An objective and timely inquiry into the activities of religious representatives in Washington
Church lobbyists are exerting increasing political pressure in the nation’s capital. Their accelerated activity is eliciting cries of both joy and pain in the pew. Conservative church members contend that clergymen should stay in the pulpit and out of politics. Liberals praise political involvement as the recovery of the church’s historic prophetic function. (The word “church” or “churches” is used here in a generic sense to include denominations, organizations, and associations of congregations of all three major faiths—Protestants, Roman Catholic, and Jewish.) Despite differences back home, Washington church representatives are intensifying their efforts to influence both legislative and executive branches of government.
The churches’ pivotal role in the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act was a heady experience. Clergymen discovered they carried a clout. Political pressure accomplished in a few months what moral suasion had failed to do in a century.
“The 1964 experience no doubt spurred the churches on to play a bigger role,” says Rabbi Richard G. Hirsch, director of the Reform Jews’ Religious Action Center in Washington, D. C. “As a matter of fact, the churches’ activity may have done more for them than it did for the bill.”
Albert Saunders, secretary for national affairs of the United Presbyterian Church, reinforces Rabbi Hirsch’s appraisal. “Suddenly,” he says, “we in the field of religious social action found ourselves playing the role of the political power group—and many of us liked it.”
Senator Richard B. Russell, Georgia Democrat, who led the unsuccessful fight to defeat the civil-rights bill, has expressed the same thing in different words. “There were many ministers who, having failed completely in their effort to establish good will and brotherhood from the pulpit, turned from the pulpit to the powers of the Federal Government to coerce the people into accepting their view under threat of dire punishment,” the senator charged on the Senate floor.
Nearly every mainline denomination has a full- or part-time representative in Washington. Many churches gain dual representation through their membership in the National Council of Churches, which has a well-staffed Washington office. Smaller conservative churches support the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) and Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State (POAU) in a rear-guard action revolving around the First Amendment to the Constitution.
Church lobbyists cover the political waterfront. It’s a rare bill indeed that fails to attract the attention of one or more church “government watchers.” This means the church lobbyist must determine priorities to get his work done. The author recalls the afternoon he stopped in the office of the Department of Social Responsibility of the Unitarian Universalist Association to interview the department’s executive secretary, Robert Jones. The secretary was talking on the telephone.
“I’ll do what I can but I’m working on the U. S.-Russian consular treaty this week,” he told his caller, hanging up. “That was a gal from the Leadership Congress on Civil Rights,” he explained. “She wants me to contact the congressional committee that provides technical aid to help schools integrate. But you can only do so much,” he said, with a gesture of futility.
Many church representatives visibly wince at being tagged lobbyists. They believe their activities are more accurately described by use of the words “education” and “information.”
“Actually I spend more time arranging seminars, speaking, writing articles, answering queries, and interpreting statutes than anything which could remotely be called lobbying,” explains Lewis I. Maddocks, Washington secretary of the Council for Christian Social Action of the United Church of Christ.
Under the loose wording of the Federal Regulation of Lobbying Act of 1946, the church representatives are not lobbyists in the legal sense of the word. (The Friends Committee on National Legislation, primarily a pacifist pressure group, is the only church-related organization that registers as a lobby.)
The Congressional Quarterly in one of its publications entitled Legislators and the Lobbyists gives the following three definitions of a lobbyist:
1. In its broadest sense, the term “lobbyist” is often used interchangeably with the term “pressure group” to mean any organization or person that carries on activities which have as their ultimate aim to influence the decisions of Congress, of the state and local legislatures, or of government administrative agencies.
2. In a somewhat narrower sense, “lobbyist” means any person who, on behalf of some other person or group and usually for pay, attempts to influence legislation through direct contact with legislators.…
3. In a third and still narrower meaning, “lobbyist” denotes anyone who is required to register or report on his spending under the terms of the Federal Regulation of Lobbying Act of 1946.…
Church lobbyists appear to fit into the first category: they do attempt to influence the decisions of Congress—even though they are striving for ideological gains rather than special privilege or financial gain.
The Federal Regulation of Lobbying Act of 1946 defines a lobbyist as:
[One] who by himself, or through any agent or employe of other persons in any manner whatsoever, directly or indirectly, solicits, collects, or receives money or any other thing of value to be used primarily to aid, or the principal purpose of which person is to aid, in the accomplishment of any of the following purposes:
1. the passage or defeat of any legislation by the Congress of the United States;
2. to influence, directly or indirectly, the passage or defeat of any legislation by the Congress of the United States.
