THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO RALPH REED

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Reed gets that kind of respect because he can deliver. With a fat war chest and so many activists on call at all times, the Coalition can stir a flurry of telephone calls and letters to lawmakers on almost any subject within a matter of hours. To train its operatives, the Coalition runs leadership schools, instructing supporters to form rapid-response networks, connected by phone, fax and modem, in hundreds of counties, located in every state in the Union. They update their information on the third Tuesday of every month by attending satellite downlinks of "Christian Coalition Live," an hour of specific instruction on political organizing at which Reed himself plays host. The broadcasts feature target lists of lawmakers to contact regarding specific legislation. More than 200 conservative evangelical churches serve as the meeting places for these high-tech gatherings; the Coalition hopes to have 1,000 downlink sites by year's end.

Such meetings are not confined to the Bible Belt. Last month, for instance, 20 activists braved the rain to attend a showing at the Bethel Full Gospel Church in Rochester, New York, and that was just one of 12 downlink sites in what is supposed to be a liberal state. The meeting began when the county chairman, Tom Jessop, bowed his head and said, "Let's come together in prayer." But he moved quickly to such topics as how to become a Republican committeeman and how to "blitz E-mail." Indeed, the group was nothing like the Coalition members uncharitably described by the Washington Post in February 1993 as "poor, uneducated and easy to command." Jessop, 54, is a senior project engineer at Eastman Kodak. His deputy Rahm Goswami, 44, is a research chemist with a Ph.D. A similar meeting a month earlier in Charleston, South Carolina, was attended by several lawyers and physicians -- all in business suits. Another misconception is that the Coalition is exclusively white. Two blacks came to the meeting in Rochester. "I don't look at it as a color thing," explained Angie Whitlock, one of the African Americans there. "I don't know why more of us don't join up." The chief reason is the blind eye the Christian right turned to segregation in the 1960s.