Christian Coalition

THE CHRISTIAN COALITION was founded by Marion Gordon (Pat) Robertson in 1989. Its professed goals are to strengthen families, protect innocent life, give local school boards and parents control of education, reduce taxes for families, punish criminals and restore the rights of victims, fight pornographic pollution, defend marriage as an institution, and safeguard religious freedom.

To accomplish those goals the Christian Coalition (now the Christian Coalition of America) commits itself to lobby for family values in whatever political arena, from local to national; to speak and write in the media on these issues; to train leaders to be effective social and political activists; to inform voters about issues and potential laws; and to protest “anti-Christian bigotry” while defending the rights of believers. The general statements are relatively innocuous, quite attractive to millions of Americans, but of great concern to millions of others, especially when rhetoric translates into specific demands for action.

The organization's Christianity is conservative both morally and politically. It is within the American tradition that traces itself to the early 20th-century fundamentalists, who rejected theological modernism. Early fundamentalist crusades helped to bring about Prohibition and to outlaw the teaching of evolution in public schools. The movement peaked in the 1925 Dayton, Tennessee, trial of a local schoolteacher for teaching evolution. The trial's adverse publicity for fundamentalism and the death of William Jennings Bryan (who prosecuted the teacher) seemed to put the movement into eclipse.

In the 1930s and 1940s, new leaders arose—men such as Gerald L.K. Smith who were anti-Semitic, anticommunist, and anti-integrationist. Other fundamentalists were Gerald B. Winrod and the Catholic priest Charles E. Coughlin, whose radio broadcasts reached millions until the church silenced him. Again, with the loss of Coughlin's voice, the movement faded to the fringes.

While conservative religious groups watched from the sidelines, mainstream America went through decades of what appeared to be moral decline. Flappers, Hollywood, the repeal of Prohibition, the increasing secularization of society—all these liberal ideas spread as fundamentalist and conservative Christians stood helplessly by. To make matters worse, World War II seemed to write the finish to political conservatism, which had emphasized isolationism and limited government, both of which had been under assault since the New Deal. Still, conservatism persisted, found its intellectual breath on the political side, and found its salvation on the religious side. For conservative religion, the 1950s and 1960s meant spreading its message by radio, then television. Because the free public service required by the Federal Communications Commission went to mainstream churches on Sunday mornings, the fringe right learned quickly how to raise funds to buy broadcast time. The radio and television evangelists mastered the art of the mass-appeal mass mailing.

Their mailing lists and the mailing lists of Richard Vigurie, veteran of the failed conservative Barry Goldwater campaign (which had re established the credibility of conservative ideas), brought the conservatives back from obscurity. And for two decades, the conservative politicians took advantage of the conservative religious believers. The religious right let it happen, not yet convinced of the propriety of mingling religion and politics.

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