Campaigning for God

"Great to be with you," says the beaming, blue-blazered man in the pulpit. "Great to be alive." "Amen," agrees the sturdy, prosperous crowd of Texans, the men in natty suits and white shoes, the women in beehive hairdos. "Great to be an American," continues the voice from the pulpit. ("Amen.") "Greatest of all to be a Christian." ("Amen.") "Born again." ("Amen.")

Billy Graham? Oral Roberts? Not quite. The speaker is Lester Maddox, former Governor and now Lieutenant Governor of Georgia, onetime wielder of ax handles to keep blacks away from his Pickrick restaurant in Atlanta, and one of the hottest speakers these days on the U.S. fundamentalist circuit.

Maddox's political visibility has given him "more opportunities to reach people about God," but he has been at his "witnessing" activities far longer than he has been a politician. Born into a Southern Baptist family 56 years ago, he recalls that "I gave my life to the Lord in 1932." He has been an active member of the North Atlanta Baptist Church ever since, sometimes as a Sunday-school teacher or the host (at the Pickrick) of the Christian Businessmen's Association.

He speaks each year to more than 100 religious gatherings, for which he takes no fee, only expenses. He has appeared at Presbyterian, Methodist and Roman Catholic churches, but his messages seem most at home in Baptist independents like the Kelview Heights Baptist Church in Midland, Texas, where he spoke last week.

So serious is Maddox about his witnessing that he went to his Midland appearance only hours after getting out of a hospital, where he had been treated for pulled ligaments and scrapes suffered in a bicycle accident during a Georgia Jaycee parade. Once in the pulpit, he limbered up quickly: "We hear a lot about not mixing government and religion. Well, I think the intent of our forefathers was to keep government out of the church. But don't keep God's people out of government. I'm not politicking, but I am campaigning--I'm campaigning for God." Other Maddoxisms:

ON CRIME. "We see it in print, hear it from the pulpit, from Marxist socialist professors, that people commit crime because they're underprivileged. I went to school barefoot in the snow and ice, [but] I didn't shoot a policeman. I didn't hold up any store. You commit [crime] because of sin in your life."

ON POVERTY. "Material poverty is insignificant compared to the poverty of spirit of church people, the poverty of patriotism, the poverty of intellect among business people."

ON THE CHURCH. "The only hope of America is the fundamentalist church, where the people teach the word of God and not the word of man. Some churches I can't get into--some of these modernist churches. They're trying to get God to adjust to man rather than man to adjust to God."

Maddox still believes--much to the embarrassment of many of his fellow Southern Baptists--in the right to segregate. "The Bible teaches freedom of choice," Maddox insists privately. "Why would we have different races if God meant us to be alike and associate with each other?" Any racism in his church messages, however, is only implied. Moreover, claims Maddox's pastor, the Rev. R.B. Sims, "the Lester Maddox of today and the Lester Maddox of the Pickrick days are different. He has more compassion now."

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