Born Again at the Ballot Box

The Protestant right gets down to political fundamentals

When he was nine years old, John B. Anderson knelt at an Illinois tent revival and committed his life to Jesus. During 19 years in Congress he has been one of the most articulate Evangelicals in politics. Jimmy Carter's well-publicized faith made "born again" a famous phrase. And Ronald Reagan? In February he told a TV interviewer that he is born again, too, but seemed shaky about the Evangelical concept of personal belief, concluding, "I suppose I would qualify."

Obviously Fundamentalists and Evangelicals who want to mix religion and politics would favor Carter or Anderson, right? Wrong. The most vocal ones, at least, find Reagan's conservatism almost irresistible. Says Richard Zone, executive director of a new political lobby called Christian Voice: "Reagan is not the best Christian that ever walked the face of the earth, but we really don't have a choice." His group slaps Anderson with a zero rating on 14 key "moral" issues, among them abortion, school prayer, a balanced budget and strong national defense. Christian Voice regards Carter as a "good man" but "naive" and with dreaded liberal tendencies. Ted Kennedy is unthinkable. But the once divorced and remarried movie actor checks out fine.

Religion in politics is no novelty in America. Hardly an eyebrow was raised when the national head of Reform Judaism endorsed Senator Kennedy even before the primaries. But Protestant Evangelicals have generally judged politics to be the devil's playground. This year they are plunging in, too, borrowing methods and single-issue zeal that religious and secular liberals have applied to racial equality, women's rights, the environment and the Viet Nam War. Their booming religious TV and radio circuit provides a "bully" pulpit for exploring moral issues. The effect on a close presidential race could be crucial.

There are 31 million Evangelicals of voting age, whose ranks include all political views. Today a quartet of interlocking groups urged on by secular New Right activists is busily at work, interviewing presidential candidates and hoping to register millions of inactive churchgoers, deliver votes on a national and local level and provide chosen candidates with campaign workers and cash. The four:

Christian Voice. Zone, 30, and other California pastors got their political start by rallying behind a 1978 state referendum to bar openly homosexual schoolteachers. Since going national last year they have broadened their targets to include school busing and the Panama Canal treaty McAteer (against), Taiwan security and prosecution of welfare deadbeats (for). Three U.S. Senators and eleven Congressmen form an advisory committee. In its first year, the group claims to have enlisted 187,000 supporters, a fifth of them clergy, and it plans to spend $3 million in 1980. Voice has no tax exemption so it can be openly political. Campaign flyers will go to 5 million people. Supporters are currently being mailed "morality" voting records on all Congressmen and a "hit list" of undesirable incumbents. A subsidiary, Christians for Reagan, has earmarked $1 million to be spent urging votes for Reagan if it decides he needs it.*

Moral Majority. Virginia's TV Preacher Jerry Falwell founded this organization to mobilize believers for political purposes. He had an hourlong dinner with Reagan in Louisiana last week but has not yet endorsed him. Most of the group's $1 million war chest is targeted for registration and voter education. Moral Majority claims friendly churches have registered more than 1.5 million voters and have increased Republican primary voting in the South. It will assign 70,000 clergy to an even bigger registration blitz in July. Affiliates are at work in 43 states. The Majority is so issues-oriented, Falwell insists that if he had to choose between a Christian politician who did not agree with his views and a nonbeliever who did, "I'd vote for the nonbeliever every time."

The Roundtable. Edward McAteer, 53, of Memphis, former Colgate-Palmolive sales executive, aims at using this group to train leaders. He focuses on what Conservative Digest calls "pro-God, profamily, pro-America causes." The Round-table is scheduling six seminars this year, including one for 11,000 this June in the Dallas Coliseum. Says McAteer: "If people know why they need to be involved, they will find out how to be." A favorite question in interviews with candidates during the primaries: "If you were President, what would you do to change the spiritual and moral direction of the country?"

National Christian Action Coalition. This behind-the-scenes brain trust researches the issues on behalf of the above groups and others that are emerging. Naturally many Evangelicals of a more liberal political bent are nervous about the new muscular Christianity. Candidate Anderson, who has always urged the devout to get involved in politics, says, "I never believed they would interpose specific doctrine to reward or punish candidates. That totally violates the role the church should play." Anderson has probably been hurt somewhat by religious right-to-lifers.

Evangelicals for Social Action, a low-key group headed by Ronald Sider of Eastern Baptist Seminary, sides with the conservatives on the need for family protection and the dangers of abortion. But criticizing the groups' other views, Sider says: "If human life is sacred then surely this means something about the nuclear arms race, too. In Scripture, the social question mentioned most often is the plight of the poor." Agrees Jim Wallis, editor of the radical Sojourners magazine: "In the activities of the Christian right, all that remains of Jesus is his name." But Christian Voice's Richard Zone is unabashed. Says he: "It's time for godly folk to have an input into government."

* Federal law prohibits any person from giving more than $1,000 and any group from giving more than $5,000 to a single candidate. But any person or group can independently raise and spend unlimited funds to help a candidate.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.