Cronkite's alliance for what?

National Review, June 30, 1997 by William F. Buckley, Jr.

Walter Cronkite, for very good reasons the heartthrob of wholesome America, has sent out a letter for general circulation in behalf of "The Interfaith Alliance." The letter's purpose is to ask recipients of it to send money to the Alliance in order to combat the Christian Coalition. Mr. Cronkite intro- duces himself (as if that were necessary) by saying that in years gone by he needed to conceal his own strong opinions but now that he is no longer the anchorman of CBS, he feels free to ventilate these opinions. On the particular subject at hand -- he is writing in behalf of the Interfaith Alliance -- he tells us that he is, himself, "a person of faith. I work very hard at being a Christian." And immediately announces the purpose of his appeal: opposition to the Christian Coalition, which "does not speak for me."

Okay. But the reader of Mr. Cronkite's petition completes the letter without any idea at all what the writer's objectives are. He tells us only that the Christian Coalition is a "genuinely radical movement, known as the religious right wing." We are prepared to believe that any genuinely radical movement is bad, perhaps with this or the other exception, like opposition to war in Viet- nam or to segregation in the South.

So what else does Mr. Cronkite's package give us? A letter from the president of the Interfaith Alliance, the Rev. Albert M. Pennybacker. What does he tell us is the purpose of the Alliance? He begins his letter with two quotations from leaders of the Christian Coalition, one from Ralph Reed, the other from Pat Robertson. This last is the most inflammatory, and therefore the most quotable. Evidently he said, or, somewhere, wrote,

"In America today, the people who have come into (our) institutions are primarily termites. They are into destroying institutions that have been built by Christians . . . the termites are in charge now, and that is not the way it ought to be. The time has come for a godly fumigation."

Now this is combative language, but very much in the American tradition. The first little piece I wrote for publication (in 1948) wondered out loud about the decorum of the charge by President Harry Truman that the Republican Party of Governor Dewey yearned to return to the age of a Hoover Depression in order to, yet again, "grind its heel on the neck of the poor." I thought this indefensible language, but then I was only 22 and hadn't grown up. If the American Civil Liberties Union wants to go after someone who objects to publishing the Marquis de Sade, it is quite capable of saying that the protestor represents the forces of repression and censorship. Americans United for Separation of Church and State wouldn't think twice before charging that anyone who wishes a prayer said at the beginning of the school day wants to repeal the First Amendment.

Suppose we transcribe the florid statement of the Rev. Pat Robertson into drawing-room prose. What is he saying?

"In America today, the men and women who dominate our institutions are agents of change. They are bent on transforming institutions that were built by the founders of American society. They are dominant now, and that is not the way it ought to be. The time has come for a thorough cultural laundering."

Should Americans thus addressed have any problem with that? We do acknowledge, do we not, that traditional institutions have changed? No one would deny that this is so in the Supreme Court -- its decisions on religion, on obscenity, on libel, abortion -- have certainly changed what used to be official positions on these matters. No one is likely to hold that the White House and Congress, judged in the main, are governed by the same presumptions that obtained fifty years ago. And of course the academies are everywhere acknowledged -- indeed, hailed -- as agents of modernism in every direction: the law, economics, literature, religion, feminism, sex. Why should Mr. Robertson be faulted for observing that the institutions of yesteryear are under attack, by -- to use his metaphor -- termites?

What Mr. Cronkite and the Rev. Pennybacker leave the reader asking is, What does their Alliance want? Their solicitation does nothing at all to identify what it is that its trustees -- mostly ministers, bishops, a rabbi or two -- want? Or don't want? -- other than that they do not want Messrs. Robertson and Reed and the Christian Coalition. Do they want/not want the restoration of prayer in school? A voucher-right for dissatisfied parents? A fresh look at whether Deep Throat is okay at the local movie house?

But we aren't let in on these questions, which makes us think that Mr. Cronkite is still under wraps and reluctant to tell us what is it he is work- ing hard at, in pursuit of Christian ideals for his country.