Onward, Christian soldiers? - Christian coalition - includes related article

Reason, Jan, 1994 by William L. Anderson

But when conservative Christians object to having immorality "crammed down their throats," they are often talking about movies and TV shows, commercials and billboards, fetishist conventions and Gay Pride parades. Many of them would like to restrict these and other private actions. And abortion, of course, will always be a burning issue for those, like Pat Robertson, who consider it a form of murder. Reed's makeover can only go so far without triggering a mass exodus. On the other hand, Reed is probably right that a narrowly focused Christian Coalition is doomed to a marginal role in our political system.

This dilemma suggests that the early fundamentalists knew what they were doing when they refused to get involved in politics. In 1992 Cal Thomas, a former vice president of the Moral Majority, wrote a column for the Los Angeles Times in which he argued that conservative Christians should not rely on politics to change the moral climate of the country.

"Preachers need to get back to their primary mission, which is to build up their members spiritually and morally and to attract new members to a life, a cause and a kingdom not of this world," he wrote. "I don't like trickle-down morality. If a nation is not ready to accept a universal standard of righteousness, no President or Congress can impose it....Ministers who think that government alone, or government mostly, can accomplish their legitimate objectives might wish to reconsider this great biblical truth: 'Not by might, not by power, but by my spirit, says the Lord.'"

Thomas is no libertarian, of course, and many Americans would not like a society built on the tenets of evangelical Protestantism, no matter how it were achieved. But by asking evangelicals to reconsider their relatively recent foray into politics, he offers an alternative solution to Ralph Reed's dilemma.

School Duel

Taking credit in New York curriculum controversy

In the months leading up to last spring's school-board elections in New York City, People for the American Way warned that the Christian Coalition was sponsoring "stealth campaigns" for the candidates it backed, working "feverishly under a cloak of secrecy." The American Civil Liberties Union called the elections "the greatest civil liberties crisis in the history of New York City." The New York Daily News weighed in with headlines in large block letters above pictures of Pat Robertson and stories that told of fear in the gay community.

This picture of fundamentalists taking over the schools of the nation's largest city bore little resemblance to reality. But it showed that opponents of the Christian Coalition share with its supporters a tendency to exaggerate the group's power and influence. Organizations like People for the American Way need enemies like the Christian Coalition to symbolize know-nothing religious extremism and oppressive prudery. (Conversely, the coalition needs enemies like PAW to symbolize arrogant secular humanism and anti-Christian bigotry.) Playing up the menace represented by the other side helps to raise money, rouse the troops, and attract attention.