Christian right repackages social agenda - Christian Coalition declares war on poverty with ts Samaritan Project; leaders of other right wing groups criticize it

National Catholic Reporter, Feb 14, 1997 by Arthur Jones

WASHINGTON -- "Now that we have ended `welfare as we know it,' we can no longer blame the liberals for the carnage that is our inner cities."

Thus spoke Ralph Reed, Christian Coalition executive director, Jan. 30 as he declared a war on poverty in the nation's inner cities by backing legislation that critics say would primarily funnel government money into local churches.

Yet Read immediately found a welcoming response from fellow evangelical and Sojourners community leader Jim Wallis: "I am very grateful that people who are poor and racially divided finally are on the agenda of an organization that calls itself the Christian Coalition," Wallis said. "I think that's a very important thing and we've been waiting for this for a very long time. What's been most wrong with the Christian Coalition in my view is not just what's on the agenda, but what's not. And people have not been on the agenda at all."

Two years ago Reed stood in a room in the U.S. Capitol, flanked by leading conservative Republicans, including House Speaker Newt Gingrich, to announce the Christian Coalition's legislative agenda for the 104th Congress -- the 10-point Contract with the American Family.

This year, in a hotel meeting room, Reed was flanked by a half-dozen black and Latino ministers as he unveiled his eight-point agenda for the new Congress, "the Samaritan Project."

"For too long," said Reed, "our movement has been a predominantly, frankly almost exclusively white, evangelical, Republican movement with a political center of gravity centered in the safety of the suburbs.

"The Samaritan Project is a bold plan to break that color line and to bridge that gap of separation that has divided white evangelicals and Roman Catholics from their Latino and African-American brothers and sisters," he said. "It is now incumbent upon us as people of faith to provide a positive, faith-based alternative to the welfare state."

Some critics, such as Barry W. Lynn of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, claim to peel away what they call Reed's "cheap veneer" to reveal "the same creaky agenda of intolerance, moral paternalism and government aid to religion that the government failed to pass during the last Congress."

Two years ago, the coalition "contract" was founded basically on issues that polls showed most Americans supported in a general way -- such as prayer in school.

This time, the coalition admitted it has picked from a crop of Congressional bills and ideas already in circulation and packaged them as its eight-point "Samaritan Project":

* Strong families. Seeking legislation that would grant moneys from the Social Security Act to fund sexual abstinence education; legislation to provide funding to states "That require couples with young children to receive counseling and undergo a waiting period prior to divorce."

* Hope and opportunity scholarship. Supporting legislation to establish scholarship (voucher) demonstration projects in 100 of America's most improverished and drug-ridden school districts.

* Charitable giving. Establishing a $500 tax credit for taxpayers who give both financial assistance and volunteer time to a private community service organization assisting the poor.

* Racial justice. The coalition will hold a congress on racial justice in Baltimore in May.

* Empowerment zones. Legislation to provide jobs through federal start-up costs and tax breaks for new businesses in the inner cities.

* Faith solutions. Amending the Public Health Services Act so that federal funds can go directly to "faith-based drug treatment programs consistent with the Establishment (Separation of Church and State) Clause" and amending the law so that "normal credentialing requirements" can be waived.

* Revitalize the church. The Christian Coalition intends to "raise funds to help 1,000 existing or new inner-city churches engaged in outreach or ministry to at-risk youth by the year 2,000."

Said Reed, "We disagree with those on the left who believe that government can solve these problems and we disagree with those libertarians on the right who believe that government has no role at all. This is designed specifically to revitalize the church and to strengthen the family."

Americans United's Lynn, at a briefing that followed Reed's announcement, said "the Christian Coalition was not born in the fire of the civil rights movement, not established to end poverty. It proclaims its interests in the poor only when that advances its genuine goal of a Christianized nation where the government doles out aid to churches and religious institutions, where it tries to impose its religious beliefs on all citizens, where it advances an agenda to restrict personal decision-making on matters of morals and family values."

Lynn said Reed wants to "be everything to everybody. I've known chameleons that have not been able to change their colors as swiftly as Ralph Reed switches the Christian Coalition's agenda.

"He's happy to tell the national press how [the coalition] raised $750,000 to rebuild [burned] African-American churches," said Lynn, an ordained minister and a lawyer, "but it takes digging to get at financial facts about his organization. $750,000 is an insignificant percentage of a $21 million budget used primarily for a partisan political purposes, and a smaller piece of Pat Robertson's annual $164 million solicitation budget [1996] income."