Background on Religious Right

Background on Religious Right

Complied for POP Show

7/25/97

The Right has arrived on the mainland

To the casual observer, the influence of the religious right appeared to wane after the collapse of the Moral Majority and the defeat of Pat Robertson's presidential candidacy in the 1988. But groups such as the Christian Coalition and Focus on the Family have worked diligently on grassroots organizing and mass-mailing and media-based fundraising. They have built a powerful political apparatus — a network of national and local organizations, mailing lists, media, and training schools.

The Religious Right political movement has built power with a strategic combination of grassroots organizing, hardball political and electoral campaigns, and persuasive, if deceptive packaged, legislative and scoreboard proposals. They have succeeded in altering the nature of political debate in this country, setting the policy agenda and even defining the language used to discuss those policies. As a result, their divisive social and political agenda is moving forward in Congress, state legislatures, city councils and local school boards.

Definition of "Religious Right"

The term "religious right" should be used advisedly. Many devoutly religious people do not subscribe to its political aims, nor do many deeply conservative people. (See The Interfaith Alliance). The term describes a movement of people organized to use government to enact their version of religious orthodoxy. It is a movement that invokes religious authority for its anti-liberty political agenda. Its adherents seek to use government to enforce an absolutist view of morality based on its version of Christianity.

The Right's agenda

Under the guise of "restoring morality" in America, Mainland promoters of religious orthodoxy have promoted a long list of initiatives in legislatures and school boards. They seek to restrict freedom of expression, curb reproductive rights and AIDS and sex education programs, reshape public education, introduce prayers into public schools, discriminate against gay men and lesbians, censor curriculums that discuss civil rights, environmentalism, history and social issues, abolish the Departments of Education, Commerce, Housing and Urban Development and Energy as well as the office of the Surgeon General and the National Endowment for the Arts, and end government funding for family planning, the arts, public broadcasting and legal services to the poor.

If you followed the original Contract With America pushed by Newt Gingrich and his disciples in Congress, you would see it translated into efforts to abolish the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to weaken environmental regulations; to weaken OSHA (worker's safety), and FDA regulations of medicines. Their tax cuts greatly favor the wealthy and large corporation, while they slash education and human services budgets. Many like flat taxes (which advantage the wealthy at the expense of middle and poor). The Gingrich troops promoted "wise use" and property rights, which translates for Hawaii into helping out large land owners and developers, vs. environment, and Hawaiian rights to land and water access (PASH & SB 8).

Christian Coalition agenda:

To amend the U.S. Constitution so that the First Amendment's church-state separation provision is eviscerated.
To shut down the Departments of Education, Commerce, Housing and Urban Development, and Energy, as well as the office of the Surgeon General and the National Endowment for the Arts.
To criminalized all abortions and cut all federal funding for abortions.
That the assault-weapons ban be gutted or repealed.
That citizenship be denied to those born in the U.S. to non-citizen mothers.
That many social programs be abolished including welfare, medical aid, food stamps, school lunches, higher and secondary education assistance, and emergency food and shelter programs.
That English be declared the official language of the U.S., requiring the use of English by federal employees dealing with citizens and repealing bilingual education programs and bilingual voting assistance.

Nobody knows the exact numbers involved in Religious Right organizations. The Associated Press cited 1.7 million members of the Christian Coalition alone in 1995. The CC has spread across every state and is organized into over 1,425 local chapters, armed with an arsenal of a $25 million. It has volunteers in 50,000 voting precincts, and full-time staff in 19 states.

Rev. Pat Robertson, head of the Christian Broadcasting Network, reaches tens of millions of people daily through his "700 Club" talk show. He heads a multi-million empire of enterprises which includes The Family Channel, Regent University, and a legal arm, the American Center for Law and Justice.

Leaders of the religious right have declared the United States "a Christian nation" and tout the need to elect officials who will take Biblical positions on public issues. Robertson derides the wall between church and state as a "socialist myth," a "lie of the left," and a concoction of civil libertarians and misguided judges.

Robertson believes that the separation of church and state is ". . . a lie of the left, and we're not going to take it anymore." (The State, November 13, 1993)

Robertson believes that only Christians should be in positions of public leadership. He said: "I think Christians were intended by God to be the leaders." (700 Club transcript)

Robertson continues to spout Anti-Semitic rhetoric. He said: "... Perhaps we can assume that the current wave of anti-Semitism is being allowed by God to force the large number of the chosen people residing in the Soviet Union out of what the Bible calls the land of the north?" (Pat Robertson's Perspective (newsletter), May/June, 1990)

Robertson believes that women should be subservient to men. "The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians." That is what he wrote in a letter to help raise money to defeat Amendment 1, an Iowa ballot initiative that would extend the protections of the state constitution to women -- (The Washington Post, August 23, 1992)

Toward this end, former Executive Director Ralph Reed built the Christian Coalition into a 50-state organization with several key goals:

Organize Christian activists for political involvement at the state, county, and precinct levels;

Provide political training for activists and candidates;

Take control of state and county Republican Party organizations.

