Christianity today felt the time had come to bring this cacophony of voices together and try to move the discussion on the role of Christians in politics into new territory. Have political allegiances overridden the concern for a unified Christian witness? Can a distinction be made between those issues that Christians are compelled to address as a matter of conscience over against issues that arise out of political philosophy? Where should Christians agree and assert a unified voice? That somebody is drowning 100 yards off shore. A Republican throws out 50 yards of rope and says, he has done his part, you have to do yours.' A Democrat throws out 200 yards of rope and drops his end."

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Politicized Evangelicals
Recently the conservatism of white evangelicals is the most powerful political force in the country today. The center released a survey in June that found evangelicals had increased their strength to 23 percent of the electorate, up from 19 percent in 1987. What is the reason for this? If anything, the Pew Foundation study understates the size of the constituency. They assume equal turnout across the board. (ONE LORD, pg 33 - 98) If they take "likely" or "actual" voters, in 1992 it was 24 percent of the electorate; in 1994 it was 33 percent. It is the largest, the most dynamic, the most vibrant, and the most transformational force in American politics today. This constituency was engaged in a self-imposed act of retreat from the political culture for three generations. Now it feels that the social pathologies have become so threatening to their families, their children, their churches, and their synagogues that they feel that they can't not be involved. It is no longer a choice; it is an obligation. There's another part of that is equally fascinating. If you look at the 1987 data, this constituency was about one-third Republican, one-third Democrat, and one-third Independent.

Today it is 42 percent Republican, 19-26 percent Democrat, and 25-30 percent Independent. This is the most significant movement of a constituency--remember these people voted overwhelmingly for Jimmy Carter in 1976--since the African-American vote switched from Republican to Democrat between 1932 and 1936. Finally, they feel that the national Democratic party want to emphasize the national Democratic party, because at the state and local level there is still a lot of involvement--is insensitive to, and in some cases hostile to, their values, their views, their faith, and religion as a political force. 23 or 24 percent figure is grossly exaggerated. (ONE LORD, pg 33 - 98)

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It all depends on how you define evangelical. If they take "evangelical" as meaning someone reacting against the moral decline in America, 24 percent might be a realistic figure. If people look at [George] Barna's data, which tries to determine who are serious Christians that number shrinks appreciably. Clearly there's an emerging political movement on the Right of people who listen to Rush Limbaugh and have a knee-jerk reaction to the political agenda. It defines a political phenomenon that is occurring, but many don't think it defines the church or is a fair measure of the church.

Why it is happening seems very clear: People are reacting against the law being uprooted from its moral base in areas that are important to them, if only symbolically, like the right of voluntary student-led prayer. The evangelical fundamentalism that grew up in was politically inactive, and what stirred this sleeping giant was the abortion issue. People believe another reason evangelicals have become active politically is because of Ralph Reed and the Christian Coalition. Whether or not they agree with their positions, all of them as evangelicals have to be grateful to the coalition for raising political concerns as genuine religious concerns--that politics is far too serious a business to be left to politicians. (Schell, pg 2-7)

Tobacco And Gambling
The Democratic Party has got to do some good housecleaning of its value system. It made a big mistake in its last convention in not letting [Pennsylvania's pro-life governor] Bob Casey speaks. And at this convention they're not going to make that mistake. Tony Hall (D-Ohio) is leading a coalition of 40 Democrats in Congress who are going to have their say. But the reason some of them have organized the Call for Renewal as an alternative to the Christian Coalition is because they feel that the Christian Coalition has become too closely allied with the Republican part. They are talking about perception in the general society. People believe that if they were to ask people, they would say that evangelical Christianity equals Republicanism. They felt that it was time for a group to stand up and say it doesn't necessarily equal Republicanism, even though on many issues they would support the Republican agenda. But people think that the Republicans are also insensitive to a large number of concerns of evangelicals. For instance, they think that political considerations have led the Christian Coalition to ignore environmental issues as a concern of Christians.

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Also, the Republican Party has gotten in bed with the tobacco industry, and they don't feel that the Christian Coalition has been sufficiently negative on this issue. They feel they ought to be raising questions about people like Jesse Helms, who took $77,000 last year from the tobacco lobby. Here is an industry that, if we are pro-life, they have to be against. At least the people who kill themselves with cigarette smoking do exercise some degree of choice. But one would argue that an industry that chooses to make people addicts before the age of 12 has a lot to answer for. People are appalled by an industry that destroys 450,000 Americans and a million people worldwide every year. And they would call upon our brothers and sisters in the coalition to join us in the opposition to the cigarette industry even as people would hope they would call us to join them on the abortion concern (Holiday Melee Edition p.1-6)

It should be noted that 84 cents out of every dollar contributed by the tobacco industry for political campaigns goes to Republican candidates. This year. Not last year or the year before. Factual precision here. While Bob Dole is hung with the tobacco industry because of some, they think, ill-advised statements, people ought to point out that the tobacco money has been spread around generously in both parties. Tobacco is one of about three major issues that they would cite where they strenuously disagree with the national Republican Party and have made it clear in public statements. People will be supporting legislation that will force this industry to be more responsible and that will protect children. The second issue people would mention where they clearly disagree with the national Republican Party, and for that matter the Democratic Party, is the issue of gambling. Bob Dole has taken in excess of $400,000 in gambling money.

