Liberal and conservative Christians face off

If the exit polls on Uncle Sam's Election Day 2004 are to be believed, the issue of "moral values" was the most important one for many voters. Jerry Falwell, a Christian broadcaster in Lynchburg, Virginia, believes it was the decisive issue in Bush's reelection, and now he has formed a coalition that seeks to take advantage of this development to further what he sees as an "evangelical revolution."

According the mission statement posted at the web site launching the initiative, Falwell's The Faith and Values Coalition will work for three objectives: the passage of a Family Marriage Amendment, the confirmation of "pro-life, strict constructionist" US Supreme Court justices and other federal judges and the election of another "socially, fiscally, and politically conservative" president in 2008.

At the web site, Falwell writes simply: "Here I go again. I am launching a campaign to enlist the first one million charter members of the Faith and Values Coalition, a 21st century Moral Majority." Readers are asked to make a $25 or more contribution to help the coalition launch a nationwide voter registration campaign designed to bring millions of more "faith and values" voters to the polls in 2006 and 2007.

Falwell founded the Moral Majority in April 1979 as an organisation made up of conservative political action committees. In the 1980s, the Moral Majority had millions of members and became one of the country's largest conservative lobbying groups. Falwell disbanded the group in 1989.

Since 9/11, Falwell has been highly critical of Islam, saying on one occasion that "the Muslim faith teaches hate." Critics have attacked Falwell, saying it is his inflammatory statements themselves that promote hate and prejudice.

Falwell, however, has strong support in the Christian fundamentalist community. "I support Dr. Falwell's coalition because I credit him with a lot of the great work that's being done in the evangelical community," said Tony Perkins, President of the Washington DC based Family Research Council. "Our group will help in whatever capacity it can because we are both working towards the same goal."

Perkins added, "The American people sent a very strong message last November 2. We are seeing the rise of the "values" voter, and that (trend) has not escaped the attention of those who serve on Capitol Hill." The Family Research Council describes itself as a "non profit non partisan educational organisation that reaffirms and promotes the traditional family unit and the Judeo-Christian value system."

Liberal Christian leaders, however, are downplaying Falwell's new initiative. "The religious right has been organising for 35 years under a variety of different names so they can push their radical conservative agenda," said Robert Edgar, General Secretary of the New York City and Washington DC based National Council of Churches. "I hope Mr. Falwell spends more time reading the Scriptures and less time pontificating and pushing policies that cause fissures in our society."

Tom Perriello, a fellow with the New York City based Res Publica, said: "My sense is that his (Falwell's) day has come and gone in the conservative Christian community. I don't think Falwell has his finger on the pulse of the American people's thinking." The New York City-based Res Publica describes itself as "a group of public sector professionals dedicated to promoting good governance, virtuous civic cultures, and deliberative public discourse globally."

But Edward J. Murray, President and CEO of the Faith and Values Media in New York City, welcomes Falwell's initiative. "We like to see faith become more active in the public forum," Murray said. "Those folks ( Falwell's organisation) are extremely skilled at making that happen. More power to them."

Faith and Values Media, which works to communicate the value of faith in everyday life, has a name strikingly similar to that of Falwell's coalition. "We sent the Coalition a letter, and it agreed to not use that name anymore," Murray revealed.

The formation of Falwell's coalition is another step in the on going ideological battle royal taking shape between liberal and fundamentalist Christian organisations. The battle intensified after Bush's victory last November and it promises to dominate politics in America for years to come. Murray sees nothing wrong with the marriage of politics and religion. "Historically, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and other ordained ministers led the civil rights movement in this country, but the liberal progressive community has missed the boat," he explained. "It has decided for whatever reason that religion doesn't belong in political discussions. That's crazy."

That situation is changing, according to Edgar, who revealed that the National Council of Churches and other '"liberal, progressive" Christian groups have organised a movement called FaithfulAmerica.org. "We will use FaithfulAmerica.org to broaden the moral values agenda," Edgar revealed. "We think it's immoral to have a prison camp in Guanatanmo. We think it's immoral to have nine million children in this country without health care."

FaithfulAmerica.org was organised just last spring. " Falwell's movement is 35 years in the making; ours is just four years in the making," Edgar explained. "We need to build a base."

Soon after forming, FaithfulAmerica.org ran a commercial on Arab television stations in which the group apologised for the Iraqi prison scandal. " That commercial alone got us 100,000 new members," Edgar said.

The group also sent a video team to the Darfur region of the Sudan last August 25 to document alleged incidents of genocide. "Our big challenge in building a coalition will be to convince moderate Christians that they must be more passionate about genocide AIDS, poverty, peace, the environment and the other important issues we face," Edgar explained.

But the Christian right may have a big advantage, given the potential numbers who can join the "evangelical revolution." The Pew Research Center found that 27 percent of voters cast their ballots in the last election based on moral values. Fifty-four percent of those voters, moreover, did so based upon social issues, such as abortion and same sex marriage, according to Pew. Meanwhile, Barna Research identified 53 percent of the voters in the November elections as "values voters" and puts the "born again" evangelical population in America at roughly 38 percent of the voting population.

"Liberals have derisively ascribed moral values to the religious right, but Barna found that moral values like honesty and integrity are on the minds of a much larger segment of the American public," Perkins said.

Perriello agreed that moral values is on the minds of American voters but he believes that the conservative Christian right, as illustrated by Falwell's new coalition, has the "wrong prescription" for what ails America. "I think many Americans, both liberal and conservative, believe that their country has a big cultural problem," Parriello explained. "They are concerned about the sexualisation, violence, and greed in our culture. Falwell's agenda is political and fixated. There is nothing in his coalition's mission statement that addresses those issues."

Perriello disputes the polls cited by the Family Research Council and other conservative Christian groups. Res Publica, along with Pax Christi and The Center for American Progress, sponsored a poll, which pollster Zogby International conducted last November 3 to 9. While exit polls have been interpreted as saying that 22 percent of the electorate cast their votes based on their views on abortion and gay marriage, the Zogby poll showed that most voters are influenced by a broader set of values.

For instance, when voters were asked to list the moral issues that affected their vote, the Iraq War topped the list with 42 percent of the voters, more than quadruple the number who chose gay marriage. When asked to choose the most urgent moral crisis facing America, voters in the Zogby poll chose greed and materialism (33 percent) as compared to abortion (12 percent) and same sex marriage (12 percent).

"These are some issues where Democrats can provide moral leadership," Parriello said.

The debate over who has the high ground on the moral values issue is polarising America, but some sources see some glimmers of hope that the high ground can give way to some common ground. This month Faith and Values Media sponsored a programme at Trinity Church Wall Street in New York City that both liberal and conservative Christians attended. "They were willing to talk to each other about some of the issues dividing them," Murray revealed. "That was encouraging and we need to see more of that."

Perriello said that, in doing volunteer work overseas in the Balkans and Africa, he has seen both conservative and liberal Christian groups providing services to the people. "I could see that the conservative groups were as passionate about stopping genocide as the liberal ones were," he explained. "So I do see some common ground on human rights, AIDS, and some other key issues."

Ron Chepesiuk is a Visiting Professor at Chittagong University and a Research Associate at the National Defense College in Dhaka.