For years, religion lobbyists have been quietly knocking on doors around the nation’s capital, informing the people who run the country where churches and synagogues stand on various issues. With only occasional exceptions, though, Washington’s religion lobby has wielded little political clout: legislators listen politely, but, as many of the religion lobbyists themselves wistfully acknowledge, that’s about all most of them do.
This is not so, however, in the case of the newest religious lobbying force in town—the Christian allies of the political New Right. Backed by prominent television preachers and with links to both New Right political organizations and conservative members of Congress, several Christian “profamily, promorality” groups have popped into public view this year, and the political establishment—from President Jimmy Carter down—is taking note.
The new groups have Protestant fundamentalist and evangelical origins, but they are inclusivist in their political strategy, eager to recruit anyone from Mormons to Roman Catholics who will help them win their objectives. They have declared war on immorality in America’s social life, on “secular humanism” in the schools and elsewhere, and on government intrusion in Christian education and other church affairs. One notable victory: Congress, under heavy pressure mustered mostly by the Christian groups and their allies, shackled the Internal Revenue Service, preventing the agency from applying new tests aimed at determining whether religious and other private schools practice racial discrimination in enrollment (see Oct. 5 issue, p. 58).
The Christian political activists have drawn a bead on legislation and legislators alike, and they intend to carry the fight into the uttermost precincts of the nation by election time next year. Candidates who don’t take a forthright position against gay rights and permissive abortion, for example, or for the return of prayer and Bible reading in the public schools, may be in deep trouble.
Leaders of the Christian groups reject the accusation that they are reactionaries hopelessly mired in negativism. Earlier this year, in action described as “positive,” they and their New Right allies drafted a proposed bill known as the Family Protection Act, and Republican Senator Paul Laxalt of Nevada, a Catholic, dropped it into the legislative hopper in September.
Among the dozens of provisions in the bill: a return of voluntary prayer to public schools; an end to compulsory intermingling of the sexes in sports programs; tax incentives to help families provide better care for elderly and student dependents; an end to income tax inequities for married couples (unmarried couples presently have a tax advantage); tax deductibility for a wife’s housework; tightening of the food stamp program; greater freedom from federal regulations for religious organizations; withholding of funds from any entity that promotes homosexual life-styles; protection of parental rights from government encroachment; and a requirement that clinics and doctors notify a minor’s parents before commencing treatment for pregnancy or venereal disease.
Two of the groups, Christian Voice and Moral Majority, are registered as non-profit, nonexempt corporations (contributions are not tax deductible). They can therefore lobby extensively and even become involved in election campaigns, unhampered by the restrictions that limit the political activities of most religious organizations.
Christian Voice was founded last January by a group of Californians headed by travel agent Robert Gordon Grant, 43, of Los Angeles. Grant, a Fuller Theological Seminary graduate with a Christian and Missionary Alliance background, served for eight years as assistant pastor under Americanism preacher W. Stewart McBirnie at the 1,200-member Glendale Community Church. He also was founding dean of the California Graduate School of Theology. More recently he founded American Christian Cause to combat the gay activist movement.
Voice, says Grant, was created out of a ground swell of interest among evangelicals who wanted to become more involved politically in shaping America’s moral future. “They felt that Christians were losing by default,” comments Grant. He speaks of “a tidal wave of unrest and frustration sweeping the Christian community.… We seek to guide its power so it has a massive impact on Washington, rather than dissipating aimlessly.”
He points out that Voice is actually an amalgamation of organizations that include the ACC, the antipornography Citizens for Decency Through Law, and the Pro-Family Coalition. Among the policy committee members are well-known southern California Baptist pastors Ted Cole and Jess Moody, television producer Paul Webb, and author-lecturer Hal Lindsey (The Late Great Planet Earth).
So far, 16 members of Congress have been recruited for the Voice’s congressional advisory committee. They include four Republican senators: Mormon Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, Lutheran Roger Jepsen of Iowa, Baptist Gordon Humphrey of New Hampshire, and Methodist James McClure of Idaho. (The influential McClure chairs a group of New Right senators known as the Steering Committee.)
Grant serves as president, and a former Foursquare Gospel minister, Richard Zone, is executive director. Zone will work out of offices in Pasadena and Pacific Grove, California. The Voice’s Washington office is headed by its legislative director, Gary Jarmin, a Southern Baptist who served for several years in a similar capacity for the American Conservative Union. Before that, he worked Washington’s legislative haunts for six years for controversial Korean evangelist Sun Myung Moon. At the time of his defection from Moon in 1974 in a squabble over policy and beliefs, Jarmin was secretary general of the Freedom Leadership Foundation, the Unification Church’s most effective front. He believes that Christians are potentially “the most powerful political force in the nation.”
