Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, September 7, 1995 TAG: 9509070094
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SCOTT WILLIAMS ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium
With ``Evening News'' anchor Dan Rather at the helm, tonight's ``CBS Reports: Faith & Politics - The Christian Right'' (WDBJ, Channel 7) focuses on this informal group's burgeoning power, influence and political agenda.
Meet preacher Larry Vance of Hardin County, Ky., a lifelong Democrat who joined the Republican Party after he became convinced the United States was hell-bent on its own destruction.
``It's not the liberal philosophy per se destroying America,'' Vance explains. ``It's the people allowing the liberal philosophy to control their lives that's destroying America.
``I don't have to become liberal. I don't have to be the type of individual that's going to say, `If it feels good, do it.'''
Instead of blasting that perceived erosion from the pulpit, Vance worked for the election of his friend, Ron Lewis, one of at least 30 conservative Republicans elected to Congress - with help from the Christian right - in 1994.
``CBS Reports'' shows us Vance's personable warmth in a face-to-face conversation, and his passionate intensity in the pulpit when he declaims: ``Whatever became of Christian America and the family? We're back!''
It's that rhetoric, that sincerity and righteousness that make this ``CBS Reports'' so watchable.
The special also visits local politics, where most Americans encounter firsthand the emergence of religious conservatives.
In Merrimack, N.H., the School Board's 3-2 conservative Christian majority began to impose its agenda for the schools, including the teaching of creationism and banning classroom discussion of homosexuality.
The uproar, the debate and the clash of competing grass-roots interests made for pure politics, and the good people of Merrimack learned that pure politics is anything but fun.
If nothing else, ``CBS Reports: Faith & Politics - The Christian Right'' is probably an advance look at the fundamental issues of the elections of 1996.
Gary Bauer, president of the Family Research Council, an influential Christian conservative group, tells Rather that the '96 contests will revolve around cultural and social issues.
Any Republican presidential candidate who steps forward will have to embody conservative values, Bauer said.
``If the Republicans nominated ... a `moderate' Republican,''' Bauer said, ``I think millions of voters who care about these issues would stay home. And, in fact, what would end up happening is the Republican Party would lose both the high ground on these issues [and] the election.''
``CBS Reports'' also covers Ralph Reed, the boyish, 34-year-old executive director of the Christian Coalition, a Washington, D.C., lobby that worked hard to elect congressional representatives who share its values and concerns.
According to Reed, conservative Christians must fight to take away power from the ``radical left'' and those who have held power for the past 50 years.
``They still control the bureaucracy. They still control the media. They still control many of the institutions of cultural power. They still control the universities and academia,'' Reed tells the crowd at a conference called ``Reclaiming America for Christ.''
by CNB