Right-Wing Populism in America by Chip Berlet

Author:Chip Berlet [Matthew N. Lyons, Chip Berlet]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781462528387
Publisher: Guilford Publications

CHRISTIAN RIGHT PHOENIX

Dominionism also influenced the Christian Coalition, one of the most prominent and influential Christian Right organizations of the 1990s. A mass organization geared toward winning control of the Republican Party, the Christian Coalition pursued a delicate balancing act between hard-line ideology and pragmatic power politics. The Coalition’s leadership mediated in its practices between dominionist principles and interest-group tactics, between New World Order conspiracy theories and policies favorable to multinational business, and between a deep-rooted Christian Eurocentrism and strategic efforts to forge closer ties with right-wing Jews and conservative people of color.

In 1987–1988, the Christian Right was shaken by a highly publicized sex and financial scandal involving prominent televangelist Jim Bakker; this was followed by fellow televangelist Jimmy Swaggart’s public confession that he had solicited prostitutes.40 Many pundits predicted the movement’s demise, especially after Pat Robertson lost to George Bush in the 1988 Republican presidential primaries. But those pundits and others who belittled the Christian Right’s future overlooked two factors: the huge grassroots constituency that remained connected through an infrastructure of conferences, publications, radio and television programs, videotapes, and audiotapes; and the ideological force of devout religious belief.

The 1988 Robertson campaign organization and mailing list—together with other Robertson-controlled organs such as the Christian Broadcasting Network—provided the basis for the Christian Coalition, which Robertson and organizer Ralph Reed created in 1989. Using seasoned activists in a bid to take over the Republican Party from the ground up, the Christian Coalition moved quickly into the local and state electoral arena and recruited hundreds of thousands of members within a few years. By 1995, the organization claimed 1.5 million donors and supporters and over 1,425 local chapters.41 The Coalition joined with other Christian Right groups, such as Lou Sheldon’s Traditional Values Coalition and Beverly LaHaye’s Concerned Women for America to target school boards, public libraries, and state legislatures.

The Christian Coalition marked the Christian Right’s shift away from the Moral Majority’s national direct-mail approach toward intensive local organizing. The new organization also encompassed a somewhat broader group of right-wing Christians. The Moral Majority appealed almost entirely to fundamentalists, mainly Baptists. But Robertson, as a charismatic, was able to bring in support from many right-wing charismatics and pentacostals as well. (Charismatics had supported Robertson’s 1988 campaign much more actively than fundamentalists.)42 The Christian Coalition also launched an outreach campaign to right-wing Catholics, and even recruited a small number of Jews.

Robertson and his aides were influenced by dominion theology but sought to work within the existing political system. According to Fred Clarkson, “Robertson himself seems to lack the long-term vision of Reconstructionist thinkers, but he is clearly driven by a short-term militant ´dominion´ mandate—the mandate that Christians ´Christianize´ the country’s social and political institutions.” Reconstructionist texts were used in courses at the Robertson-controlled Regent University. (“Robertson explained that a ´regent´ is one who governs in the absence of a sovereign. And that Regent U. trains students to rule, until Jesus, the absent sovereign, returns.”)43 But, while Christian Coalition leaders sometimes declared openly that “America is

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