The Voice has budgeted $1 million for its efforts in 1979, and $3 million next year—some of it earmarked for conservative candidates. Its direct mail fund raising campaign is being handled by Jerry Hunsinger, 46, of Richmond, Virginia, a former Methodist minister whose accounts include the television ministries of Jerry Falwell and Robert Schuller, singer Anita Bryant’s antigay and profamily work, Citizens for Decency Through Law, and a number of Catholic organizations and other charities. An evangelical, he also oversees fund raising for the Moral Majority.
There are at least 50 million conservative-minded church people out there, muses Grant, and he hopes to enlist many of them in Voice’s promorality political crusade. Already, some 130,000 persons—including 1,200 Protestant ministers and several hundred Catholic priests—have become members, he discloses.
Voice plans to blitz millions of viewers of Christian television with spot announcements alerting them to issues in Congress and suggesting what they ought to do. There will be weekly half-hour commentary shows and a 30-minute special featuring prominent Christian and government leaders. Meanwhile, a 30-minute documentary film, The Doomsday Report, produced by Hal Lindsey and featuring Senator Hatch, will be promoted throughout the country. It deals with America’s moral decline.
Clergy will receive a monthly legislative bulletin, complete with recommendations to share with parishioners.
At the end of the year, says Jarmin, Voice will produce the first of its morality report cards on Congress. Legislators will be rated on a “morality scale,” according to how they vote on a variety of issues deemed by Voice leaders to have a morality factor.
It is this element that seems to bother critics most. For example, Voice leaders have a way of reasoning how a vote to lift sanctions against Zimbabwe is moral, while a vote against it is immoral. They apply the same sort of reasoning to other controversial issues as well, almost always arriving at the same positions as those held by New Right politicians. Like the New Right, they opposed Carter’s China policy and the Panama Canal treaties.
But on many issues, the critics contend, no “Christian position” as such exists. They argue that equally devout and biblically informed Christian legislators may cast opposing votes on an issue. If that occurs, the critics insist, it is more a matter of difference in philosophy, not morality.
Moral Majority was organized last June by television preacher Jerry Falwell, 45, of the 16,000-member Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia. His goal is to mobilize two million people to work for government policies based on traditional moral and biblical principles. One possibility: a constant bombardment of Congress with millions of letters every time an issue vital to Moral Majority is at stake.
Serving with Falwell on the board of directors are Baptist ministers Tim LaHaye of San Diego and Greg Dixon of Indianapolis.
LaHaye and his wife, Beverly, authors of books on family relationships, chair what amounts to a Christian family lobby in Washington: Family America. It disseminates advance information on family and moral issues in government, and it serves as a resource agency for family-oriented organizations needing assistance in their programs. Jay Grimstead of the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy is president, and Susan Wismar looks after legislative research.
Dixon, of the 7,000-member Indianapolis Baptist Temple, is a veteran of political wars. Earlier this year he led 400 ministers to form a human chain around Texas evangelist Lester Roloff’s home for problem children, temporarily preventing authorities from closing the home. He has organized antigay and antipornography rallies, and he pushed through the Indiana legislature an omnibus bill designed to protect religious organizations from government interference.
Falwell’s “Old Time Gospel Hour” is aired weekly on more than 300 television stations and has an audience numbering in the millions. (Two million persons are on record as active donors to the telecast within the past year alone.) Falwell recalls that as he thought about his TV audience, he realized that a “moral majority” exists in America: people from many church backgrounds, concerned about the nation’s moral drift and its impact upon their families, but unorganized and unable to stop the decline. Meanwhile, the “other side” was getting all the press attention.
Although from a strongly separatist church background, Falwell decided it was time for the majority to join hands, himself included. Some of his strongest support, he noted, had come from Mormons and Catholics when he preached against pornography, gay rights, abortion on demand, the Equal Rights Amendment, and on other topics that touched on family life and morality. Doctrinal differences could be thrashed out later, he concluded: more urgent matters were at hand, and he needed all the help he could get.
Robert Billings was named executive director of the Moral Majority lobby. Billings, a graduate of Bob Jones University, was the founding president of Hyles-Anderson College, a school sponsored by well-known fundamentalist pastor Jack Hyles and his 18,000-member First Baptist Church of Hammond, Indiana.
