NEWS STORY: Christian Coalition seeks `church liaisons’ to enlist in lobbying effort

c. 1998 Religion News Service WASHINGTON _ The Christian Coalition _ hoping to build on its success in the recent defeat of a Maine gay-rights measure _ said Wednesday (Feb. 18) it will seek to involve some 100,000 evangelical churches in a grassroots lobbying effort focused on the sort of conservative social issues that brought […]

c. 1998 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ The Christian Coalition _ hoping to build on its success in the recent defeat of a Maine gay-rights measure _ said Wednesday (Feb. 18) it will seek to involve some 100,000 evangelical churches in a grassroots lobbying effort focused on the sort of conservative social issues that brought it to national prominence.

The strategy, dubbed”Families 2000,”is designed to gain the congregations’ support by connecting 100,000 volunteer”church liaisons”to local coalition chapters by November 2000. The coalition said the plan will”place family issues at the forefront in the next two election cycles and into the new century.” The Families 2000 blueprint included a”menu”of”issues for state and local action,”around which the congregations can rally their efforts. Abortion, parental notification of government actions affecting children, school curriculums, homosexuality, legalized gambling, pornography, drugs and covenant marriage contracts were among the issues listed by the coalition.”We’ve recognized the reality that in the anonymity of the suburbs and cities today, for people of faith the church is often their community,”coalition spokesman Arne Owens said in an interview.”This is the logical next step toward expanding the roots of the Christian Coalition.” Owens said the”citizenship ministry”effort would focus on voter registration and education, and avoid partisanship _ a charge often leveled at the coalition by liberal critics.


Families 2000 was tested in Maine, where the coalition successfully led a petition drive to force a vote on legislation guaranteeing the civil rights of homosexuals. The measure was overturned in balloting earlier this month.

Owens said the coalition, based in Chesapeake, Va., added 100,000 names to its list of supporters by working with some 900 Maine churches during the effort. The organization claims about 1.9 million supporters.

Randy Tate, the coalition’s executive director, said in a statement announcing the new initiative that”our Maine victory has set the stage to take this winning formula and apply it nationwide.” Despite its success in Maine, the coalition _ once the religious right’s premier political lobbying group _ faces a struggle to regain its former clout, much of which evaporated with the departure last year of Ralph Reed, its media-savvy former executive director.

Fund raising dropped from $26.5 million in 1996 to $17 million last year, forcing the coalition to lay off about a fifth of its employees, cease publishing its bi-monthly magazine and spin off a much-vaunted outreach effort to African-Americans and Hispanics.

The Internal Revenue Service is also reviewing the coalition’s tax-exempt status and the Federal Election Commission has filed suit alleging the group violated election law by engaging in partisan political activity while promoting the candidacies of conservative Republicans.

In addition, other groups competing for the same conservative religious constituency have grown stronger. Chief among them is the Washington, D.C.-based Family Research Council led by Gary Bauer.

Critics were quick to tie the coalition’s problems to its latest effort.

The Rev. Barry W. Lynn, director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, labeled the plan a”desperate”attempt to get the coalition”back on track.” Involving local congregations, Lynn said,”is a deplorable misuse of houses of worship for partisan political ends. … I don’t know why any church would want to be associated with a Tammany Hall-style political machine.” Carole Shields, president of People for the American Way, said the coalition,”when faced with a financial crisis and a profound legal challenge, is returning to the red-meat issues that motivate its members.” Shields said the coalition was”returning to a narrow religious right message, calculated to stir up its members and fill its bank account.” However, John Green, an expert on the religious right, said Families 2000″isn’t really anything new”for the coalition, even if its outreach to churches is”somewhat more explicit”than its past efforts.”The history of the Christian right has evidenced a lot of learning. This would appear to be just another step in the learning curve,”said Green, who directs the Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron.


Green said coalition attempts initiated by Reed to broaden its base by appealing to blacks and other racial minorities, plus an earlier effort to involve Catholics, proved unsuccessful.”They found it difficult to break into other communities because of the historical animosities between white evangelicals and blacks and Catholics,”Green said.

Now, he said, the coalition has decided to”deepen rather than attempt to broaden”its base of support.

And despite the coalition’s recent spate of problems, Green added, the organization started by religious broadcaster Pat Robertson remains”in better shape than its critics would have you believe. There’s a lot of life left there.”

DEA END RIFKIN

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