Nation: Politics from the Pulpit

Fundamentalists take aim at Carter and liberals nationwide

Classes were canceled at Liberty Baptist College in Lynchburg, Va. Students were bused in from Lynchburg Christian Academy to help fill the 8,000 seats. Excitement built as the hour neared for the featured speaker to appear. "Here he comes, ah!" cried one young woman as the hero stepped onto the stage. Billy Graham? Oral Roberts? No, Ronald Reagan.

The Republican candidate's talk at the meeting of the National Religious Broadcasters in Lynchburg was blandly disappointing to many who had been hoping for a fire-and-brimstone sermon. Mindful of the storm he had stirred when he addressed an evangelical Christian audience in August and questioned the theory of evolution, Reagan this time confined himself to platitudes about peace, inflation, separation of church and state —though he did say, when asked about voluntary prayers in public schools, "I don't believe we should ever have expelled God from the classroom."

But the significant fact was that Reagan was there at all. Attending the meeting were the leaders of a new political movement: evangelical-fundamentalist preachers dedicated to herding conservative Christians to the polls in the hope that most of them will vote for Reagan. The strength of that movement is difficult to assess. But in an election expected by both sides to be extremely close, it is one of several factors that just might tip the balance in states like Ohio and IIlinois, and it definitely could have an influence in some scattered local races.

If so, the effect would be a striking triumph for a movement that scarcely existed two years ago. In June 1979, the Rev. Jerry Falwell, Reagan's host in Lynchburg, founded Moral Majority. In just 16 months, that organization claims to have signed up 72,000 ministers and 4 million lay members, establishing chapters in all 50 states. It expects to raise $5 million for political proselytizing this year alone.

From the pulpit, through the mails, in leaflets, at mass rallies and on such TV programs as Falwell's Old-Time Gospel Hour, which appears on 373 stations, members of Moral Majority and allied groups pound home the same message: the U.S. is in a terrifying moral decline, and Christians have a duty to reverse it by registering and voting for candidates who agree with their moral principles. As enunciated by Falwell and other conservative evangelicals, those principles are remarkably similar to the Republican platform—which in fact Moral Majority had a hand in shaping.

For the most part, Falwell and other leaders of the religious right insist that they do not tell their followers for whom to vote. But they leave no doubt which of the three born-again Christians running for President they prefer. Although Carter considers himself to be an evangelical, he is not deemed conservative enough by Falwell and his associates because he has failed to fight for such matters as a ban on abortion or legalizing prayer in schools. Says Randy Stewart, a Baptist minister in Lexington, Ky., and a member of Moral Majority: "I will talk about the issues in my church. I will recommend issues to the congregation, not candidates. But when I get through, they will know who I am voting for: Ronald Reagan."