The Wall Street Journal
June 21, 2004
Christian Coalition Working for a Revival; Gay-Marriage Issue Seen as a Lightning Rod for Fresh Energy, New Conservative Troops
By Avery Johnson
Looneyville, W.Va. -- THE CHRISTIAN COALITION has fallen far from its glory days as a pro-Republican fighting force in the 1990s. But now Pastor J. Allen Fine has a new political weapon.
"Gay marriage is societal suicide," says Mr. Fine, a religious broadcaster who was recently installed as state director of the coalition's West Virginia chapter. "We were asked on our radio program, 'Is sodomy still a sin?' It brought in so many calls and the dish of the fax machine overflowed."
The same thing is happening in Ohio, another electoral battleground where Christian Coalition stalwarts are seeking political revival. "People see that there's something greater at stake here with gay marriage," says Rev. Dallas Billington at the Akron Baptist Temple in Akron, Ohio. "It's a crucial time in the cultural war, and I'm telling people to 'Vote your Bible.' "
President Bush today will try once again to get a political boost from promoting "traditional marriage" with a visit to Ohio. And the Senate is gearing up to vote next month on the constitutional ban on gay marriage that he favors. So far, there's little evidence that such moves are boosting President Bush and his party in the nation's ambivalent political center.
But the subject is giving a shot of adrenaline to conservative Christian activists who in recent years had grown politically listless. "The whole gay marriage issue has caused a rebirth of the social conservative movement," observes Republican strategist Scott Reed, manager of Bob Dole's 1996 presidential bid. John Green, a scholar of the religious right at the University of Akron, reserves judgment on the ultimate impact but says the Christian Coalition appears "much more alive" than it's been in years.
Mr. Bush's re-election campaign certainly hopes so. The president's top strategist Karl Rove has complained that lack of enthusiasm kept four million conservative Christian voters from turning out in the dead-heat 2000 election. To remedy that, the Republican National Committee has recruited some 60,000 evangelical "team leaders" and sought to identify "friendly congregations" who can help mobilize the pro-Bush base.
A revival of groups like the Christian Coalition would provide a welcome boost. Led by televangelist Pat Robertson and political operative Ralph Reed in the early 1990s, the coalition capitalized on conservative discontent with President Clinton and played a key role in the Republican drive to recapture House and Senate majorities.
More recently the organization has suffered hard times. Republican control of Congress and the White House has sapped some of the coalition's political energy. The Federal Election Commission accused the Christian Coalition of violating its tax-exempt status through excessively pushing Republicans in its trademark voter guides.
By 2001, Messrs. Robertson and Reed had both departed. In 2002, the coalition took in $5.3 million, according to politicalmoneyline.com -- down from peak revenues of $25.3 million in 1996. This year, press secretary Michele Ammons estimates the organization will take in $8 million.
"People have forgotten about the Christian Coalition," says longtime foe, Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
At the coalition's headquarters in Washington, national field director Bill Thomson says he wants to broaden the organization's traditional base beyond issues affecting the family to tax cuts and the defense budget.
But conservative ire over gay marriage is lending fresh energy. Some 30 new directors have been appointed to coalition chapters. The group is devoting attention to electoral battlegrounds with large numbers of evangelicals such as Missouri, Florida, Oregon, Iowa and Ohio. In the Buckeye State, director Chris Long plans a briefing for pastors this month and a statewide "citizenship Sunday" on July 4 to register voters.
Mr. Fine says conservative Christians can make headway in West Virginia, whose five electoral votes Mr. Bush carried four years ago. Mr. Green, the religious right scholar, estimates 40% of West Virginians consider themselves evangelical Protestants, compared with 25% of Americans as a whole. In 2000 exit polls, "white religious right" voters made up 14% nationally and 28% in West Virginia. But many of those voters, in the state's struggling mining communities, traditionally have responded more to Democratic messages.
So Mr. Fine, who once worked in the furniture business, plies the mountain towns where white churches dot the green landscape. From his home in Looneyville, he hosts a 30-minute radio show called "New Sounds of Inspiration." The 69-year-old pastor counts just 1,100 West Virginians as Christian Coalition members. The chapter went through multiple leaders before settling on Mr. Fine, who calls his budget "fluid." Yet he hopes the gay marriage issue will help rally new troops. He says he may start petition drives exhorting voters to stand up against "activist judges," whom Mr. Bush has cited as a threat to the institution of marriage through decisions legalizing same-sex weddings.
Mr. Fine aims to register voters on Sundays after church, and mobilize pastors to discuss important issues from the pulpit. Another goal: placing voter guides illustrating differences between Democratic and Republican candidates in 90% of West Virginia churches, up from 50% in years past. Whether he can accomplish that remains a question. And he acknowledges his admiration for Democrat John Kerry, a Vietnam War hero, "as a patriot and as a veteran."
But he says Mr. Kerry's position on gay marriage will undercut the Massachusetts senator's prospects here. Mr. Kerry opposes gay marriage, but also opposes the constitutional amendment prohibiting gay marriage that Mr. Bush has endorsed.
"Same-sex marriage just does not fly in West Virginia," Mr. Fine says. "Ninety-eight percent of people in the churches will vote for Bush. The other 2% think we are a bunch of loonies because we believe in the word of God."
---
Political Revival?
After seeing its influence wane in recent years, the Christian Coalition is
hoping the gay-marriage issue will provide new energy and make social
conservatives a greater force in the 2004 election:
Voters identifying themselves as part of the religious right voted more
Republican in 2000 . . .
1996
Dole: 65%
Clinton: 26%
Other: 9%
2000
Bush: 80%
Gore: 18%
Other: 2%
But represented a smaller share of the electorate nationally and in some
battleground states
1996 2000
Nationwide ..... 18% 14%
Florida ........ 23% 19%
Michigan ....... 23% 20%
Ohio ........... 23% 17%
Pennsylvania ... 22% 15%
West Virginia .. 33% 28%
Sources: Exit polls; John Green, Bliss Center for Applied Politics,
University of Akron
Source: http://www.irql.org/article_content.php?resourceID=118