NEWS STORY: Christian Coalition reinvents itself after dropping tax-exempt fight

c. 1999 Religion News Service WASHINGTON _ Abandoning its decade-long attempt to gain tax-exempt status, the Christian Coalition on Thursday (June 10) recast itself as a partisan political entity that will openly fund and endorse candidates. Along with a host of recent staff shuffles and a reported growing financial deficit, those developments could portend a […]

c. 1999 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ Abandoning its decade-long attempt to gain tax-exempt status, the Christian Coalition on Thursday (June 10) recast itself as a partisan political entity that will openly fund and endorse candidates.

Along with a host of recent staff shuffles and a reported growing financial deficit, those developments could portend a significant change in the status and influence of what has been the religious right’s marquee political organization.


The Chesapeake, Va.-based organization said it has changed its name to Christian Coalition International and will seek to organize chapters overseas”in response to dozens of requests.” Meanwhile, the organization’s Texas affiliate _ which has the tax-exempt status that the national office had unsuccessfully sought _ has been renamed Christian Coalition of America.

Chuck Anderson, the Texas Christian Coalition executive director, said Christian Coalition of America will operate out of the Virginia office, despite its Texas charter. A new Texas affiliate will be organized, he added.”Christian Coalition International will operate in the same fashion as any traditional business corporation,”said a statement issued by the Chesapeake office.”It will have the freedom to endorse candidates on a state and local level, make financial contributions to candidates or engage in such other activities as are permissible to all businesses.” Christian Coalition International will form a political action committee which will allow it to funnel money to candidates.

Molly Clatworthy, a national coalition spokeswoman, said Christian Coalition of America will function much as the old Christian Coalition operated. Clatworthy said that will include distribution of the group’s controversial voter guides that list candidates’ positions on issues of coalition concern.

The guides reportedly figured prominently in the Internal Revenue Service’s reasoning for not granting the Coalition tax-exempt status. The IRS, as is customary in such cases, declined to comment Thursday.

Critics have long called the voter guides _ tens of millions of which were distributed during the 1998 election largely through a network of thousands of churches across the nation _ partisan electioneering for favored candidates, virtually all of them anti-abortion, conservative Republicans.

The coalition maintains the guides are non-partisan and educational, and notes that no church has ever had its tax-exempt status lifted for distributing them.

The announced changes were touted by coalition founder and religious broadcaster Pat Robertson as enhancing the organization’s ability to push its political agenda.”Christian Coalition of America will continue to be a force in American politics and it will remain a prominent fixture on the political landscape as the nation’s number one pro-family, pro-life organization,”he said.


The coalition also downplayed the import of the tax-exempt issue, despite having spent 10 years pursuing its case with the IRS. The coalition statement said only that it had”withdrawn its application for 501(c)(4) tax exempt status.” However, both past and current coalition officials said that decision was made only after the IRS informed the organization earlier this spring the application would be denied. As long ago as January, the Robertson-affiliated American Center for Law and Justice hinted in a fund-raising letter of the impending IRS decision.

Critics and others said abandoning the quest for tax-exempt status as a”social welfare organization”and engaging in open partisanship is likely to hurt the coalition by undercutting its relationships with the individual churches who form the bulwark of its grassroots strength.”They will be severely hampered by this,”said the Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a Washington-based liberal advocacy group that has long supplied the IRS with information about coalition activities.

Lynn said”confirmation”that the coalition is”nothing but a hardball political operation”will cause pastors to shy away from accepting voter guides.”If the voter guides cannot get through the church-house door, then the clout of the Christian Coalition has been dramatically diminished.” William Martin, a Rice University sociologist who has studied and written about the religious right, agreed. But Martin also cautioned against equating the coalition with the larger religious right.”We’ll have to see about the Christian Coalition. But whatever happens to the group, the religious right has proven itself to be a relatively permanent part of the political landscape,”said Martin.”If needed, someone else will fill the vacuum.” Since the 1997 departure of former executive director Ralph Reed, whose boyish good looks and media acuity brought the organization to the peak of its influence, the coalition has struggled to maintain itself.

Donations have dropped and key officials have come and gone. Only a handful of state affiliates are said to remain strong, although Clatworthy said the coalition still has 2.1 million”members and supporters,”about as many as it has ever claimed.”There’s been some waning,”said Florida Christian Coalition executive director John Dowless.”All organizations go through ups and downs.” One former national coalition official said the organization has a deficit of more than $2 million, a figure, he said that”isn’t shrinking.” Earlier this month, Randy Tate, a former congressman from Washington state, was shifted from executive director to head of the group’s Washington lobbying office. Coalition president Don Hodel, a former Regan cabinet member, quit in February.

Dave Welch, the national field director, and Chuck Cunningham, who coordinated the coalition’s 1996 Republican National Convention delegate selection effort, both left in March.

END RIFKIN-BANKS

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