Religion: Jerry Falwell's Crusade

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The results of the religious right's lobbying in Washington have been mixed. Its efforts have helped win fights in Congress on such issues as abortion funding and a law guaranteeing "equal access" to school facilities for voluntary religious and nonreligious student groups. President Reagan supports school prayer, and antiabortion legislation and several of his appointments have gratified the religious right. Among them: William Bennett, a Roman Catholic who backs religious day schools, as Secretary of Education; former Moral Majority Lobbyist Robert Billings as Assistant Secretary of Education; Pro-Life Presbyterian C. Everett Koop as Surgeon General.

One of the shrillest of the Fundamentalist ideologues in Washington is the Rev. Tim LaHaye, 59, who moved to the capital from San Diego last year. He runs the new American Coalition for Traditional Values (ACTV, pronounced active), which has been praised by Reagan and is endorsed by Falwell. A Baptist, LaHaye is lobbying in the capital and also building a network of clergy activists in more than 300 cities. He speaks of Reagan's presidency as , nothing less than God-ordained ("the Heavenly Father looked down and saw our plight") and says a second Carter Administration "might have plunged us into another French Revolution, only this time on American soil." LaHaye advocates a quota of 25% of federal jobs for Christian conservatives and, at the same time, insists that "no humanist is qualified to hold any governmental office."

A growing number of political moderates are deeply worried by LaHaye-style threats and by the specter of schoolbook censorship, legislation of private morality, and the packing of courts with doctrinaire "pro-family" judges. Some of the most thoughtful objections come from the Evangelical movement. The "packaging of the Gospel with politics" is unfortunate for the faith, says Chattanooga's Ben Haden, a conservative Presbyterian pastor and TV preacher. He compares the Fundamentalists who are venturing into politics to the church liberals who stressed social action over the Gospel in the 1960s. Charles Colson, the Nixon aide who served seven months in federal prison for his role in the Watergate scandal, is a born-again Christian and evangelist who firmly upholds the Bible's inerrancy. He argues that believers "need to understand that the real problems of our society are at their root moral and spiritual. Institutions and politicians are limited in what they can do."

Politically liberal Evangelicals accuse the Fundamentalists of avoiding such issues as economic change to combat poverty in the U.S. and worldwide. Falwellians respond that churches and synagogues can achieve more than government programs.