Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 17, 1994 TAG: 9404170063
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CODY LOWE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
"We can win. We must win," read the transparency projected behind the speaker.
"We must have a positive attitude. We have the numbers. They have the zeal."
"They" are members of the "Radical Religious Right." "We" are the assortment of 50-or-so social activists assembled Saturday in Roanoke for an all-day workshop called "Countering the Radical Religious Right."
The message: Get organized, speak out, counterattack the Christian Coalition's "stealth" campaign to take over American political institutions.
Participants came from points across Virginia - Alexandria, Lynchburg, Blacksburg, Charlottesville, Roanoke. They represented Planned Parenthood affiliates, the National Organization for Women, community coalitions. They included teachers, a retired United Methodist minister, college students, a professor.
They were invited by Planned Parenthood Blue Ridge Associates, a political-action offshoot of the region's Planned Parenthood affiliate. Unlike its parent organization, the associates group can endorse candidates for office, because it has no tax-exempt status that prohibits such activities.
What Saturday's workshop participants had in common was a fear that what they called the "Radical Religious Right" is going to win elections for everything from local school boards to the presidency.
Keynote speaker Skipp Porteus did not allay those fears.
Porteus, a former Pentecostal minister who now heads the Massachusetts-based Institute for First Amendment Studies, warned them that the "hard right . . . will do anything" to gain and keep political power.
Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson is a "genius," the workshop leader asserted, but also "one of the most dangerous men in America."
Robertson's Christian Coalition - a self-described grass-roots effort to mobilize evangelical Christians to become politically active - was the focus of most of the day's discussion.
Two of the Christian Coalition's own videos - describing its mission to become the most powerful political organization in the country by the end of the decade - were shown, and numerous examples of its clout recited.
Porteus and others accused the coalition of a continuing core agenda of banning abortion, oppressing homosexuals, and abolishing public schools or injecting Christian theology in their curricula.
The Coalition "is trying to go mainstream," Porteus said, by focusing on issues such as crime, taxes and family. "I don't believe it for a moment."
Though Ralph Reed, executive director of the coalition, once promoted the idea that the organization would win elections with "stealth tactics" that would hide their religious agendas, he and Robertson for the past year and a half have said they now reject that position.
The coalition has said it is seeking to include a broader range of ethnic and religious groups - including Jews - and Robertson has said that members no longer must agree on every issue, including abortion.
Porteus insisted "we do not want to label Christians as the enemy. This is a political battle with very little to do with religion."
He and Sharlene Bozack, director of public affairs for Planned Parenthood of Central and Northern Arizona, even suggested that the conference participants learn from the Christian Coalition's successes.
For instance, they encouraged infiltrating religious right organizations to learn more about them. People also could pose as students to get on a mailing list.
In his own state, Porteus said, a group he belongs to is waging "a secret ongoing campaign to defeat" an anti-abortion pastor who is running for a school board seat. If the campaign were "too public," that would "enrage the competition," perhaps generating a backlash that would elect the pastor, he said.
Porteus unsuccessfully ran for the school board in New York in the mid-1970s, when he was still a minister. "Fortunately, I lost," he said, since he was then part of a plan to take over the schools and impose Christian beliefs.
Not long after that, his marriage broke up, and he left the ministry. While working as a newspaper reporter, he said he began to examine his religious beliefs for the first time and eventually rejected most of them.
He is now a member of a Unitarian Universalist congregation.
Participants in Saturday's workshop - held in Roanoke's Unitarian Universalist Church - decided to attempt to create a statewide coalition of their own.
They talked of networking, publicly identifying opposition "stealth" candidates, using the media to get their message across and bringing in more conservative agencies and people, including Republicans disgruntled with their political party.
"This was a step in the right direction," said Susan Anderson of Blacksburg. She said she is hopeful that a statewide alliance of groups with "common interests" can be formed to counter what she sees as the threat of religious extremists.
A June meeting is planned in Charlottesville to continue planning for such an alliance.
by CNB