Altar Call: Christian Coalition's 'Families 2000' Project Seeks to Enroll 100,000 Churches in Pat Robertson's Partisan Political Machine

Conn, Joseph L., Church & State

On the Sunday before Election Day, Republican legislative candidate Dick Black visited the 11:15 worship service at the Christian Fellowship Church in Ashburn, Va. He wasn't there just to pray.

Black, a Religious Right activist, was making one of several last-minute stops in his religiously grounded campaign for the 32nd District seat in the Virginia House of Delegates. He found a warm welcome at the 2,500-member congregation.

According to the Loudoun Times-Mirror, Senior Pastor James Ahlemann advised his flock, "I do not have to tell you how to vote this morning. You know what is right. You can make your decision based on the information that you have."

And what information would that be? That same Sunday morning, voter guides from the Christian Coalition were tucked inside church bulletins and distributed to all churchgoers. Those fliers carefully steered the conservative evangelical congregants toward Black. He was depicted as standing against abortion and homosexuality and for parental rights and lower taxes, all positions likely to resonate with the faithful.

In the low-turnout special election Feb. 3, Black's church-based strategy -- and help from 20,000 Christian Coalition voter guides -- paid off. He won the election with 57 percent of the vote.

At the victory party at Glory Days restaurant in Sterling, Black illustrated theatrically how he won. Relying on a well-known children's nursery rhyme and hand game, he said, "Here's the church, here's the steeple. Open the doors and out come the people." His supporters cheered.

If the Christian Coalition has its way, the Virginia scenario will be repeated in hundreds of elections across America. In February, TV preacher Pat Robertson's political group announced plans to recruit 100,000 Christian churches into its operation by November 2000.

Touting its new "Families 2000" approach, a press release from CC Executive Director Randy Tate said the program "is a strategy for grassroots activism focused on churches as the Coalition's organizational base."

Relying on "church liaisons" appointed for each congregation, Tate's release said, "Church congregations will now serve as the primary source of people interested in participating in citizenship ministries, the nonpartisan voter registration and education efforts of the Coalition."

Tate also …

Questia, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. www.questia.com
Publication information: Article title: Altar Call: Christian Coalition's 'Families 2000' Project Seeks to Enroll 100,000 Churches in Pat Robertson's Partisan Political Machine. Contributors: Conn, Joseph L. - Author. Magazine title: Church & State. Volume: 51. Issue: 4 Publication date: April 1998. Page number: 7+. © 1999 Americans United for Separation of Church and State. COPYRIGHT 1998 Gale Group.

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