Change in strategy - Christian right's recruitment of African Americans - Watch on the Right

Humanist, Jan-Feb, 1994 by Sara Diamond

The Christian right's recent overtures African-American church leaders provoked controversy in California last summer, when the San Francisco board of supervisors voted to remove from the city's Human Rights Commission one Reverend Eugene Lumpkin. The prominent black Baptist minister had inflamed public sentiment with his repeated descriptions of homosexuality as "an abomination against God." In the heat of the controversy, Lumpkin told a TV talk-show host that he concurred with the Old Testament's prescription of stoning "sodomites" to death. White preachers from the Traditional Values Coalition rallied behind Lumpkin at a press conference. (On Lumpkin's behalf, the Rutherford Institute, a Christian-right legal firm, later filed a lawsuit against the San Francisco mayor for supposed religious discrimination.) Charges of homophobia and racism flew fast and furious, and the whole incident threatened to rupture alliances between the city's black and gay civil-rights advocates. In the end, cooler heads prevailed, but not without raising concerns over the Christian right's efforts to recruit new members outside of its traditional all-white base of support.

In part, the Christian right's appeal to some black evangelicals is made possible by shared denominational traditions that cross racial lines: Baptists and Pentecostals have more in common with each other than they do with main-line churchgoers, irrespective of race. But if shared worship styles were the sole basis for bonds between conservative black clergy and the Christian right, why, then, is an alliance between the two camps emerging only now?

Central to the Christian right's new quest for racial diversity within its ranks is the drive to split gay-rights advocates from their natural allies in communities of color. Black churches have been a mainstay of the African-American civil-rights movement. They are now a target of Christian-right propaganda aimed at demonizing homosexuals, the latest group to assert its demands of legal equality.

Among the Christian right's new genre of anti-gay home video cassettes is Gay Rights, Special Rights: Inside the Homosexual Agenda, produced for the Traditional Values Coalition by Jeremiah Films and designed for an audience concerned about civil rights. The 40-minute scare flick relies heavily upon footage from the April 1993 gay-lesbian-bisexual march for equality in Washington, D.C. Featured are the obligatory transvestite strip-tease scenes and countless clips of lip-locked gay and lesbian marchers intercut with shots of young children's angelic faces. The film's crude theme is that gay "special rights" elevate chosen "life-styles" to the level of immutable racial categories and, thereby, effectively undermine the legitimate minority status of people of color. Mixed with footage from Martin Luther King, Jr.'s, famous "I have a dream" speech, we hear arguments against gay rights from, among others, two great civil libertarians: former drug czar William Bennett and former Attorney General Edwin Meese.

Undoubtedly, the African-American community as a whole is no more homophobic than the white population. Few will be fooled by the specious claims that gay-rights initiatives will adversely affect the laws outlawing racial discrimination. But the Traditional Values Coalition and its ilk are counting on support from that small but vocal number of preachers who may use racially charged arguments to disrupt civil-rights coalitions in cities where gay rights are controversial.

Beyond this type of opportunism, the Christian right's new-found racial inclusiveness is taking other forms, both cultural and decidedly political. Within the evangelical subculture, black and white church leaders are beginning to communicate openly about racism among Christians. A recent Christianity Today cover story, "The Myth of Racial Progress," featured complaints about racism in the church from prominent African-American ministers, plus a special message from the magazine's cofounder, Billy Graham. "Racism--in the world and in the church--is one of the greatest barriers to world evangelization," Graham wrote,

Evangelicals' efforts at what they call "racial reconciliation" have been increasingly evident in the pages of Charisma, a popular magazine geared less toward clergy and more toward everyday admirers of the leading religious broadcasters. Charisma's own recent cover story, "Healing the Rift Between the Races," profiled some of the largest of the new racially mixed charismatic churches: John Meares' Evangel Temple in Washington, D.C.; Rod Parsley's World Harvest Church in Columbus, Ohio; Benny Hinn's Orlando, Florida, Christian Center; Dick Bernal's Jubilee Christian Center in San Jose, California; and Joseph Garlington's Covenant Church of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Every month Charisma is loaded with ads for "camp meetings " At these two, or three-day mini-vacations for born-again Christians, the entertainment is gospel music and high-energy preaching by charismatic celebrities. Recently, Charisma has advertised a slew of such camp meetings headed by black preachers. More impressively, the gatherings are increasingly interracial. In Tulsa every June, Oral Roberts and the 70-odd "trustees" of his "International Charismatic Bible Ministries" put on one of the biggest of the tent revivals. At this camp meeting, well-known white TV preachers (Oral's son Richard Roberts, Paul Grouch, Kenneth Copeland, and Marilyn Hickey, to name a few) share the pulpit with their black counterparts.