The escape hatch is the phrase “to be used primarily to aid, or the principal purpose of which person is to aid.…”
One of the primary reasons why church officials shy away from the word “lobbyist” is that it has direct bearing on their churches’ tax-exempt status. The Internal Revenue Code grants tax exemption to religious and other non-profit organizations if “no substantial part” of their activities is “carrying on propaganda or otherwise attempting to influence legislation.…” The key question here is, “What is “substantial”?
A 1955 Federal circuit-court case indicated that if political activities take up “less than 5 per cent of time and effort” of the organizations, then these activities would not be considered “substantial.” The lobbying act specifically exempts testimony before congressional committees, publications, advertisements, and so on.
“The Council for Christian Social Action receives only about 2 per cent of the United Church of Christ budget,” says Maddocks. “Here the so-called lobbying activities of the UCC could hardly be called substantial.”
The Rev. James L. Vizzard, Jesuit director of the Washington Office of the National Catholic Rural Life Conference (RLC), is more at ease than many of his peers with the word “lobbyist.” A veteran observer and shaper of public affairs in Washington, Father Vizzard explained his political philosophy:
“When I was studying at Georgetown University, I asked a Jesuit priest who had been in Washington a long time where you draw the line on lobbying.
“ ‘The only distinction is whether your lobbying is successful or not,’ he replied. I thought it was a good answer.”
Father Vizzard began testifying before congressional committees in 1950 in behalf of migrant workers. “Except for the Quakers, I was pretty much alone then,” he says. “We were prophets crying out in the wilderness. But since 1955, there has been a considerable growth in church representation. We have seen a shift in emphasis from so-called church interests to dedication to the common welfare.”
How do church officials distinguish political issues from moral issues? Is the church exceeding its competence by becoming involved in issues ranging from foreign policy to space control? Do church conventions and governing bodies that issue pronouncements on a panoply of topics have a direct pipeline to God denied to the average man in the pew?
Maddocks of the United Church of Christ has an answer to these questions usually asked by critics.
“I cannot separate the gospel message from the economic, social, and political affairs of men,” he says. “This does not mean that one position on a public issue is the Christian one and that the opposite is unchristian. It means, rather, that two Christians can disagree.”
To illustrate his point, Maddocks used an analogy:
“I had a father who, certainly by any standards I consider valid, was a Christian. He was a fair man, a man who was pathologically honest, who always treated people in a Christian way.
“But he and I didn’t agree at home. I am a liberal Democrat and he was an ultra-conservative Republican. But I never lost respect for my father and he never lost respect for me. We would discuss issues and disagree. He would discuss them from his standpoint of values, and I would discuss them from the standpoint of my values. Therefore, I didn’t say I had the Christian position on things and he had something less than that.
“Those who disagree with what their church is saying should oppose the issue, not the right of the church to speak out on issues. If you see religious implications in all public issues, you do not have to try to determine which issues are political and which are religious.”
In a paper outlining his rationale for “A Relevant Ministry in the Nation’s Capital,” Maddocks wrote:
“In order to appreciate the Christian’s responsibility in political action, we need merely to recognize that Christianity is concerned with the welfare of people, and that politics in a democracy is based on government by consent of the people; therefore, Christianity, and thus the Christian, must be concerned with politics.”
An opposing view is set forth by the National Association of Evangelicals in a Kiplinger-style letter written by Clyde W. Taylor, general secretary and director of public affairs.
“The church’s prophetic and evangelistic voice must not lose its spiritual authority by speaking on every other matter, which it is neither competent nor authorized to do,” Taylor wrote.
Referring to the 2,000 clergymen and laymen who picketed the White House in February, 1967, to protest the United States’ involvement in Viet Nam, Taylor set forth the NAE position:
“As a group we have no mandate to speak for or against this involvement in Viet Nam. We do have a responsibility to minister to our men in service, to bind up the wounds of those who suffer. We as individual Christians must find the level of our commitment in these major issues; we must find our own perspective on Viet Nam.”
Individual action versus organized response is one of the major issues on which the church is divided. Conservatives generally hold that social conditions are of secondary importance to man’s spiritual relationship with God. Although they do insist on social involvement, conservatives say, it should not overshadow the church’s prime responsibility of bringing God and the individual man together.
