THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, June 18, 1995 TAG: 9506160595
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARGARET EDDS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 190 lines
With the failure of the 1988 presidential bid of television evangelist Pat Robertson, scholars and political analysts foretold the doom of the Religious Right as a force in American politics.
The 1980s political resurgence of conservative Christians, dated to the formation of the Rev. Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority in 1979, was dismissed as a decade-long blip in the United States' steady progression toward political and cultural secularism.
``There is little reason to believe that the Christian Right will regain its agenda-setting ability in the 1990s,'' observed political scientist Matthew Moen, author of ``The Transformation of the Christian Right.''
Michael D'Antonio, a journalist whose 1989 book, ``Fall From Grace,'' explored the intersection of politics and religion, was even more emphatic. ``With the demise of Robertson's campaign came the death of the Christian Right's political hopes. The born-again movement soon ceased to be a significant religious and social force as well,'' he wrote.
Seven years later, the Religious Right can claim kinship with Mark Twain in his observation: ``The report of my death was an exaggeration.''
Even before the November midterm congressional elections, national analysts described religious conservatives as the single most influential bloc in the Republican Party.
In the election's wake, the Christian Coalition, the political organization founded by Robertson after his 1988 defeat, boasted that it had helped elect eight new Republican senators, seven new GOP governors and 44 of the 52 new Republican members of the House.
From across the political spectrum, the People for the American Way reported that 60 percent of the 600 candidates for national, state and local offices supported by religious conservatives won.
What is the basis of this resurgence by conservative political groups? What is its potential to reshape American society? What, given national and international historical trends, are the long-term prospects for the coupling of church and state in American life?
Throughout American history, the attraction between religious conservatives and politics has waxed and waned. Religious conservatism was part of the American scene 200 years ago, and by the early 20th century, a full-fledged Christian Right existed.
During this century, the movement has seen three waves of activism - in the 1920s, the 1950s and the 1980s - followed by three periods of relative quiet, wrote Michael Lienesch in his 1993 work, ``Redeeming America: Piety and Politicism in the New Christian Right.''
What we now recognize is that the ``quietude'' of 1989 to 1993 was only a surface calm. During that period, religious forces were regrouping to shape a grass-roots organization whose clout would not be fully appreciated until the 1994 elections.
The 1920s debate over the teaching of evolution prompted the first set of Christian Right political groups in this century. A second political revival occurred in the 1950s when conservative Christians gained prominence in the anti-Communist movement. And a third, writes author Sara Diamond in the book ``Spiritual Warfare,'' was launched in a 1979 meeting of the late Robert Billings of the National Christian Action Council, Lynchburg's Jerry Falwell and several right-wing strategists.
Out of that meeting was born the Moral Majority, a coalition that embraced moral orthodoxy, militant anti-Communism and conservative economics.
There are mixed claims about what the Moral Majority accomplished. Falwell said that the group registered between 4 million and 8 million conservative Christians and that it provided Ronald Reagan's victory margin in the 1980 presidential race. Polltaker Louis Harris supported the claim.
But skepticism soon surfaced. Estimates of the number of Americans who watched television ministers were downscaled, and some analysts held that membership in the Moral Majority had been vastly overestimated.
Without a political crisis to bolster support, funds began to dry up, and the Moral Majority was officially terminated on June 11, 1989. Meanwhile, a series of scandals had rocked the world of television evangelism. And Robertson's campaign had succumbed to personal missteps, to the deep skepticism of the media and GOP regulars, and to the failure of religious conservatives to vote as a bloc.
The Religious Right's dramatic resurrection is a product of political acumen, hard-ball tactics and historical forces. In the 1984 book ``Evangelicalism and Modern America,'' analyst Martin E. Marty suggested three causes for the political successes of fundamentalists in the early 1980s: a worldwide retreat from various aspects of modernity, a broadly recognized values crisis in American life and a sophisticated use of technology.
Those factors apply to the 1990s successes as well. A shifting global economy and declining mores produced a political climate ripe for the unambiguous solutions and moral certitude offered by the Religious Right. Smart applications of old-fashioned strategy and newfangled technology aided the cause.
Capitalizing on the fervor of its devotees, the Religious Right has learned to influence elections by dominating the GOP structure in various states, blanketing churches with pre-election voter guides and speaking out during campaigns.
