Pat Robertson

Love him or hate him—the latter of which is now a trope among culturally savvy evangelicals—Pat Robertson is one of the most influential leaders in 20th-century evangelicalism, founding the Christian Broadcasting Network, Regent University, the American Center for Law and Justice, and, most controversially, the Christian Coalition in 1989. The coalition’s close alignment with the Republican Party made it the target of several Federal Election Commission lawsuits in the ’90s, and it has since lost influence among Christians suspicious of partisan politics. Meanwhile, Robertson continues to make headlines by pontificating on everything from marijuana to Israel to September 11 to the end of the world.