Dr. C. Stanley Lowell, associate director of POAU and a Methodist minister, is one of those who believes clergymen are confusing their roles. “The clergyman has the right to be involved in politics to the same degree as any other U. S. citizen—to vote or run for office,” he says. “But when a minister attempts to throw a divine aura on every issue, he is violating his trust as a minister.”
Presbyterian Saunders thinks it is time for churches to make a thorough reappraisal of church-state relations. “Simplistic statements supporting the church’s involvement in any public effort that appears to serve the betterment of mankind are dangerously irresponsible,” he said shortly after being appointed to his Washington post last fall. “There are varieties of involvement by the churches in public programs, and means and ends must be seriously studied in each instance. Otherwise, precedent could be established that would condition the future interaction of church and state in ways that undermine the integrity and effectiveness of each in its mission to the world.”
Saunders warned that churches have a tendency to rush in where angels fear to tread just to get where the action is. Sounding a word of caution, he proposed that before taking a position on any issues, the church should ask the following questions: Why should the church speak to this problem? And what does the church have to say, or what can it do, that can be legitimately related to the genius of its own tradition, and that will permit it to retain the vital element of independence from the political power structure in order to witness to, and effectively interact with, that structure?
Lobbying assumes a variety of forms and shapes. Buttonholing congressmen in corridors is considered ineffectual and passé. (A notable exception to this rule was the ecclesiastical activity on behalf of the 1964 civil-rights bill.) And rarely do church representatives appeal to congressmen on the basis of their mutual denominational connections.
Church lobbyists recognize that pressure from a congressman’s constituents has more influence than direct confrontation by a church bureaucrat. (“We are aware of the impact of communication on legislation,” says Dr. C. Emanuel Carlson, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs. “Folks who talk about indirect lobbying as being more effective than direct lobbying are correct.”) Congressmen are quick to discern whether the church spokesman has broad support back home or is a “general without an army.”
The church lobbyist can travel numerous avenues to reach his goal. He obviously cannot ply decision-makers on the Hill with the traditional unholy trinity of wine, women, and folding money. But he can influence legislation by bringing in experts to testify before committees, sponsoring seminars on various issues, distributing pamphlets informing churchgoers how to contact congressmen, releasing statements by important church leaders to the press, and deluging Congress with church resolutions and position papers when a bill is in committee or comes up on the floor for voting.
Some Washington representatives are handicapped at times and limited in movement by their church’s cumbersome machinery. The policy of the highly structured Methodist Church, for example, is formulated every four years by the General Conference. While this 900-member, unwieldy body seems to speak on everything in general, it often overlooks specifics. Thus The Methodist Church—which has the largest Protestant staff in Washington, operating in a five-story building across the street from the Capitol—could not participate in the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. The General Conference had not given its approval.
Alert lobbyists, however, learn to improvise when the need arises. Herman Will, Jr., associate general secretary of The Methodist Church’s Division of Peace and World Order, recalled the time when it looked as if the Senate Appropriations Committee would not vote funds for food aid to Communist Poland and Yugoslavia. Believing Congress should not mix politics with empty stomachs. Will wanted the committee to know how his church felt.
“I drafted a statement urging that food be sent to the two countries and wanted Bishop John Wesley Lord to sign it and send it out,” Will said. “But the bishop was out of town on vacation. I finally got in contact with him in the evening.
“He said my statement expressed his sentiments and to go ahead and send it out. We had copies on the desks of all the members of the Senate Appropriations Committee by the next morning,” Will said.
The churches win friends and influence politicians the most when they speak with one voice. Again Exhibit A is the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The three major faiths were so united in purpose on this issue that for the first time a Roman Catholic priest, a Jewish rabbi, and a Protestant minister testified in Congress in July, 1963, with a joint statement read by a single spokesman.
Concerned clergymen have picketed, verbally protested, called on congressmen, and bought full-page newspaper advertisements to register their opposition to the Viet Nam struggle, but with a singular lack of success. Congressmen recognize that this is an issue on which honest men differ. Even the so-called monolithic Roman Catholic Church has internal differences about Viet Nam, if statements by Pope Paul VI and Cardinal Spellman can be taken at face value.
