Frustrated Christian right tests its faith in politics

By David M. Shribman, Globe Staff, July 5, 1999

DES MOINES -- Bobbie Gobel, the irrepressible face of religious conservatives in the grain belt, fought for the top position in the Iowa Christian Coalition because she wanted a political pulpit to work against abortion, to fight for prayer in public schools, and to mobilize for next winter's Republican presidential caucuses here.

She didn't count on fighting a rear-guard action against some of her former allies who, in influential books and articles, are arguing that the place of religious conservatives is in the church pew, not in the public square.

But right now, as candidates crisscross Iowa and New Hampshire, as the debate over values flares on Capitol Hill, and as efforts nationwide to post the Ten Commandments in public places continue, the religious-conservative movement is in upheaval and consumed by self-doubt. As sure as they are that their arguments should carry the day in public debate, religious conservatives are increasingly unsure about taking part in the political debate at all.

"This is the aftermath of Ronald Reagan's victory in 1980 and the Republican congressional victory of 1994," says Ralph E. Reed Jr., the onetime executive director of the Christian Coalition who is now an independent political consultant. "People are developing a sense of frustration, even despair, that 20 or 25 years of political engagement has not really reversed some of the things we most wanted to put to an end, like abortion on demand."

And so this summer, as the political season heats up, religious fundamentalists are taking part in a millennial debate on political fundamentals that could shape the political world as deeply as the influx of religious conservatives upended politics in the Reagan years.

On one side are Cal Thomas, a prominent commentator, and Paul Weyrich, a prominent conservative theorist, both founding fathers of the modern religious-conservative movement. They're now arguing that religious goals and political goals are irreconcilable and that political involvement compromises people of faith.

"When the church takes up the ballot," says Thomas, a former aide to the Rev. Jerry Falwell and his Moral Majority, "it leaves behind the greater power for the lesser power."

On the other side are activists such as Gobel who believe their political battles are a mission from God, an echo of God's will, not a choice.

"Shame on Cal Thomas," says Gobel, who is quick to add: "But I forgive him and I love him."

It is, thus far, a quiet, civil struggle, but one that could prove as consequential, as divisive, and as bitter as the struggles with liberals on abortion, school prayer, and creationism.

"There is a big strain in the evangelical movement to save one soul at a time and reform society through individual conversion," says James Guth of Furman University, an expert on religious conservatives. "That is the classic evangelical theology, and it has always been the core social approach of evangelical Protestants. The idea of reforming institutions and changing laws -- the ideas of Falwell and Pat Robertson -- is the new idea."

This period of introspection among religious conservatives was prompted in large measure by the school shootings in Littleton, Colo.

"When Columbine hit, it really became very clear that it is the heart of man that needs to be changed, and that's our work," says the Rev. Richard L. Hardy, associate pastor of the First Assembly of God Church in Des Moines. "Political legislation can't change a heart."

But the Rev. Charles L. Austin, associate pastor of Southtown Pentecostal Assembly in Des Moines, said the shootings made him think "we have to rekindle" the political fire and make it "even hotter," adding: "We have withdrawn into our own little cells too many times. We have forgotten who the enemy is. The enemy is the devil, Satan."

Some religious conservatives regard the views of Thomas and Weyrich as the weariness of an old guard -- and proof that the first generation of modern religious conservatives probably ought to move to the sidelines.

"If the Cal Thomas generation is tired, give me the baton," says Craig Bergman, 34, executive director of the Iowa Christian Coalition. "I'm not tired. I have not yet begun to fight."

Indeed, the power of the Christian right came from Americans who hadn't voted, hadn't attended political caucuses, hadn't manned phone booths, and hadn't canvassed their neighbors before. By swarming into the political system, they pushed the Republican Party to the right, made the antiabortion creed part of the GOP platform, and even forced Democratic politicians to learn to talk about their faith and relationship with God, as Vice President Al Gore did just last month.

"They've won," says Jeffrey Hadden, a University of Virginia political scientist who specializes in religious conservatives. "They've changed the shape of America. And now they are saying that they shouldn't do it?"

