Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, April 8, 1993 TAG: 9304080281
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CODY LOWE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Long
CHRISTIAN GROUP CLAIMS A LOT OF GRASS-ROOTS SUPPORT
THE BROCHURE'S COVER reads: "Christian Americans Are Tired of Getting Stepped On." For the Christian Coalition, that's a statement of attitude and a launching pad for its goals.\ When almost 1,000 people showed up for a Jan. 5 Montgomery County School Board meeting to discuss what names to use for school vacations, the Christian Coalition got credit for a bit larger membership than it has.
"Not 50 of them were Christian Coalition members," said John LeDoux, chairman of the 100-member Montgomery County chapter.
But the huge turnout reflected what national Christian Coalition organizers have been saying for a couple of years - that the concerns it has raised are held by a lot more people than pay dues.
Even before Tuesday night's meeting, at which the School Board decided to continue calling school-year vacations "winter break" and "spring break," LeDoux had written board members an almost conciliatory letter.
If they couldn't use the names "Christmas break" and "Easter break" on the school calendar, at least have the calendar acknowledge the major religious holidays on the dates they occur, LeDoux wrote.
That was a compromise also backed by the Coalition for Community - another grass-roots organization in the county that rose up to defend the nonreligious designations.
While the holidays - including Christmas, Hanukkah, the beginning of Passover and the start of Ramadan - won't be on the calendar itself, they will be listed on a supplement that will be distributed with the calendar.
\ The Montgomery County chapter of the Christian Coalition didn't even exist until six months ago.
Last fall, LeDoux, an engineering professor at Virginia Tech, and Lewis Sheckler, a retired music professor at Radford University, were brought together to fire up the organization.
Sheckler, who lost a bid to be the Republican candidate in last year's 9th District congressional race, is the coalition's Southwest Virginia regional coordinator.
Sheckler says he doesn't remember how he heard about the organization, but when he did - about a year ago - he was intrigued. He eventually called the national headquarters in Virginia Beach.
"I told them I was interested in being involved," he said. "They said they were looking for someone to serve as a coordinator. . . . I said `sure.' "
Sheckler, a volunteer who pays his own travel expenses, provides advice and assistance to the region's nine chapters - in Radford and in Montgomery, Floyd, Giles, Pulaski, Tazewell, Buchanan, Washington and Wise counties. The Wise County chapter was formed Monday night by 80 people from 24 churches, Sheckler said. But he wouldn't say what the Christian Coalition's total membership is in the region.
There is no chapter in the Roanoke Valley, though Sheckler said there is interest.
Every chapter is autonomous, he said, setting its own agenda. Sheckler said he is bemused by media portrayals of "Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition." While Robertson is the founder and his name appears prominently in much coalition literature, "I don't see any evidence that he is running the operation" of the national group or local chapters, Sheckler said.
Local chapters set their own dues - $5 a year in Montgomery County - all of which stay with the chapter. People also may hold memberships in the national organization, which raises its own funds.
"The purpose is not to raise a lot of money, but to get people involved," Sheckler said.
Members are not asked to adhere to any specific Christian doctrine or creed, he said, but would tend to hold the same "Judeo-Christian values." They represent a variety of churches, he said, in which they may help spread the Christian Coalition message.
The coalition - nationally and locally - has carried out what Sheckler calls a defensive effort against the secular world.
"Christians and what they believe are under attack in our society. Many of those Christians began to realize that there was a need for an organization that will help them defend themselves against those attacks."
A recent mass mailing from the national coalition to prospective members included a "Congressional Scorecard" listing the positions of members of Congress on raising taxes, abortion, educational vouchers, "special rights for homosexuals," "tax-funded obscene art" and a balanced-budget amendment.
It also asked recipients to send at least $7.50 to cover the expenses of the mailing. Although the survey apparently was not sent to coalition members, the issues it addresses are among the most prominent national concerns of the group.
Whether they heard about the organization by word-of-mouth, as most do, through Robertson's "700 Club" television program or by direct mail, thousands have flocked to the cause across the country.
Like many members, Sheckler said he was fed up with "evangelical Christians almost always being portrayed as wackos . . . evil or stupid" in news accounts and popular entertainment.
"In the political realm," he said, the coalition opposes what it sees as increasing "censorship of religious expression and symbols."
At the state level, many members were concerned about recently enacted regulation of church-operated day-care centers.
On the other hand, Sheckler said, no chapters that he knew of took a position on handgun-purchase limits. He said that was an issue members probably were split over.
The real emphasis of the coalition is at the local level, particularly on education, he said.
The attention to the naming of "winter break" and "spring break" is just the beginning of what LeDoux expects to be an increased awareness of what is going on in public schools of Montgomery County.
"We're going to establish a School Board committee," LeDoux said, with "somebody attending every meeting." It will "look at what is being taught [and] what the textbooks are saying."
Aside from the specifics of texts and calendars, LeDoux and Sheckler fundamentally disagree with public policy that says schools must be completely neutral in matters of religion.
"They can't be neutral," LeDoux contended. "Standards are based on some system of belief. If it is not Christian, it will be Islam or atheism" or something else.
In public schools, there cannot be "a religious vacuum," Sheckler said. "Some religion is going to be prominent. The question is not: `Will there be a religious influence?' " but which religion will provide the influence.
"If students are taught that all religions are equal," they develop an attitude that any religion is OK, which Sheckler objects to as "pantheism." "If you only teach about God" without asserting the reality of God, that is secular humanism, he said.
"I don't think the Christian Coalition would advocate that teachers get up in front of a class and try to indoctrinate children in a particular denomination," Sheckler said.
On the other hand, "I don't think the Christian Coalition would find fault with schools posting the 10 Commandments . . . permitting students to pray . . . or letting students give a Christmas program. . . .
"Many Christians have a real problem when one parent or one student is able to censor what most of the parents and students want just because there are religious connotations," he said.
\ Despite the depictions of the organization in some national publications, such as Playboy, the Christian Coalition "is not a radical, Nazi-type group," LeDoux said. "We're an educational organization more than anything else."
LeDoux said he abhorred the actions of "some so-called Christians" who made ethnic slurs against former Montgomery County School Board chairman Daniel Schneck, who is Jewish.
"If they were Christians, I think they are in trouble with the Lord," LeDoux said.
LeDoux and Sheckler say anti-Semitism has no place in their organization and both have expressed admiration for Schneck.
And in addition to asserting what they believe are their rights, they would like to be better understood by nonmembers.
The Montgomery County chapter is participating in a "dialogue group" with members of the Coalition for Community in an effort to find common concerns and to better understand each other.
Though members of the two groups will continue to disagree on some issues, the dialogue "is great, really," LeDoux said.
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