And behold, ye shall be my Republicans: Christian Coalition as a lean, mean religion

National Catholic Reporter, March 24, 1995 by Thomas E. Blackburn

And they'll know we are Christians by our -- tort reform? The question arises because Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition, the most visible confessing lobby, has laid hands on the "Contract with America." The coalition sees the hand of God in other Republican enterprises, too.

A group of first-term Republican House members recently set up task forces to decide how to abolish the Education, Energy, Commerce and Housing departments. They announced their plans in a fat package mailed to newspapers. (Fat packages and long faxes from the House have quadrupled and re-quadrupled since the House came into new ownership.) One of the items in the package was a congratulatory letter from the Christian Coalition's Capitol Hill office.

"To study the elimination of these four Cabinet-level agencies reflects a strong commitment to respond to the American people's calls for reducing the bloated federal bureaucracy and returning power to local communities, families and business," the coalition told the politicians.

The specifically Christian interest in raising the costs and slowing the pace of the Energy Department's nuclear-waste efforts may elude some of the Christian Coalition's contributors. But there it is.

The Christian Coalition claims a membership of 1.5 million people. That makes it a little smaller than the United Church of Christ. Its public relations budget, television outlets and political showmanship, however, combine to make innocent bystanders think it is the "Christian right" or "religious right" in this country.

Activists on a local level, loosely or not so loosely aligned with the coalition, increase its visibility. In West Palm Beach, Fla., recently, the coalition's name was invoked in an unsuccessful effort to repeal a "gay rights ordinance" by referendum.

While on a local level the activities of coalition members may reflect individual Christians' feelings that they are being ignored or denigrated by a secular society, the operations of the coalition in Washington focus on the neoanarchist agenda of some Republicans.

Ralph Reed, the coalition's front man, explained that position in an article for The Wall Street Journal's editorial page, Feb. 13, the date of the coalition's letter to the new congressmen.

The explanation was a gloss on the "Contract with America." Sample: "Middle-class tax relief will reduce the crushing tax burden on families." Reed's piece glows with the populism that underlies the contract, which was devised from public opinion polls. Thus, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is an affront to families in part because contributors to WETA in Washington have an average net worth of $627,000. (It seems to have eluded Reed that the well-off are subsidizing "Sesame Street" for poor kids in the same way he and Newt Gingrich want them to take over government welfare programs with charitable contributions.)

The genius of the Republican effort in 1994 was to drape the cloak of religious populism over a political agenda. The chief preacher of the crusade, Rush Limbaugh, proclaims that he has "talent on loan from God," which, of course, is every homilist's claim.

What's completely missing in this religious perspective, though, is the lesson of the first recorded outburst of religious populism. That's the time the Israelites talked Aaron into making a golden calf for them to worship in Moses' absence.

Authentic religion accepts standards of behavior and morality outside oneself. It recognizes an eternal element. Populist religion, by contrast, gives to oneself and one's friends the power to decide and to change standards of behavior and morality. And Newt Gingrich isn't exactly eternal.

Certainly, one has only to turn on the television or go to the movies -- which are not projects of big government -- to see that the values most Americans profess are ignored or denigrated. Not surprisingly, people who take their Christian faith seriously react. The reaction takes a number of forms.

Ralph Reed and Pat Robertson -- who seems to be turning into a character from Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum -- have tapped into the energy of the reaction. They have channeled it into neo-anarchism (no bureaucracy plus no taxes equals no government) that is definitely a political program, not a religious one.

Political parties always set up "interest" coordinators for elections to keep in touch with ethnic or business groups they hope to capture. Ralph Reed is just an old-fashioned interest-group coordinator -- for self-identified evangelicals.

You won't know him by his fundraising, which stresses Christian themes. You'll know him by his lobbying, which stresses conservative Republicanism.