Gary Bauer, the founder of the Family Research Council and a Republican candidate for president, rejects the call for retreat. "It's ludicrous -- and it's odd," he says. "The whole country's concerned about declining voter turnout and citizen involvement. Why would we flail around trying to get people involved in politics but say to religious conservatives, 'We don't mean you'?"

Bauer's campaign is fueled in large measure by religious conservatives. Just last week, for example, he gained the support of the Rev. Olan Adams, who heads the Iowa Association of Christian Schools; Ruth Beyer, president of Iowa Right to Life; Sandy DeLong, treasurer of Iowa Right to Life; the Rev. Larry Johnson, who heads the Iowa American Family Association; and Dave Karwoski, a former board member of the Iowa Christian Coalition.

Many newcomers from the religious right took to politics immediately, won important seats on state party committees in places like Iowa and Kansas, captured school boards and even, in the case of Bauer, mounted presidential campaigns of their own. Now they are as much a part of the political scene as the old-time fiscal conservatives of Midwestern Republicanism, the old-time social liberals of the Northeast, and the old-time populists of the prairies.

And many of them are just as unwilling to relinquish the place they won at the political table. "If people can meet at a bowling alley and roll a black ball down a lane," says Gobel, the Iowa Christian Coalition chairwoman, "then I can gather once a week at a church and tell people who should be sitting in the White House."

In public appearances and in the book "Blinded by Might," written with the Rev. Edward Dobson, Thomas argues that ministers, with eyes on a higher kingdom, demean themselves and their message when they get down in the trenches of partisan politics.

"If you come into the political arena," Thomas says, "truth is never advanced. It becomes a power game of a temporal kingdom. It's the ultimate seduction and the ultimate temptation."

He argues, moreover, that the political arena is less persuasive and less powerful than the spiritual world. "The greater power is the power of the church to transform men's hearts and minds. When it overly relies on politics, it changes neither hearts nor minds."

Weyrich, meanwhile, is calling for what he described in an essay in The Washington Post as "a change in strategy," away from the effort to elect conservatives to existing political institutions and toward building "new institutions for ourselves: schools, universities, media, entertainment, everything -- a complete, separate, parallel structure."

Gobel, who speaks with passion about her commitment to the country and to children, dismisses those notions. "We've come so far," she says. "We should be in the political arena. God wants us there because He trusts us, and we're there because we trust Him."

But she acknowledges that the Thomas and Weyrich theses have shaken the confidence of religious conservatives, and she says Thomas especially has made some of her allies unsure and uneasy about their role, even as their convictions grow stronger.

"He has scared some pastors with his books," she says. "People see Cal as a godly man, and they think that if Cal can back out of all this, maybe they should, too. They wonder if he has some wisdom that they don't."

This is a war of conscience among people of conscience, and the first battle may come when the Christian Coalition distributes its voter guides for next year's elections. Some pastors, including Hardy, say they will not place the guides in church bulletins, but will make them available on a counter top.

"We think we're making a good-faith effort to make them available," he says, citing the uneasiness that Democrats and independents in the First Assembly of God feel toward the guides. "I'm concerned about the appearance of endorsement."

But Gobel says she will get the guides distributed among Hardy's parishioners, even if it means putting roller blades on her seven children and dispatching them to place a guide on every windshield in the parking lot.

Despite his doubts about the ability of legislation to change the public's heart, Hardy doesn't endorse a full retreat from politics.

"Just because this debate is going on doesn't mean we pull out," he says. "Our responsibility in Scriptures is to be salt and light in a world that needs the influence of Judeo-Christian values."

Besides, says Reed, the former Christian Coalition leader, politics is too alluring to abandon. "Politics is the closest thing to an aphrodisiac that you've ever seen," he says. "People love it, and they can make a difference."

But the debate over how to make a difference, and how much difference religious conservatives can make, isn't disappearing, in part because it is one of the basic debates of American political life.

"There is a sense that evangelicals found politics fascinating because it was so new to them," Reed says. "It can be painful to find that you don't usher in the millennium by winning a political election, but it is also helpful for realizing that politics is only a part of a broader agenda that also includes a dose of racial reconciliation, a dose of evangelism, a dose of charitable activity.

"To be truly effective at politics," Reed says, "you have to recognize its limits."