Last June, The New York Times reported that the Christian Coalition had taken over the Republican Party apparatus of six states - Virginia, Texas, Oregon, Iowa, Washington and South Carolina - and had made significant gains in several others, including Florida, New York, California and Louisiana.
Tactics of the Religious Right during the 1994 elections ranged from strident to conciliatory.
Through his Sunday morning television broadcast, the ``Old Time Gospel Hour,'' for instance, Falwell hawked a $40 videotape that accused President Clinton of drug-trafficking, drug use, murder and rampant infidelity. The tape's most astounding assertion was that Clinton arranged the murder of an Arkansas investigator who supposedly had proof of the former governor's alleged trysts.
Meanwhile, some other organizations, including the Christian Coalition, were taking a different tact, broadening their appeal by soft-pedaling parts of their message.
In 1991, coalition director Ralph Reed compared his strategy to guerrilla warfare, noting, ``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.''
By 1994, the coalition was quietly toning down such rhetoric, emphasizing broadly based economic and foreign-policy issues as well as its polarizing social agenda, and making interfaith and interracial appeals for support.
As the election approached, the coalition announced plans to distribute 33 million voter guides in every Senate and gubernatorial race and 350 House races and to call 2 million households.
The success of the Religious Right in rallying supporters was reflected in New York Times exit polling. The newspaper found that white, born-again Christians had moved more dramatically to the right than any other religious group over the past 14 years, providing a basis for the GOP gains.
Since 1980, Catholic and Jewish voters have consistently supported Democrats, as have African-American voters, the newspaper reported. White Protestants moved increasingly toward the GOP, with 59 percent favoring Republicans in 1980 and 66 percent favoring them in 1994.
But the greatest change was among white born-agains, who favored Republicans by 57-43 percentage points in 1980 and by a whopping 76-24 percentage points in 1994.
``The organized Christian vote is roughly to the Republican Party today what organized labor was to the Democrats. It brings resources: people, money and ideological convictions,'' House Speaker Newt Gingrich said after the election.
As the 21st century approaches, the Religious Right appears poised to exert perhaps its strongest influence on the American political scene in modern times. Still, several factors mitigate against unbridled power.
One limitation is internal, involving potential dissension among various groups making up the Religious Right, as well as ongoing unease in some religious circles over the wisdom of mixing politics and religion. Robertson's 1988 presidential campaign is an example of how this bloc can fracture in the voting booth. Many fundamentalists followed Falwell that year in backing George Bush for the Republican nomination. Former New York Rep. Jack Kemp also drew some religious support away from Robertson.
A second restraint is the continuing tendency of Americans to put pocketbook issues at the top of their political agendas. After the 1988 elections, numerous writers theorized that the United States was moving away from political divisions centered on economics and social class. The nation was moving toward a more European alignment in which parties of the political right are supported by most religious groups, and parties of the political left are more secular, they said.
But if that realignment is occurring, the 1992 presidential election showed that it is not yet complete. While Republican nominee George Bush's largest bloc of support came from Christian conservatives, exit polls showed that many individuals sympathetic to the Religious Right saw economic issues as paramount and voted for Clinton.
A third caveat rests with the continuing skepticism and mistrust that many Americans have for leaders of the Religious Right. A July 1994 poll by The Wall Street Journal and NBC News, for instance, found that Robertson is viewed negatively by 35 percent of Americans and positively by 17 percent.
A New York Times/CBS News poll taken during the same month found twice as many people viewing Robertson negatively as positively. Falwell's negatives were five times as high as his positives in that poll.
Still, the potential influence of the Religious Right cannot be underestimated because its message taps into a deep anxiety about the state of American culture in the late 20th century. So long as concerns about declining family life, widespread violence and escalating illegitimacy remain, those who call attention to that decline and offer a way out are certain to have an audience.
The strength of the Religious Right lies in the continuing need in a democratic society for moral underpinnings; a limitation lies in the intolerance with which some leaders and members historically have regarded those whose values differ from their own. MEMO: Catherine M. Lacy, an attorney with the State Corporation Commission,
contributed to this report.
ILLUSTRATION: JOHN EARLE/Staff
Color photos
Pat Robertson
Jerry Falwell
Ralph Reed
by CNB