Billings resigned his college post in 1976 to run for Congress. Unsuccessful, he moved to Washington anyway and set up shop as a consultant representing fundamentalist Christian schools in their dealings with the government. In the process, he established friendships with important people on Capitol Hill that are now paying off.
As he visited among leaders of anti-abortion and New Right political organizations, Billings discovered that many of them were as concerned as he about America’s overall moral state and the alarming disintegration of traditional family values. He was soon accepted into the inner circle of New Right leadership as friend and adviser. He became treasurer of the Free Congress Research and Education Foundation, which publishes Family Protection Report, a conservative profamily newsletter. The foundation is headed by New Right leader Paul Weyrich, a devout Eastern rite Catholic who also directs the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress.
Meanwhile, Billings organized the National Christian Action Coalition to research and publicize national issues of special interest to church people, and to provide a rallying point for likeminded Christians to work for change.
When Billings, who also sits on the policy committee of Christian Voice, took the helm of Moral Majority, his son William, 29, assumed leadership of NCAC. The younger Billings, likewise a Bob Jones graduate with a background in Christian school administration, has also directed another Washington-based organization, the Conservative Leadership Youth Foundation.
The elder Billings was the person most responsible for mobilizing the powerful church opposition that eventually led to the demise of the IRS’s plans to make it tougher for private schools to pass nondiscrimination tests and retain their tax exemptions.
Using Falwell’s 250,000-name prime donors list, Moral Majority last month raised nearly one-third of its first-year budget of $1 million. Like Christian Voice and other groups, Moral Majority will send legislative alerts to its constituency, and it may mount campaigns similar to those envisioned by Voice.
Falwell, Moral Majority’s founder, has become increasingly active in political circles in the past several years. He is a familiar figure in Virginia Republican gatherings: some lawmakers say that his endorsement—or lack of it—can mean the difference in an election. At election time, politicians from both major parties beat a path to his church. He played a key role in the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment and pari-mutuel gambling in Virginia.
Some legislators in Washington sense that Falwell, with his vast television following, is becoming a powerful figure on the national political scene as well. When earlier this year the minister taped his “I Love America” rally on the Capitol steps for airing on national television, a number of senators and representatives (including Mormons) unabashedly took seats next to Falwell, and some gave testimonials on camera supporting Falwell’s antiimmorality, profamily, and pro-God views. One of the senators was Republican Jesse Helms of North Carolina, a Southern Baptist who has been trying for years to restore prayer to public schools. He is perhaps Falwell’s staunchest backer in the Senate.
Liberals in and out of Congress resent Falwell’s involvement in politics. Some religious leaders are upset, too. Executive James Payne of the Virginia Council of Churches has been quoted as saying that the close relationship between Falwell and Virginia Governor John N. Dalton, a fellow Baptist, comes close to infringing on the doctrine of separation of church and state.
A ruckus broke out recently over a remark Falwell made at an “I Love America” rally in Richmond attended by Dalton, Lieutenant Governor Charles S. Robb, and Attorney General Marshall Coleman. While making a strong defense of Israel during his talk, Falwell quipped that a Jew “can make more money accidentally than you can on purpose.” Falwell explained to critics later that his remark was made “in jest” and was not intended to be taken as a racial slur. He promised not to repeat it. Unmoved, the critics suggested that Dalton and the other politicians should have walked out after Falwell made the remark. Dalton and Robb disagreed. Said Robb: “It was an unfortunate choice of words, but in the context in which they were spoken, I don’t think it was an anti-Semitic remark.”
Both on television and in print, Falwell has been blasting the SALT II arms limitation agreement as a sell-out to the Soviets, a position held unanimously by the New Right. In September, Robert L. Maddox, a Southern Baptist minister who serves on the White House staff as Jimmy Carter’s liaison officer with religious groups, and a State Department official, traveled to Lynchburg to discuss SALT II with Falwell. They apparently failed to change his mind, however.
Insiders acknowledge that SALT II is in trouble in the Senate as opposition mail pours in, much of it prompted by New Right-aligned religious groups and preachers like Falwell. As part of a counterattack, the administration invited a contingent of 155 leaders representing 27 national religious organizations, including the National Council of Churches, to a White House breakfast in September. They were briefed on SALT II by Carter himself and by other administration officials.
