THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, June 5, 1996 TAG: 9606050003
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A8 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: ANOTHER VIEW
SOURCE: By BARRY W. LYNN
LENGTH: 91 lines
Many pundits believe that for the first time in American history, a religious movement could seize control of all three branches of government. In 1996 the Religious Right wants to pick a president, gain control of both houses in Congress and select the next few Supreme Court justices. Its view of this moment in history was summarized by Pat Buchanan at the Christian Coalition's last annual meeting: ``The time is not far distant when we're all going to have to gird ourselves and take that long march up to Armageddon to do battle for the Lord.''
This is the Religious Right's vision, but growing evidence indicates that mainstream America thinks this fringe group needs new glasses.
Just a year ago, with great fanfare, Christian Coalition Executive Director Ralph Reed announced the Coalition's ``Contract with the American Family,'' a ``Top 10'' list of legislative demands. Despite the initial hoopla, the results have been less than impressive. The Religious Right's allies in Congress couldn't eliminate funding for Planned Parenthood's nonabortion-related health-care services. They couldn't establish a voucher program to subsidize religious schools in Washington, D.C. They couldn't eliminate the Department of Education, with its adult-literacy programs and assistance to poor children. The reservoir of common sense in America indicates these views are too extreme.
Moreover, the cornerstone of the Christian Coalition's agenda was to be the ``Religious Equality Amendment,'' a rewrite of the religious-liberty protections of the First Amendment. After more than a year of wrangling, Religious Right groups still haven't agreed on language, much less passed a proposal. Perhaps that's because it's difficult to top the First Amendment drafted by James Madison and other founders.
Americans are also beginning to reject the Religious Right's laundry list of false accusations against American institutions.
The Religious Right constantly whines about ``liberal bias'' in the media. Yet it owns and operates more than 1,200 radio stations and 300 television stations and has a continuous presence on virtually every cable-television system in the country.
Broadcasters like Rush Limbaugh, James Dobson, G. Gordon Liddy and Oliver North parrot the Religious Right's rhetoric with a virtual total lock on talk radio, unchallenged by opposing viewpoints. Cal Thomas, William F. Buckley Jr. and others fill newspaper columns with Religious Right propaganda every day.
The Religious Right complains about ``victimization'' while Pat Robertson's empire alone ranges from diamond mining to the Ice Capades and boasts a religious broadcasting center with an endowment of $1 billion.
And how about the frequent Religious Right charge that public schools are conducting a ``war against religion and morality''? It's nonsense. Under existing law, a dazzling array of voluntary religious activity is perfectly permissible in the public schools. Anyone who actually visits a public school sees the promotion of commonly shared community values: honesty, respect, courtesy and fairness - not devil worship and promiscuity. The Religious Right's claims about our schools have no empirical support and are clearly out of step with mainstream America.
Also disturbing to the average voter are deceptive tactics the Religious Right frequently embraces in its pursuit of power. At last year's Christian Coalition conclave in Washington, state activists were told to conceal their affiliation with the Christian Coalition and with the anti-abortion movement. Such ``stealth tactics'' are a slap in the face of the democratic process.
In 1994, the Christian Coalition distributed 33 million voter guides that cleverly and deceitfully misrepresented the positions of candidates it opposed. Contrary to Christian Coalition statements, no objective observer could view these skewed documents as anything but transparent endorsements of certain candidates.
In fact, a new book, Dirty Little Secrets, by Larry Sabato and Glenn Simpson, exposes in detail how the coalition uses these voter guides to attack candidates it dislikes. The Religious Right's efforts to engage conservative churches in illegal candidate endorsements is now under scrutiny by the Internal Revenue Service, the Federal Election Commission and citizen watchdog groups like mine.
Proof of the sour taste in the Religious Right pudding is its own declining membership. Though the Christian Coalition claims 1.8 million members, postal records document 311,000 members - a ``member'' being defined as anyone who contributes $15 a year. In addition, although the coalition claims to be growing by leaps and bounds, the circulation of its own magazine, Christian American, actually dropped by 50,000 this year.
Religious Right activists would like to convince us that their movement is an unstoppable force in American politics. Many mainstream Americans, however, realize that this force is running into an immovable object called the truth. The Religious Right can still triumph and achieve its dream of total control of all three branches of government - but only if a majority of Americans decide to roll over and play dead. MEMO: The Rev. Barry Lynn is executive director of Americans United for
Separation of Church and State in Washington, D.C. The text published
here is excerpted from his keynote address at the first annual dinner
meeting of the Virginia Chapter of Americans United at Virginia Wesleyan
College on May 29. by CNB