Nine Years Ago In Time

The growing role of RELIGION in presidential politics was examined in a 1995 cover on the Christian Coalition's Ralph Reed, now a regional chairman of the Bush-Cheney campaign.

Not long ago, America's Christian right was dismissed as a group of pasty-faced zealots, led by divisive televangelists like Jerry Falwell, who helped yank the Republican Party so far to the right that moderates were frightened away. But [Ralph] Reed has emerged as the movement's fresh face ... His message, emphasizing such broadly appealing themes as support for tax cuts, has helped make the Christian Coalition one of the most powerful grass-roots organizations in American politics. Its 1.6 million active supporters and $25 million annual budget ... hold a virtual veto on the Republican nominee for President, and will exert an extraordinary influence over who will occupy the Oval Office beginning in 1997. In fact, Reed's success represents the most thorough penetration of the secular world of American politics by an essentially religious organization in this century.

--Time, May 15, 1995