Afterward, many of the participants fanned out among Senate offices to lobby for the treaty’s ratification. Echoing some liberals on Capitol Hill, several participants said they are opposed to SALT II because they do not feel it goes far enough on the issue of disarmament. They said they were willing to back it, however, as a step in the right direction.
(In a separate development that cheered the Carter administration but dismayed politically conservative evangelicals, evangelist Billy Graham announced he’d had a change of mind and now favors nuclear disarmament and SALT II.)
Falwell and the new Christian political action movement have been receiving major press coverage over the past several months, including cover stories in Conservative Digest and U.S. News and World Report. In addition to Falwell, the cover stories featured another television personality, Pat Robertson, 48, founder of Christian Broadcasting Network and cohost of its popular “700 Club” show.
The son of a former U.S. senator from Virginia, Robertson has openly backed conservative Christian candidates in that state, and he has invited several conservative congressmen as guests on the “700 Club.” The program is viewed by millions on 150 TV stations and about 3,000 cable systems.
Robertson has publicly questioned President Carter’s competence, warned against the excessive influence of liberals in public policy, and suggested that the American government is really under the control of a leftist elite. Conservative Catholics and Protestants need to unite to rescue America, he says. Together, he wrote recently, “we have enough votes to run the country.” To get the point across, he hopes to rally one million Christians to a meeting in Washington next year.
The broadcaster joined 17 other conservative Christian leaders in a private meeting with Republican presidential candidate John B. Connally at Connally’s Texas ranch in August to discuss issues and possible support. Others in the party included Falwell, Billings, Dixon, educator Bob Jones III, executive director Ben Armstrong of National Religious Broadcasters, Robert Dugan of the National Association of Evangelicals Washington office, Southern Baptist Convention president Adrian Rogers, and Ed McAteer, who is the national field director of the Conservative Caucus. (A member of Roger’s church in Memphis, McAteer is said to be a key figure in bringing together New Right leaders and the emerging conservative Christian activists.)
Sources say the group was more than pleased for the most part by Connally’s positions on issues. The same delegation, with the addition of pastor Jack Hyles and evangelist Jack Wyrtzen, also met with Ronald Reagan, Howard Baker, Jr., and Philip Crane last month. So far, Reagan seems to be the favored candidate among the Christian leaders, with Connally a close second.
The partiality shown Reagan has caused some minor tension in New Right circles. Richard A. Viguerie, the conservative direct mail expert (he raised $8 million for Jesse Helms’s 1978 campaign), recently parted company with Illinois Republican Congressman Crane and went to work for Connally. “I think the conservative movement should support him,” Viguerie said. “In four or eight years, we can try to work for someone more conservative.”
Viguerie, a Catholic who sends his children to a fundamentalist Christian school in suburban Washington, is part of the inner circle of the conservative Christian-New Right coalition in Washington. He controls mailing lists that contain the names of four million political conservatives, and he published Conservative Digest. For the first time, outsiders now have access to Viguerie’s lists, and fund raiser Hunsinger is expected to use them to build support for Christian Voice and Moral Majority.
The big difference between the New Right and the Old Right is one of tone and style. The contemporary conservatives are more optimistic, more activist, and more cooperative with each other than their ideological forebears, according to analysts. In some respects, the same is true of the latter-day fundamentalists. Perhaps the most striking change from past days is their willingness to cooperate with nonfundamentalists and even non-Christians to achieve mutual objectives.
Leaders of the Christian lobbies attend weekly strategy meetings of the Kingston Group, a broad coalition of conservative political and special-interest organizations. They also attend twice-a-month meetings of the Library Court Group, a coalition of conservative religious, morality, and antiabortion lobbies. Many of the Library Court people are also members of Kingston. The coalition meetings serve as an information clearinghouse and a coordination center for lobbying and other activities. Members are pledged to maintain secrecy about what goes on in the meetings. It is known, however, that mutual-support agreements are forged at some of them (one Christian leader, for example, acknowledged that he had agreed to help out the National Rifle Association on an issue in return for backing of his causes). The “support” may involve anything from simply contacting a single congressman to mounting a major letter-writing and mass media campaign.
Comments Paul Weyrich; “This is no false unity based on papering over doctrinal differences.… Our very right to worship as we choose, to bring up our families in some kind of moral order, to educate our children free from the interference of the state, to follow the commands of Holy Scripture and the church is at stake. These leaders have concluded it is better to argue about denominational differences at another time. Right now, it is the agenda of those opposed to the Scriptures and the church which has brought us together.”
