What's un-Christian about the Christian right - Cover Story

Washington Monthly, Dec, 1995 by Jonathan Rowe

By this standard, it is hard to understand why public broadeasting--public radio in particular--would be first on the hit list of those who say they are concerned with this country's moral atmosphere. I would invite Ralph Reed to spend a week watching any of the commercial networks, and a week watching PBS, and then explain why PBS should be singled out for abolition as a matter of Christian principle. Would not Fox be at least as worthy a target? I would also invite Reed to listen to Rush Limbaugh for a week, and then Scott Simon of NPR's Weekend Edition. Does Limbaugh really embody the qualities Paul talked about in I Corinthians 13 (patience, kindness, modesty, etc.) better than Simon?

If the goal is to rid the airwaves of sex, violence, and intemperance, then the crusade against public broadcasting calls to mind what Jesus said about straining gnats and swallowing camels. As for the National Endowment for the Arts--personally I think it should fund WPA-type civic art and projects in ghetto schools, and let the Mapplethorpes fend for themselves. But do we really want to turn the funding of the nation's arts over to the very same corporations that use prurient sexual imagery to sell everything from cereal to shampoo, as the Christian Coalition suggests? How about using the NEA to fund projects in the poorest neighborhoods to paint over the pervasive cigarette and malt liquor billboards with positive messages? (There's a dose of old-fashioned politics in the Contract, the kind Tip O'Neil and Dan Rostenkowski would have appreciated: While the Coalition wants to cut off funds for PBS, the NEA, legal services for the poor and others, they want churches to be eligible for those same noxious federal funds.

On the scale of sheer moral cowardice, however, it is hard to beat the so-called "Istook Amend ment," which the Christian Coalition warmly embraced. Right-wing House members turned Istook into a jihad upon the groups that oppose their agenda. Basically, the Amendment would prohibit any organization that receives federal grants from seeking to influence legislation in any way, even if it uses other funds to do so. Applied consistently across the board, Istook might not be a bad idea. If defense contractors, for example, could no longer flood Congress with lobbyists on behalf of budget-busting weapons systems, it could be a definite advance for the republic. The same goes for tobacco and sugar growers, timber and mining companies, and others who benefit financially from federal policies and largess.

The trouble is, that's not what Rep. Istook, a Republican lawyer from Oklahoma, and his cohorts had in mind. Their idea of cleaning up Washington didn't include defense contractors or most others who make money and give large sums of it to Congressional campaigns. Instead, with enthusiastic Christian Coalition support, they focused on nonprofit groups for the ban on lobbying and the expression of views on legislation--even though they are already prohibited from using government funds to lobby. In the version the Christian Coalition supported, defense contractors could continue to besiege Congress for B-2 bombers which the Pentagon doesn't even want. But the YMCA that receives federal money for after-school programs for troubled teens would have to watch what it says.