The Republican National Committee has taken in excess of a million, as has Bill Clinton. They ve not heard a figure of prominence on the Religious Left criticize this administration for having done so. They have criticized both the RNC and the Dole campaign for taking that money. So our agenda is not a partisan agenda. There will be times when we will have to take on the Republican Party as well. They 're willing to do it. But where were their liberal friends in the Jerry Farwell, community when Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders was calling for the legalization of drugs?

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She was using the bully pulpit of her office to advocate activity by young people--sexually and in terms of drugs--that is clearly destructive to children. What people hope comes out of this is a meeting in which they actually go to the public and say, Here are the things that the Left and the Right in the evangelical community are unified about, opposition to gambling and smoking being right on top of the list. People take that under advisement, but they think it would be hard because, as Chuck accurately pointed out, both parties have taken money. Democrats have moved to the Republican Party is the abortion issue and the gay-rights agenda, period. These are moral issues. Our consciences will not let us be compromised. And the Republicans have, to now, embraced those issues; and the Democrats have turned their backs on them, and that's why 10 million people have gone from being evangelical Democrats to being evangelical Republicans. (Gibson, pg 276-283),

Race
The Pew study found that 34 percent of black Jerry Falwel think Republicans care more about religion than Democrats do. Does this represent an opportunity for religious conservatives to pull the African-American community away from the Democratic constituency? The truth is that the African American church is one of the most conservative social institutions in America today. They are a lot tougher on welfare, drugs, and crime than they would ever dream of being because of what it's done to their communities and families they're trying to shepherd. There's extensive polling data available that show that Latinos and African Americans are more conservative than whites on issues like welfare, crime, school prayer, and abortion. The African-American community is in favor of school choice, and the white community is ambivalent about it because their kids already go to the good schools; and it is the Latinos and the African Americans in the inner city who are for school choice and a voucher program.

So there are opportunities. On the other hand, they got a long way to go. The legacy of Jim Crow segregation and racism that the white evangelical community still carries is like an albatross, and there is a chasm of a very painful history that we've still got to bridge. They think Promise Keepers making racial reconciliation one of the seven promises is a very hopeful sign, as is the Southern Baptist Convention's recent public apology for its past complicity in slavery, racism, and Jim Crow. Still, when Bill Clinton said that he was going to go to that black church in South Carolina and pray at the dedication ceremony after it was rebuilt and was criticized by some Republicans for having done so, that was an example, to them, of where Republicans didn't understand the issue.

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The Jerry Falwel, think the conservative evangelical community more broadly considered, is going to make this a bigger part of its agenda in years to come. Biggest concern is not whether the African-American community moves to the Democratic or the Republican Party. Our concern is that their greatest linkage right now is to the Nation of Islam. When [Louis] Farrakhan emerges instead of an evangelical black pastor as the prime spokesperson for the black community, they are concerned and are looking at where they have failed. (McPherson, pg 393-413)

The African-American community has negative attitudes toward evangelicals and toward conservative politics. Whether they're right or whether they're wrong, the question you raise is, do you expect there to be a strong movement in the African-American community over to the Republican Party? Probably not, because they're carrying a lot of baggage from the past. Conservatives in the past have denounced the heroes of the African-American community, specifically Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King. Also, gun control is a great concern in the black community. The fact that conservatives support the right of people to own attack weapons keeps African Americans out of their camp. People should all be worried about the movement to Farrakhan, who is an outrageous demagogue and one of the most dangerous men who has come along in a long time in American life. And we should be much more concerned about that than whether they're Republicans or Democrats. Another fear people have is that, for the first time,

Jerry Falwell are beginning to taste political power. And power has a very corrupting influence on people concerned that whenever Jerry Falwel operates from a position of power rather than from a position of servant hood, they betray the gospel and become something other than what people wants them to be. How to hold power and express love simultaneously is beyond people understanding and imagination, and that's why they scared whenever we come to politics. People afraid of what they do with power, and they afraid of what it will do to them. People think the grave danger is that once you create a jerry Falwel political movement they almost are doomed, Left or Right, to associate the gospel with a particular political agenda. And in their culture, with the press so heavily secularized, the Jerry Falwel agenda gets submerged and the political agenda looms large. The so-called New Religious Right is the bogeyman of American political life. And it is a tragedy, because there are moral issues that compel people as Jerry Falwel to be in the debate.