Falwell expressed similar sentiment before 12,000 at a rally in Dallas a few months ago to raise $100,000 for a legal fund for Texas evangelist James Robison. The evangelist, who preaches weekly on nearly 100 TV stations, was cancelled by WFAA-TV in Dallas for his hotly worded sermons against homosexuality. Station executives, including at least one evangelical, feared they would be forced to provide free time to gays as a consequence. (The rift was later resolved and Robison’s program was reinstated.)
Seated with Falwell on the platform were ministers of varying racial, ethnic, and denominational backgrounds, including traditionalist Catholic theologian William H. Marshner (a brilliant New Right theoretician), and president Gary Potter of the Washington-based Catholics for Christian Political Action. A Jew, director Howard Phillips of Conservative Caucus, gave the opening address.
Falwell looked toward the press table and said: “The media had better understand that in another context we would be shedding blood [over our doctrinal differences]. But our commitment to the family has brought those of us of differing religious views and backgrounds together to fight a just cause … to fight for the family.”
Until Billings and the other Christian activists hit town, the Washington religion lobby was composed of about 100 persons representing several dozen organizations. Most of the big denominations and groups like the National Council of Churches and the National Association of Evangelicals have Washington staffs to look after their interests.
With several exceptions, including the NAE, their lobbying priorities have been such social issues as disarmament, poverty, hunger, health care, and racism, and their viewpoints have been mostly liberal. The only major parting of ranks occurs when the Catholics go their own way on abortion (against) and parochiaid (for).
The groups prepare newsletters, do research on pertinent issues, develop background papers, compile voting records, testify at legislative hearings, file court briefs, and jawbone with legislators and bureaucrats. Most tread lightly, in accord with IRS policy specifying that “no substantial part” of a nonprofit organization’s activity should involve “carrying on propaganda or otherwise attempting to influence legislation.”
Only two of the liberal-oriented religious groups have registered as nonexempt lobbies and thus are not bound by the IRS policy: the Quaker-related Friends Committee on National Legislation, and Network, an effective 4,300-member organization headed by Catholic nuns.
To coordinate their work better, and to make up for staff and budget limitations, the religion lobbyists have formed an association: the Washington Interfaith Staff Council.
Many of those in WISC are distressed over Christian Voice and Moral Majority. To them, the new conservative groups represent a cruel attempt to baptize right-wing and even extremist politics, thereby exploiting millions of uninformed believers and distorting the Christian message. “They claim they will finally get us Christian representation in Washington, but I think that shows considerable arrogance,” Lutheran lobbyist Charles Bergstrom told reporters. “There are many Christians, and it’s impossible to talk about one point of view representing Christian views.”
The conservative Christian campaign, the critics warn, can lead to demagoguery and radical divisiveness in America’s religious life. Adam DeBaugh, director of the Washington office of the predominantly homosexual Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches, sees it as a direct threat to the civil rights of homosexuals and possibly other minority groups.
Nonsense, says Senator Hatch. He says he sees nothing wrong in fundamentalists and other conservative Christians making up for a lack of representation of their views in traditionally liberal religious bodies like the NCC and denominational lobbies. “The other side has been working too long without opposition,” he says.
A Washington columnist suggests that the liberals have only themselves to blame. He asks: “How can you be so concerned about the sugar-coated cereal that goes into a kid’s mouth without also being concerned about the filth that goes into his mind?”
The NAE’s Robert Dugan, a Baptist minister from Colorado who failed in a bid for Congress says he sympathizes with many of the goals of the conservative Christian lobbyists, but he hopes they do not mistakenly attach religious labels to issues that should have none. He also hopes they will broaden their concerns to encompass more of the spectrum of human need.
Partially in response to the formation of Christian Voice and similar groups, the Christian Life Commission of the 13-million-member Southern Baptist Convention launched the Christian Citizenship Corps. Spokesman William Elder said that the corps will be an alternative to organizations that have “wedded conservative politics and conservative Christianity.”
The goal of the program is to enlist “a grassroots network of Southern Baptists’ who will become involved in political action “to promote public righteousness.” The commission will collect and channel information on legislative issues “and their ethical implications” to corps members, primarily through a “Moral Alert” newsletter when fast action is called for on special issues, Elder said. Although headquarters may take positions on issues, he indicated that corps members will not be told “what they should think and how they should vote.”
According to an SBC news release, formation of the corps marks the first time the nation’s largest Protestant denomination has attempted to mobilize political action through an organized structure.
It may or may not remove some of the heat from the Southern Baptist who occupies the White House.
