Questions Linger on Robertson’s Dropping Status as Minister

Two days before he officially announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination, Pat Robertson asked the church that ordained him to drop him from the ministry. The Southern Baptist congregation granted his request this week, but questions linger whether the act was politically necessary and whether it will be difficult should he seek to be ordained in the future.

Being both a minister and a candidate was not that “big a problem,” said the Rev. James Draper of Euless, Tex., a former Southern Baptist Convention president who hosted a reception for Robertson last June at the denomination’s annual meeting.

“I encouraged him to just go on doing what he’s been doing and not deal with the issue at all,” Draper said in an interview. But Draper added that the decision may have been justified “under the circumstances . . . in order to avoid any misconception . . . and because ordination means so many things to so many people.”

Robertson has sought to be described primarily as a businessman and lawyer rather than as a religious broadcaster or as a television evangelist, and on Sept. 29 he moved to sever ties to those religious identities.

He announced that he had resigned as board chairman and chief executive officer of his Christian Broadcasting Network of Virginia Beach, Va., the nation’s fifth largest cable network, and had also decided to “resign the ordination to the Christian ministry” granted him by the Freemason Street Baptist Church in Norfolk, Va., in 1961.

Robertson said in a statement that “many citizens” would regard the election of an ordained clergyman to the presidency as “tantamount to a preference of one religious denomination over all others.” He said that “the call of God on my life for service has never diminished,” but that it has shifted from religion to government. Each is a unique role, he said, and “I would serve neither well by blurring the distinction that exists between them.”

Another Robertson backer, Southern Baptist layman Ed McAteer of Memphis, president of Religious Roundtable, endorsed Robertson’s dropping his clergy status as “a reasonable and proper response . . . to a difficult problem” because of misunderstandings regarding the roles of religious leaders.

Likewise, University of Virginia sociologist Jeffrey Hadden, who has written extensively about television evangelists, said that Robertson’s step to remove “the Rev.” in front of his name may provide some “symbolic” benefit for him in the primary elections.

To the unsophisticated voter, it may give assurances that Robertson “is not going to mix church and state,” Hadden said.

On the other hand, William Schneider of the American Enterprise Institute, a political analyst for The Times, said that Robertson’s decision to resign from the ministry was not politically necessary and may only be “marginally” helpful to his campaign.

“What counts is that Robertson is outspoken on religious issues and has a constituency that is basically defined by religious values, so that resigning his ministry shouldn’t make much difference in how he is perceived,” Schneider said.

Likened to Jackson

Schneider said being an ordained minister has not been seen as a problem for the Rev. Jesse Jackson, a contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, because Jackson’s message is not seen as primarily religious in nature.

Indeed, Jackson has apparently not viewed his ministerial status as a campaign hindrance either in 1984 or in his current campaign.

Jackson was not available for comment, but two ministers who are key advisers to Jackson said that, to their knowledge, the Baptist minister has never considered dropping from the clergy rolls.

Bishop H. H. Brookins of Los Angeles said he discussed the subject briefly with Jackson during the 1984 campaign. “He said his calling was from God and that God did not withdraw his calling just because he was seeking political office. He is by conviction and conversion a preacher. (Ordination) is not something you lay down or pick up at random,” said Brookins.

The Rev. Wyatt Tee Walker, national coordinator for the church and clergy division of the Jackson campaign, suggested in a separate interview that “the dynamics of black church life” are different than those of white churches.

“Jesse Jackson may not always be a candidate for the Democratic nomination, but he’s always going to be an ordained preacher,” said Walker, pastor of Canaan Baptist Church in Harlem. “Once you are ordained, it’s for life, unless you are defrocked as (PTL founder) Jim Bakker was.”

Sees No Impact on Voters

As for public opinion, Walker said he did not think voters would rule out candidates because of their earlier careers. “We didn’t exclude Dwight Eisenhower because he was a military man or Ronald Reagan because he was a ‘B movie’ actor,” Walker said.

Robertson’s request to resign as a clergyman was granted Sunday by his congregation, the Freemason Street Baptist Church, although at least two nays were heard among the 150 present for the vote, according to the pastor.

A woman who voted against the request said that she thought Robertson should remain ordained while running for the nomination. “I don’t see how a person becomes unordained. It’s like how do you become unbaptized?” said Deborah Antony of Norfolk.

The Rev. Donald J. Dunlap, the congregation’s pastor, said he could see a problem if Robertson wished to be reordained in his or any other church.

“The theological understanding is that the Holy Spirit sets you apart for the ministry,” Dunlap said. “For him to give that up and then come back and request it again would raise a very troubling theological question of whether the Holy Spirit changes its mind as much as a human being does.”

Indeed, Robertson once wrote that God prohibited him from getting into politics and that his calling was as a minister. In his 1972 autobiography, Robertson wrote that God told him, “I have called you to my ministry. You cannot tie my eternal purposes to the success of any political candidate . . . not even your own father.” Robertson was recounting how he yearned in 1966 to campaign for his father, a Democratic senator from Virginia.

It was reported last month that the passages about the divine admonitions to Robertson were omitted from the hard-cover edition of the book, “Shout It from the Housetops.” It was published in October, 1986, when Robertson first announced that he might seek the presidency. Robertson now says he has a “direct call . . . from God” to seek the nomination.

If Robertson, given a slim chance by political observers, loses his bid and returns to work in the religious field, it is by no means certain that he would seek to be ordained again, or, if so, whether it would be in the Southern Baptist Convention.

For one thing, Robertson is a charismatic Christian--believing in speaking in tongues, healing and other “gifts of the Holy Spirit.” Many Southern Baptists strongly oppose charismatics in their ranks. The Greene County Baptist Assn. in Missouri recently expelled a local congregation from membership, charging that the church’s acceptance of charismatics is not in accord with Southern Baptist interpretation of Scripture.

The church of Robertson backer Draper earlier expelled Southern Baptist evangelist James Robison from its membership because Robison had become a charismatic.

However, Draper said he does not think that Robertson’s charismatic beliefs hurt him as a candidate among Southern Baptist voters. “Most Southern Baptists have not claimed him as a Southern Baptist. They have seen him as a general religious figure,” he said.

Draper acknowledged that Robertson is a long-shot candidate even among conservative Protestants.

That observation was illustrated by a straw poll of National Assn. of Evangelical board members who met in Washington Oct. 7. The survey, released this week, showed Robertson coming in fourth (17%) among Republican candidates after Kansas Sen. Bob Dole (43%), Rep. Jack Kemp of Buffalo (21%) and Vice President George Bush (19%).