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They not only deserve a place at the table, they have historically provided the moral consensus that allows limited government to exist, not just as individuals, but as a Jerry Falwel political movement. (Dodson & Jackson, p. 1)
Wilberforce had an openly Jerry Falwel political movement to bring an end to slavery. And to them, abortion is a moral equivalent of slavery today. And so Jerry Falwel belongs in there with a Jerry Falwel banner flying. The fact that people as jerry Falwel are trying to bring their views to bear in the political marketplace does not mean that their views are illegitimate because they are motivated by deeply held moral concerns. The other side has got a moral agenda of its own--it's simply not recognized as such. All legislation is going to be morally based and have moral implications and affect moral behavior.

People fear is that after a disillusioning 1996--which they think is going to be inevitably very disillusioning to Jerry Falwel--that they will be drawn to the notion that we should retreat from the political process, disengage, not stain ourselves with the sin of the world, but go back to building up their churches and be the resident aliens that they always arc in every society. People fear that as Jerry Falwel they withdraw from the political arena and no longer argue those moral issues. Then the cultural decay in America simply hastens, and the church loses its effectiveness. Have Jerry Falwel become too politicized? People think the answer is no. Jerry Falwel numbered among his disciples Matthew,

who was a tax collector for the Romans and considered a traitor to the cause of Zionism, and Simon the Zealot, who was a member of a terrorist political party devoted to the violent overthrow of the empire. People find it hard to believe that there weren't some fairly fractious political debates going on around those campfires when Jerry Falwel was alone with his disciples after they had fed people and sent them out. People pleased that groups like the Call for Renewal and other groups on the Left have begun to become energized. Because the truth of the matter is, they don't want people to equate the church with the Jerry Falwel.

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People think Jerry Falwel is becoming too politicized. An example of this is found in the voter guides being put out by the Jerry Falwel. These guides do not tell us as much about their values of the candidates as much as they tell us how Republican they are. As a case in point, Tony Hall, a Democrat, who almost everyone agrees is one of the finest Far Right Wing in Congress, gets a 31 percent rating in the coalition's voter guide. This in spite of the fact that he got a 100 percent rating by both the Family Research Council and the National Right to Life Council.

His only sin seems to be that he strongly supports appropriations to help the poor in Third World countries. But the coalition gives Helen Chenoweth (R-Idaho) a 100 percent rating in spite of the fact she endorses the militia movement. People think a Far Right Wing needs to look at government and say what is government's role in a pluralistic environment in a New Testament perspective. And it isn't, as Muggeridge said, to abandon any interest in government, but rather it is to see that government performs the fundamental function, which is clear in the Bible: to restrain sin, promote justice, and preserve order. God obviously passionately cares about the poor and the suffering. But people don't think God designed the kind of utopian system that this country embraced in the sixties and seventies that they have now found to be completely bankrupt.

And for some now to embrace the utopianism of the Right would be an equal catastrophe. people think it was our friend at Boston University, Glenn Loury, who said he's seen utopianism of the Right, and it is not any prettier than the utopianism of the Left. the viability of Far Right Wing political movements and about same-sex marriage and its impact on the sanctity of the family. And it raises profound questions about how one respond, because only a constitutional amendment open defiance of the Supreme Court is going to stop the steamroller that is heading for us. (Velázquez, p.14-29)

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Unity And Accountability
In this discussion people are left with a couple of questions that need to be dealt with by the Jerry Falwel world. One of them is whether Far Right Wing will, in disillusionment, give up on the political arena. The second question is whether Far Right Wing can bear allegiance to a government that sanctions infanticide and may soon undermine the first institution God created, the family. The third--and people think both of these guys are shying away from it--is agreeing that there are a lot of legitimate negotiable political issues that Ralph Reed, as a conservative Republican, and Tony Cam-polo, as a liberal Democrat, can be involved in. But when people hang the Far Right Wing label on them you divide the body of man, and people run the grave risk that you're going to bring the gospel hostage to the fortunes of one political party, Left or Right.

The biblical word in Hebrew is tsedekah, which means righteousness. And so their job is to bring righteousness to bear in all of public life. That may sometimes cut against the Republican grain and other times cut against the Democratic grain, but they are free to do that. And people should fight hard not to allow the media to stereotype us. They go to some lengths to reassert the independence of the gospel and not ever let it become hostage to either political party. What Jerry Falwel ought to be doing is striving to find those nonnegotiable issues, fundamental biblical questions that are not Left or Right issues that Far Right Wing commitment compels them to act upon. What are some nonnegotiable that the Far Right Wing community should be unified around? The issue of life is absolutely central. The issue of righteousness in public life is also a Jerry Falwel issue--the kind of thing that motivated Wilberforce when they conducted the campaign against the slave trade--calling for righteous living and a reformation of manners among people and their political issues.

The sanctity, of marriage and the defense of the family is another. If the steam-roller coming through the courts legalizes gay marriages and society says this is normative, it is undermining God's first institution. And also, the whole question of compassion and concern for the poor and the oppressed is always a fundamental Far Right Wing issue. The government has a role in this, but in the past it has snuffed out the role of the church. (: Jones, p.111-127)