GOM’s Dan Gilgoff advances the proposition that Mara Vanderslice’s Matthew 25 Network, the Christian pro-Obama PAC, represents the religious left’s getting up to speed a lot faster than the religious right took. Nothing like having someone else break the trail.
The relevant comparison is between the Moral Majority’s press release approach and Christian Coalition’s grass roots work, and Dan sees Matthew 25 as more on the CC model even as he acknowledges that it is tiny compared to CC in its heyday. But apart from resources, the challenge for the religious left is that the kind of grassroots mobilization-by-congregation that the CC specialized in is effectively impossible, not only because the IRS is a lot readier to pounce than it used to be but also–and even more–because the Catholic and mainline Protestant congregations where those susceptible to Matthew 25’s appeal hang out are much more ideologically mixed entities than the conservative white evangelical churches that CC brought into the Republican fold.
CC’s weapon of choice was the voter guide. So far, Matthew 25’s favored instruments appear to be the radio ad and–that great new engine of lefty mobilization–the web. It is proudest at this point of its Put Away Falsehood page designed to set the record straight on “false and misleading information about Senator Obama’s record on a number of vital issues” that “some in the faith community have been promoting.” Know the Truth and the Truth Will Set You on the Path to Obama.