Pat Robertson's agenda for America: a marriage of religion and politics.

• Author: Doerr, Edd

TELEVANGELIST Pat Robertson's failure to come even close to winning the Republican Party's presidential nomination in 1988 taught him an important lesson: If you can't start at the top, as Gen. Dwight Eisenhower did in 1952, then start at the bottom and work your way up.

In 1989, then, building on his already impressive broadcasting and university empire, Robertson created his Christian Coalition. By mid 1995, the organization boasted a nationwide membership of 1,700,000 and 1,700 local chapters. The Coalition describes itself as "a non-profit citizen action organization under IRS code 501 (c)(4)" and solicits "corporate business contributions."

"The Christian Coalition is clearly functioning as if it were a political party," notes John M. Swomley, professor emeritus of Christian ethics, St. Paul School of Theology, and chairman of the American Civil Liberty Union's Church-State Committee. "It not only supports and aids candidates, but its goal is to take control of the Republican Party." The Coalition pioneered "stealth" campaigns in primaries and elections beginning in 1990, influenced a great many local elections, and claimed credit for helping reelect Senators Alphonse D'Amato (R.-N.Y.) and Jesse Helms (R.-N.C.).

The Christian Coalition's showpiece is its "Contract With the American Family: A Bold Plan to Strengthen the Family and Restore Common-Sense Values," released with much fanfare in May, 1995. Borrowing its name from Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich's Contract With America, it contains the following 10 goals, about which Robertson's organization claims, "Each item in the Contract enjoys support from between 60 and 90% of the American people":

1. Restoring Religious Equality. This item, supposedly in reaction to alleged "hostility toward religious values" and "anti-religious bigotry," features a proposed amendment to the Constitution to authorize so-called "student and citizen initiated" religious exercises in public schools and elsewhere. A proposed amendment more or less in line with this item was introduced in November, 1995, by Rep. Ernest Istook (R.-Okla.) and about 100 co-sponsors, while a more far-reaching Religious Equality Amendment was introduced about the same time by Rep. Henry Hyde (R.-Ill.) and apparently designed to allow tax aid to religious schools and other institutions.

2. Returning Education Control to the Local Level. This vague proposal ignores the fact that public education always has been primarily a state and local function. The Contract's explanation of this item derives from the notion that American public schools are seriously ailing, a view analyzed and exploded by David C. Berliner and Bruce J. Biddle in The Manufactured Crisis: Myths, Fraud, and the Attack on America's Public Schools.

3. Promoting School Choice calls on Congress to fund nonpublic, mostly sectarian schools under a voucher plan.

4. Protecting Parental Rights is aimed at blocking the U.S. from ratifying the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

5. Family-Friendly Tax Relief proposes a $500 tax credit for children, a flat or flattened income tax, elimination of the "marriage penalty" from the Federal tax code, and allowing single-income couples the same individual retirement account privileges as two-income couples.

6. Restoring Respect for Human Life. While the Contract acknowledges that "these items do not represent the pro-family movement's entire agenda," it points the way in this item, calling for restrictions on late-term abortions, ending the Federal requirement that state Medicaid plans cover abortions for poor...