Stealth campaigns

Reed has also advocated the so-called "stealth campaign" strategy. According to this approach, activists are encouraged to run for school boards, city councils, and other low-profile posts without announcing their religious right affiliations or full political agendas. Campaign organizers rely on church directories for "get-out-the-vote" efforts and distribute flyers extensively in church parking lots. According to Reed, voter registration drives sometimes are conducted in church pews when the offering plate is passed. This allows for a highly effective campaign with little visibility to opposing candidates or the general public. Says Reed: (ACLU report)

"I want to be invisible. I do guerilla warfare. I paint my face and travel at night. You don't know it's over until you're in a body bag. You don't know until election night."

The effectiveness of stealth strategy was demonstrated dramatically, with Christian Coalition support, in San Diego in November, 1990. (See San Diego report)

Influence of Religious Right on Republican Party

The Christian Coalition has been a major force in campaigns for election to a wide variety of public offices at all levels of state, local and national government. The most recent and alarming, however, was displayed in the 1994 national elections.

A Campaigns and Elections survey taken in the summer of 1994 revealed that the Radical Religious Right asserts "dominant strength" in 18 state Republican parties, with a combined electoral college vote total of 239. While in 13 other states, accounting for an additional 117 electoral votes, their strength has been determined to be "substantial."

In 1994, the Christian Coalition's grassroots network disseminated 35 million voter guides, 17 million Congressional Scorecards and phoned 3 million voters. The Christian Coalition reports that their constituency of religious conservatives accounted for 33 percent of the national vote on November 8, with their voters contributing a net vote gain of roughly 6 percent for Republican candidates.

Of the 48 newly elected Republicans in the House, the CC claim 38 won while embracing religious conservative themes and religious conservative activists. In addition to the 38 freshmen Congressman the Coalition takes credit for the election of eight freshman Senators and seven new Governors because of their endorsement of the "pro-family/pro- life" agenda. (Christian Coalition Report, "Religious Conservatives Increase Influence in National Election Data, Pro-Family/Pro-Life Candidates Account for Most of GOP Gains," November 8, 1994)

The Christian Coalition has also demonstrated its power to influence the Republican Presidential selection process by demanding obedience from whomever runs for its "family values" agenda and by threatening to back Pat Buchanan if the front runners fail to toe the line. Leading candidates for the GOP nomination — Bush, Bob Dole, Senator Phil Gramm — received the message loud and clear and avidly sought approval from the radical Religious Right.

The Christian Coalition's 1998 Institutional Goals

"Increasing Christian Coalition's membership from 1.9 million to 3.0 million."
"Holding more than 200 Citizen Action Training Schools."
"Distributing more than 55 million voter guides and congressional scorecards," and
Organizing a massive Christian Voter Registration and Get-Out-The-Vote Program.

Oppositional groups

Interfaith Alliance Foundation

A variety of groups have arisen to challenge the rights's political activities.

The Interfaith Alliance Foundation, for example. Mainstream religious leaders, prominent scholars, and other important public figures have come together to form The Interfaith Alliance Foundation. "Together we are affirming the important role religion has played in American public life and we are educating folks about all forms of religious and political intolerance. We are working together to overcome ideological divisions and to counter the misuse and political manipulation of religion. TIAF affirms both the plurality of religious voices and the strength that diversity brings to our national life. We encourage the active participation in civic life by people of faith and all people of good will."

TIAF issued a lengthy report titled "Road to Victory?" that carefully examined troubling Christian Coalition activities:

campaign practices that violate both the spirit and the letter of Federal election laws.
legislative proposals that reveal the extremist agenda of the far right and its candidates.
examples of the "bait and switch" routine in which Ralph Reed says one thing to the public and the press while his boss, Pat Robertson, says things far more extreme to his followers.
exposure of the "Trojan Horse" strategy by which stealth candidates pose as "mainstream conservatives" and hide their true agenda behind phrases carefully constructed from polling data and focus groups.
details of the ways in which the Christian Coalition is increasingly gaining control of the Republican Party and its candidates.

Colorado

Big Money from out-of-state. in Colorado, 97 percent of the money raised to put a "parental rights" initiative on the ballot in `94 came from the Virginia-based group Of The People.

Colorado voters soundly rejected Amendment 17, the so-called "parental rights" initiative, after opponents of the initiative supplied clear, honest information about what the amendment would mean to their children and their schools. The victory was won by a coalition of more than 150 in-state organizations, the Protect Our Children Coalition. The Coalition closed a 60-point gap in voter opinion in the last two months to defeat the measure. The come-from-behind victory occurred despite being greatly outspent by half a million dollars from the out-of-state, Religious Right group Of The People. That Virginia-based group bankrolling 95% of the money proponents spent on Amendment 17 campaign in Colorado.