c. 2003 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ The Rev. Richard Cizik relishes his walk along the line between church and state.

As vice president for governmental affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals, Cizik serves as a key representative of the evangelical community in Washington.

“I believe that God has given me a call to serve his church in this, the capital of the free world,” Cizik, 51, said in a recent interview. “It’s a spiritual calling. … It’s a fascinating place, the two arenas people are not supposed to talk about, politics and religion.”

He has networked on both sides of the aisle in Congress and with presidential administrations of different political parties, introducing them to the diversity of views among evangelicals. He, in turn, opens young and old evangelicals to the possibility of influencing public policy with unified stands on matters such as religious persecution and AIDS.

A staffer in the group’s Washington office since 1980, Cizik has held his current post for seven years. He is based seven blocks from the U.S. Capitol, in a new townhouse complex that last June became the official headquarters for the umbrella organization of 50 denominations and 250 other ministries.

But much of his work is away from his third-floor office decorated simply with oak furniture and artificial gladiolas.

In early February, Cizik introduced top evangelical leaders to Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., an advocate for AIDS prevention and treatment programs, as they boarded a Capitol elevator after meeting with other senators and African leaders about the pandemic on their continent.

“I think it’s important for him to know that evangelicals are important players on HIV/AIDS,” said Cizik.

Days later, Cizik found himself in a completely different setting to explain who evangelicals are _ and aren’t.

He was invited to meet with Khaled Saffuri, chairman of the Islamic Institute, a Washington organization that fosters Muslims’ involvement in politics. Cizik surprised Saffuri when he informed him that his association had not taken a stand on a possible war with Iraq.

“Evangelicals are certainly not cheerleaders for a war with Iraq,” said Cizik. “If anything, we’re reluctant warriors.”

Saffuri said the discussion left him with a new impression.

“It explained to me, at least, that I should not judge evangelicals based on what I hear Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell saying, even though both of them have the habit of insulting everyone, not only Muslims,” said Saffuri.

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A man of distinctions, Cizik said he’ll take part in some interfaith dialogues but would rarely attend an interfaith service.

“It is inadvisable and counterproductive to call Muhammad names,” he said of the founder of Islam. “I don’t believe that’s the evangelical spirit. Should we contest with one another over absolute truth claims and what is truth? Of course, but I think that evangelicals should reach out in love to members of the Islamic faith.”

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Religious leaders familiar with Cizik credit him with shaping the views of journalists and other Washingtonians about evangelicals, moving them away from the sole descriptor of `fundamentalists.”

“He is the one who has helped them to understand the significance and the subtleties of the evangelical leadership,” said Leith Anderson, NAE’s interim president.

Cizik estimates that fundamentalists comprise only 10 percent of evangelicals.

“Americans interpret evangelicalism, unfortunately, in light of its most strident voices and get a picture of the whole that really only is representative of its parts,” he said. “I’m trying to represent the whole. I would like to think that NAE, in its best sense, represents the whole rather than the parts.”

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Cizik’s role representing the ideological range of evangelicals came through a circuitous route of changes in health and faith.

As a child of 10, he overcame lymphatic cancer through what he believes was a miraculous healing requested in his mother’s prayers.

He was raised in what is now the Presbyterian Church (USA) but was later ordained in the more conservative Evangelical Presbyterian Church. In between, he attended a seminary affiliated with the Conservative Baptist Association of America. Although he does not personally speak in tongues, his Presbyterian denomination believes in such gifts of the Holy Spirit.

“In so many respects my heritage is conducive to the kind of peacemaking role that one has to play in this kind of a position,” he said.

“I understand the mainline movement. I understand the reasons why American evangelicals have united together in support of biblical orthodoxy because I believe the mainline has departed from it. On the most fundamental of issues, there’s a continental divide … that issue being the authority of the Scriptures.”

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Cizik was considering a career as a diplomat before author Norman Vincent Peale, the “positive thinking” proponent, told him at a 1974 Rotary Club meeting, “Well, God can always use a few good diplomats.”

After pursuing seminary instead, Cizik said he views himself less as a lobbyist and more as a diplomat “for the Christian cause in a strife-torn world.”

His training in the Chinese dialect of Mandarin came in handy when he joined a 1996 delegation of religious leaders to China at the invitation of President Clinton.

Cizik also has put his diplomatic skills to use within his 61-year-old organization, which has been in almost continual transition lately. It has had four chief executives in the last decade and, for the first time in its history, did not hold an annual meeting last year.

The organization plans a gathering March 6-7 at the Eden Prairie, Minn., megachurch of its current interim president.

Diane Knippers, president of the Institute on Religion & Democracy and secretary of the NAE’s executive committee, said Cizik “significantly represents organizational continuity.”

The Rev. Jim Wallis, convener of Call to Renewal, an ecumenical network of Catholic, mainline Protestant and evangelical leaders that includes Cizik as an individual member, praised Cizik’s perseverance in the midst of so much change.

“Sometimes he hasn’t known what’s happening next with NAE because nobody knows,” Wallis said.

Cizik himself recalls personal periods of fasting and prayer during uncertain times, especially last year when a new headquarters in California closed and staffers were laid off.

“I think God brought us through the period and we’re in a recovery period but it’s clear that we’re back on track,” he said.

But he says some parts of the job remain difficult, like getting NAE’s massive constituency to jointly support some issues.

“They are intrinsically anti-institution and Washington is an institution town,” he said. “If the constituency doesn’t value and understand the importance of institutions, it’s the equivalent of pushing a rock up a hill.”

Sometimes he’s opted to take individual stands, endorsing campaigns about poverty and environmental awareness.

Though he enjoys networking with policymakers and answering media calls, Cizik has contagious enthusiasm for helping fellow evangelicals who are new to the Washington scene.

He boasts that attendees of the annual student leadership conference he runs have later been appointed as ambassadors, federal district court judges and U.S. attorneys.

Bill Wichterman, a policy adviser in the office of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., credits that seminar and Cizik’s later advice as instrumental in his Capitol Hill career.

“I got the bug,” he said.

For Cizik, getting others to walk that same line between religion and politics is especially gratifying.

“I remain as excited and interested and as committed to the task of … training young people to influence the life of the nation as the day I came,” he said.

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