DATE: Wednesday, September 3, 1997          TAG: 9709030006

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B11  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Opinion 

SOURCE: Glenn Allen Scott 

                                            LENGTH:   81 lines

INTERFAITH ALLIANCE, CHRISTIAN COALITION DIFFER ON AGENDAS

The 60,000-member Interfaith Alliance, based in Washington, is small change beside the Christian Coalition, which is headquartered in Chesapeake.

Created by telecommunications magnate Pat Robertson following his failed bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 1988, the Christian Coalition claims 1.9 million members.

The coalition predictably drew a legion of reporters to the Washington press conference last week at which it announced its latest legislative agenda.

The coalition does not speak for all Christians, of course, any more than does the National Council of Churches or the National Conference of (U.S. Roman Catholic) Bishops or any of the many denominations that maintain representatives in Washington to be near Capitol Hill and the White House.

Nor does the terfaith Alliance, which came into being in 1994, speak for all believers not in step with the Christian Coalition. But the toddling enterprise hasestablished 112 affilates in 36 states since its emergence in 1994.

The alliance's mission is to voice faith-shaped views on public issues from a perspective different from the coalition's. That perspective is shaped by values common to a broad spectrum of faith traditions. Roman Catholics, mainline Protestants, Southern Baptists, Jews and Unitarian Universalists sit on the alliance's board.

As the Rev. Ken Brooker-Langston, director of education and religious outreach explains, the alliance measures proposed and existing public policies by their likely or observable effects on ordinary people, especially the most vulnerable members of society - ``the poor, the marginalized, the powerless, the struggling.''

While it recognizes that reasonable people often disagree about what government should or should not do to advance the common welfare, the alliance regards as harmful the coalition's hard line against minimum-wage increases and regulation of firearms; enthusiasm for cuts in Social Security, Medicare and programs that aid children and weakening clean-air, clean-water and food-safety regulation; and silence on big tobacco's targeting of children.

The alliance also deplores the coalition's employment of ``stealth'' candidates to win school-board and other public offices. It criticizes the coalition's distribution of voter guides to churches that tacitly anoint some candidates as more acceptable to Christians than others.

In the alliance's eyes, the coalition practices the politics of distraction, exploiting bewilderment, fear, loathing, resentment and anger to get Middle Americans to scapegoat the weak, thus voting against their own best interest while boosting the fortunes of Americans most blessed with wealth and power.

The alliance understands that, with a $1.9 million budget, it plays David to the Christian Coalition's Goliath. Pat Robertson's religious-broadcasting ministry touches every continent. His coalition is the most prominent faith-based advocacy group in the United States. That it is very controversial is understandable; its impact upon the Republican party and public policy and its sponsor's calls for returning religious practices to public schools and denunciations of legalized abortion and homosexuals' human-rights demands assure controversy.

How long the coalition will retain top-dog status is unknowable. Under the leadership of the charismatic Ralph Reed, who is now plowing other fertile fields in the political landscape, the coalition became the dominant force in the Republican party nationally and in most states.

But it was unable to knock off Virginia's senior U.S. senator, John W. Warner, in the last Republican primary. And it is to the national Republican party what the McGovernites were to the national Democratic party. Still, Republican presidential aspirants bow before it. Forbes magazine publisher Steve Forbes, who may run again for the GOP presidential nomination, was on the platform at the recent coalition press conference.

Lynchburg evangelist Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority is history. But with its $25 million budget, the Christian Coalition looks invincible. It is in the big leagues with the secular National Rifle Association and the united pro-environment lobbies.

The Interfaith Alliance, which counts the redoubtable Walter Cronkite among its supporters, lacks the coalition's intensity and big money.

Indeed, it barely registers on the radar.

But it's spunky.

MEMO: Mr. Scott is associate editor of the editorial page of The

Virginian-Pilot.

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