Nation: Politics from the Pulpit

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Only a few years ago many of his listeners probably would have agreed. Religious pronouncements on American political issues go back to the founding of the colonies. In the 1960s, many clergymen lobbied for civil rights laws and against the Viet Nam War, but they were mainly liberals. With some notable exceptions—Prohibition was the most conspicuous—religious conservatives have shunned politics, believing that the way to create a moral society was to evangelize individuals.

That view was changed by three causes. Such trends as the legalization of abortion, the spread of pornography and agitation for homosexual rights convinced many evangelicals that, in Falwell's words, "a minority of secular humanists and amoralists are running this country and taking it straight to hell." Carter's "failings," in their eyes, deepened their despair. The last straw for many evangelicals was a 1978 attempt by the Internal Revenue Service to take away the tax-exempt status of private schools suspected of practicing racial discrimination.

Fervent evangelicals saw the move as an assault on one of their last bastions: the Bible schools they had established to shield their young from an ungodly environment (most of the schools are predominantly white). Congress forbade the IRS to carry out its plan, but in the eyes of conservative evangelicals the battle lines had been drawn. Says Billings: "The IRS ignited the dynamite that had been lying around for years."

Since then, the evangelical right has not so much risen as erupted. In addition to Moral Majority, two other major organizations have sprung into action. The Religious Roundtable, founded by Ed McAteer, a onetime toothpaste salesman in the Bible Belt, concentrates on holding briefings to teach ministers and lay evangelicals how to get out the conservative vote. Christian Voice, led by the Rev. Richard Zone, campaigns openly for and against specific candidates, which it can do because, unlike the other groups, it does not claim a tax exemption.

All the groups work closely together: their leaders gather every other Thursday over coffee in Washington to plan strategy with such conservative political groups as the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress, and the Conservative Caucus. Christian Voice has compiled a list, widely circulated by Moral Majority and Roundtable as well, of how Senators and Congressmen voted in 1979 on 14 key moral issues. It praises votes not only for school prayer but for the Kemp-Roth bill to cut income tax rates 30%; condemns votes favoring not only abortion but the Equal Rights Amendment. The rightists claim to find religious grounds for all these stands. Says Zone: "We can talk about a balanced budget as a moral issue. The Bible says you should not live in debt."