to listeners to phone in for prayer helps bring the network 500,000 calls a year and 30,000 professions of faith. Explains Robertson: "We can ask God to heal and he does it. This is just New Testament."

Robertson's network will soon include stations in Hartford and Boston. Christian Network radio broadcasts for Britain from the Isle of Man began two weeks ago. Soon Robertson hopes to set up a satellite relay station on a hill outside Bethlehem because he believes "this should be a center of God's love for these last days before Christ's Second Coming." As Pentecostalists, he explains, "we at Christian Broadcasting act as though we haven't a lot of time left to bring the word of the Lord to the world."

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