Churches also are finding themselves allied with liberal labor and civil-rights groups in a coalition of “conscience and power.” This is an imposing alliance for which politicians have a growing respect. The coalition has resulted in such broad-based groups as the Leadership Conference on Civil. Rights, with more than 115 participating organizations, and the Citizens Crusade Against Poverty.
In the ecumenical climate produced by Vatican II, warm, refreshing breezes have blown on the Washington scene. A generation ago, Protestants acted as if their primary mission was to counter, and if possible cancel, the Catholic influence rather than to be a positive force on the legislative process. POAU made its appearance in Washington twenty years ago when Presbyterians, Southern Baptists, and Methodists banded together to block the appointment of an ambassador to the Vatican.
Now Protestant, Jewish, and Catholic spokesmen consider their common political objectives stronger than their theological differences. Doctrine no longer divides. Social issues form the rallying point—or the battleground.
Most Washington church representatives are on a first name basis with one another and would much rather cooperate than compete. This results in frequent crosspollination of issues. It is not at all unusual to find the same pamphlet on the current crusade displayed in half a dozen church offices.
Lobbyists seek the advice and consent of as many of their colleagues as possible before starting a campaign. The prevailing trend is to seek interdenominational backing for specific goals. The National Campaign for Agricultural Democracy is a prime example. The idea came from a Jesuit (Father Vizzard), the organization is housed in the Methodist Building, and the director is a United Church of Christ minister (the Rev. Eugene Boutillier). Purpose of the organization is to get farm workers in general and grape-pickers in particular protected by the provisions of the National Labor Relations Act.
Laymen sometimes are confused by what they consider an ambivalent stance by the churches on the church-state principle. The strongest opposition to Senator Everett Dirksen’s (R.-Ill.) prayer amendment has come from church leaders. Clergymen charge that permitting prayer in the classroom would infringe on the First Amendment. At the same time, churches are serving as the primary channel for translating federal funds into anti-poverty programs in communities across the nation.
Sargent Shriver, director of the Office of Economic Opportunity, boasted in a speech in San Francisco in December, 1965, that the OEO had scored a breakthrough in church-state cooperation. “Three or four years ago it was practically impossible for a federal agency to give a direct grant to a religious group,” he declared. “Today we have given hundreds without violating the principle of separation of church and state.” POAU sharply dissents.
Shriver’s statement points up the prime factor in the increased cooperation between churches and state. The federal government has expanded to the point where it is now, for better or worse, a tremendous force in the entire economic and social life of the country. Congress is now studying and acting on problems that once were considered the private domain of the churches.
“There are a growing number of areas in which the modern welfare state and the church have a concurrent interest and common concern,” states a recent Lutheran booklet on Church and State, A Lutheran Perspective. “These now center in the fields of health, education and social welfare. Both the church and the state operate schools, colleges, hospitals, homes. As population booms, problems grow and costs soar, the state is gradually assuming its communal responsibilities more directly by taking over many of the social functions performed earlier by the church.
“We have therefore rejected the position of an absolute separation of church and state in favor of a mutually beneficial relationship in which each institution contributes to the general welfare and the common good by remaining true to its own nature and task.”
The booklet, produced by twenty-two Lutheran scholars, describes the distinctive mission of the church as that of proclaiming the Word of God in preaching and sacraments, worship and evangelism, Christian education and social ministry. The purpose of the state is to establish good order, peace, and justice in a sinful world. The Lutheran scholars advocate an institutional separation of church and state but call for functional interaction. They support their argument with a quote from the U. S. Supreme Court:
The First Amendment does not say that in every and all respects there shall be a separation of church and state. Rather it studiously defines the manner, the specific ways, in which there shall be no concert or union or dependency one on the other. That is the common sense of the matter [Zorach v. Clauson, 1952].
But conservatives warn that growing government intervention should be resisted rather than welcomed. They point out that where the state becomes totalitarian it monopolizes welfare and penalizes the churches.
Although idealistic in principle, religious lobbyists are pragmatic in practice. Many offices operate on austere budgets; others are more generously financed by their denominations. An educated guess, based on figures available, is that the total operating budget of the church lobby amounts to about a million dollars annually.
Religious lobbyists are sophisticated professionals who know where the power lies in Washington and who daily are refining their techniques for manipulating this power. This church lobby is a growing pressure group that public officials may either damn or praise but seldom can afford to ignore.
