Politics & Power Quote by Pat Robertson

Robertson’s line isn’t a history lesson; it’s a power move dressed as piety. By claiming the “founding document” (a conveniently vague mash-up of Declaration and Constitution in most ears) “acknowledges the Lordship of Jesus Christ,” he tries to convert a contested civic origin story into a settled theological fact. The intent is straightforward: if America was officially Christian at birth, then contemporary political fights over schools, courts, sexuality, and public language become less like policy debates and more like restoration projects.

The subtext is a familiar Christian Right syllogism: legitimacy flows from founders to institutions to today’s moral order. If the founders were under Christ’s lordship, then the nation’s laws should be, too. That move quietly shifts “religious freedom” from protecting pluralism to protecting Christian dominance, recasting dissent as betrayal rather than disagreement. It also turns citizenship into a kind of catechism: to be fully “American” is to be aligned with a particular creed.

Context matters. Robertson built a media-and-politics empire that thrived on the sense that secular elites had stolen the country. His rhetoric works because it trades on nostalgia and anxiety: people don’t just fear change; they fear dispossession. The claim is historically sloppy (the Constitution famously avoids naming Jesus), but its effectiveness doesn’t depend on accuracy. It depends on framing: America as covenant, politics as revival, opponents as heretics. That’s not merely religious talk entering public life; it’s religion asserting a veto over what counts as American.