Onward, Christian soldiers?

• Author: Anderson, William L.
• Position: Christian coalition - Includes related article

In trying to broaden its appeal, the Christian Coalition risks alienating its base.

For the last year, Ralph Reed, executive director of the Christian Coalition, has been trying to change the organization's image. In a series of articles and interviews, he has emphasized that a "pro-family" agenda is not limited to hot-button social issues. It also includes economic issues that are important to families of all persuasions.

"The pro-family movement has limited its effectiveness by concentrating disproportionately on issues such as abortion and homosexuality," he wrote in the Summer 1993 Policy Review. "To win at the ballot box and in the court of public opinion...the pro-family movement must speak to the concerns of average voters in the areas of taxes, crime, government waste, health care, and financial security."

Reed is attempting to move his organization's agenda into the mainstream by emphasizing issues like free trade, a cut in the capital-gains tax, a line-item veto, a balanced-budget amendment, and a higher standard tax deduction for dependents. The coalition has published a "mainstream agenda for public education," which includes school choice, "parental rights," keeping schools "free from crime and drugs," and a curriculum that will "return to the basics" of reading, writing, and mathematics. Reed would like to expand the organization's base to include more Catholics and Jews. His makeover has generated positive coverage, including a kind profile by Time, a stunning departure from the national press's usual hostility to the Christian right.

The Christian Coalition's Annual Road to Victory meeting was held near Washington, D.C., last year instead of its former site, Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network complex in Virginia Beach. The move reflected Reed's attempt to put some distance between the Christian Coalition and CBN. Although the coalition was formed in 1989 from the remnants of Robertson's failed presidential campaign and the 700 Club host continues to serve as its president, he has become something of a bogeyman among people wary of his religious beliefs and political agenda.

The September meeting was supposed to showcase the Christian Coalition's new, broader appeal. Democratic National Committee Chairman David Wilhelm addressed the group, though he sharply criticized many of its positions on both social and economic issues. The meeting was also a forum for 1996 Republican presidential hopefuls. Sen. Bob Dole, Sen. Phil Gramm, former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Jack Kemp, and former drug czar William Bennett each spoke before an appreciative audience. When it was over, Reed declared the gathering a success in promoting a mainstream program.

Yet the most publicized event at the meeting was a remark by Pat Buchanan that did not go well with the Christian Coalition's new image. Talking about the superiority of Western culture, Buchanan noted that widows in India have been known to fling themselves onto the burning funeral pyres of their husbands. While condemning the practice, Buchanan added that "in the case of Bill Clinton, it may be justified." The audience of nearly 3,000 delegates cheered. Buchanan's confrontational message was the most popular speech at the convention.

In a way, Reed could argue, the speech and its reception represented a step forward. Buchanan, after all, is Catholic. Most evangelical Christian political activists are Protestants who come from a tradition that for many years regarded Catholics as dangerous. At the same time, the reaction of the delegates to Buchanan illustrates the Christian right's tendency to emphasize divisive social issues and promote an "us vs. them" attitude.

In attempting to moderate that message and reach out to a broader constituency, Reed runs the risk of alienating the Christian Coalition's base. Most of the group's members are motivated by precisely the issues that Reed is trying to downplay. Many are bored by his economic-policy proposals, if not actively opposed to them. Others may agree with his positions on taxes and trade, but they expect the coalition to concentrate on issues where a religious perspective has special relevance. After all, many secular conservative organizations already address "the concerns of the average voter." So the more successful Reed is at making the Christian Coalition presentable to outsiders, the less attractive it may seem to its core supporters. In smoothing its rough edges, he could sand away its reason for existence.

The stakes in Reed's gamble are large. The Christian Coalition claims nearly 750 chapters throughout the country and about 400,000 members, concentrated in the South and in major metropolitan areas on both coasts. But fully one-third of the 87 million Protestants who belong to denomination-affiliated churches in the United States are evangelicals, including fundamentalists and Pentecostals. When combined with conservative Catholics, this is potentially a very powerful voting bloc. "We expect to top out with 1 million Protestant members," Reed recently told Newsweek. "With Catholics, we can double that." Some evangelicals have relatively liberal social views, however, and not everyone who shares common ground with the coalition is an evangelical. So tapping new wells of support will require the sort of reorientation that Reed proposes.

Although Reed's outreach efforts have received good press, the reception within the movement has been less enthusiastic. The delegates at last year's Road to Victory meeting failed to endorse the North American Free Trade Agreement, which Reed favors. Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot wrote: "The Christian Coalition was once going to offer at least modest support for NAFTA. Last week it decided to sit on its hands, amid private grumbling about Trilateral Commissions and other global conspiracies." The populist leanings of many coalition supporters, which help explain Buchanan's popularity within the group, make them leery of free trade and cool toward a cut in the capital-gains tax, which is seen as benefiting the affluent.

Reed's attempt to change the emphasis of the coalition is at odds with the attitudes of the rank-and-file activists, who are much more likely to get excited about issues like homosexuality than about taxes or trade. Sharon Gadd, an activist in Lookout Mountain, Georgia, works on Christian Coalition phone banks. She says the biggest reaction she has seen recently followed President Clinton's move to lift the ban on gays in the military. She expresses her...