Faith-Healing-Service Video Dogs Robertson : Tape Replayed on TV as Republican Presidential Hopeful Seeks to Downplay His Evangelical Past

At a time when Republican presidential candidate Pat Robertson is rushing to de-emphasize his evangelical past, he is being confronted with the emergence of powerful video images showing him leading a 1981 revivalist faith-healing in which he proclaims that members of the audience are cured on the spot of cancer, hemorrhoids, goiter, bad teeth and a long list of other ailments.

At one point as he leads an enthusiastic audience through the prayer meeting, Robertson shouts out that God has just cured one person of a hernia and tells the sufferer to take off a truss.

Parts of the faith-healing performance were broadcast Friday by KNBC television news. One day earlier, CBS broadcast a short news clip of the event. Linda Douglass, KNBC political reporter, identified her source for the videotape as James Randi, a critic of faith healers who has just written a book on the subject.

Rebroadcast on His Network

The videotaped 1981 prayer meeting, before the Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship International in Philadelphia, was rebroadcast soon thereafter on Robertson’s Christian Broadcast Network. It has kicked around in political circles for at least a year, drawing only occasional attention. Robertson’s beliefs in Pentecostal faith healing are established in his writings and in profiles about his past.

The renewed attention to the subject this week stems from Robertson’s show of strength in early political organizing tests, which invites more scrutiny of his record by others in the political community, and from his bold attempt to break with his past.

Just this week, in making his candidacy official, he resigned as a minister and issued a flyer to Iowa voters describing himself in strictly non-religious terms as a “lecturer, author, educator, broadcaster, news commentator.”

Change in Image

This characterization differs from the charismatic preacher filmed six years ago. At that time, his soft-spoken Southern voice rising to full thunder, Robertson tells a huge auditorium full of believers that miracles are going to happen.

“How many people in this audience, right at this moment still haven’t had a prayer answered? You’re praying for (relief from) sickness, and you say God hasn’t answered me. You’ve prayed for financial help, and God hasn’t answered you. You’re asking for guidance or wisdom, and you don’t feel like you’ve been answered . . . .

“If I’m reading this book right,” Robertson said, apparently in reference to a Bible on the lectern with him, “tonight is the night that you get those prayers answered. Tonight is the night!”

Summons Up Cures

Robertson then summons up cures through prayer for 21 different diseases and afflictions. A sampler:

“God has just healed someone of a concussion, a fractured skull. The Lord has healed him of it. Where are you, brother . . . . Aw, there are so many people, I just can’t see. But God is healing somebody right now. Thank you, Jesus. God is healing people all over this place. An inguinal hernia has been healed. If you’re wearing a truss you can take it off, it’s gone.

“Several people are being healed of hemorrhoids, and varicose veins . . . .

‘It’s Healed’

“There is a woman here with cancer of the womb. I don’t think it’s been diagnosed. She didn’t know what it was. There has been excessive bleeding. God has healed that right now. It’s healed.”

“Many people, their eyesight is being opened right now; you’re seeing when you couldn’t see well before. Your eyes, your vision is being restored. People can hear; in the name of Jesus their ears are being opened right now . . . .

“In the center section here, somebody has been healed of an ulcer . . . . Somebody has swelling in the glands of their neck, the Lord is healing that--the swelling and inflammation is going down right now . . . . There are so many tooth and gum disorders, several here, their teeth are infected and the Lord is healing the teeth right now. I will pray for the gum diseases being healed by the power of God.

‘God Is Manipulating’

“Somebody’s bite is not right, and God is actually manipulating the jaw right now so the teeth will hit the way they are supposed to, and you can almost feel something happening in your jaw, the Lord is doing a miracle in your life right now . . . .” Members of the audience were invited to come forth to attest to their healing, and several did, including one man who said he had been “stone blind” but now could see colors, and another who had been unable to lift his arm due to a brain operation and now could.

As he has in other well-publicized appearances, Robertson told the audience of having had personal discussions with God.

He said he was driving in his car, and the Lord told him to ask for something, anything. “I said, well, I don’t know what to ask for, but I probably would like to have $1,000. And the heavenly father said all right . . . .”

Gift Covers Dental Care

So the Lord gave it to him, Robertson said. And then a week later, he was glad he asked because he said his daughter required dental care that cost $1,000. “He (the Lord) knew I had the need before I called on him.”

Constance Snapp, communications director for the campaign, said the airing of this and other performances from Robertson’s past was expected. “Clips like that, we’re going to see them all the time.”

Traveling with Robertson during campaign stops in Iowa Friday night, Snapp added that the campaign was “not concerned” about the attention given to the faith-healing session, and that enough survey polling had been done to convince her “that Pat is not considered a right-wing fanatic.”

“The more people get to know who Pat is . . . people will understand he is a man of great depth.”

The Secular Candidate

Marlene Elwell, Midwestern political director for Robertson, said the new campaign emphasis on a secular candidate was to counter what had become a one-dimensional religious image. “The press has put an emphasis on Rev. Robertson and the religious broadcaster, and they constantly ignore his other credentials . . . .”

She said other campaigns were engaging in fear tactics, that “this man is to be feared because he is a right wing religious fanatic . . . . We’re saying that’s not true. It’s a narrow stereotype that he’s just a preacher.”

Staff writer Bob Secter contributed to this story from Des Moines, Iowa.