Christian Coalition Organization

IT WAS MOURNING IN THE REV. PAT ROBERTSON'S AMERICA. On the day after Bill Clinton was elected President, Robertson smiled wanly and consoled the millions who watch his "700 Club" cable TV show. As the pewter-haired televangelist lamented what democracy had wrought, it seemed as though God Himself had lost the election. Plagues and disasters were on the horizon. At the very least, economic collapse and radical abortion laws--baby-killing laws, really--are coming.

The Christian Coalition, which has helped steer the Republican Party to the right for the last 10 years, has lost a decade-old effort to win tax-exempt status from the Internal Revenue Service. The development is the latest blow to the coalition's once-vaunted political clout, raising questions about the group's future influence. The coalition filed for a 501(c)4 tax-exemption shortly after it was founded in 1989.

Not many legislators were still on the House floor when Rep. Glenn Poshard stood up late on the evening of March 23 to deliver a few remarks. Nothing surprising about that: Poshard isn't the kind of politician to draw a crowd. A 49-year-old Democrat now serving his fourth term, Poshard represents a rural south-central Illinois district (the big city is Decatur) where people work mostly with their hands. There's nothing flashy about the place, and nothing flashy about Poshard himself.

Once again, it's the season when social conservatives gear up for an election-year ritual: flooding mailboxes with political leaflets. But the ebullience of past drives has faded into malaise. Just a few days before the election, activists are woefully aware that the issues they had hoped would propel the 1996 presidential campaign--support for school vouchers and school prayer, opposition to abortion rights and gay rights, for instance--remain missing in action. The letdown sank in slowly.

If the religious right succeeds in advancing its conservative, anti-abortion agenda in the Capitol, much of the credit would have to go to a publicity-shy multimillionaire from Orange County named Howard Fieldstead Ahmanson Jr. Ahmanson's father forged a financial empire out of the despair of the Depression and built what is today's $38-billion Home Savings of America, the nation's largest thrift.

A pastor at one of the San Fernando Valley's most prominent evangelical churches, acknowledging for the first time its close ties with the conservative Christian Coalition of California, says that church leaders find it difficult to keep the group focused on religious issues instead of secular quarrels like immigration and gun control.

The Christian right is waging an extensive and well-financed fall campaign in California aimed at expanding its power in the Assembly and threatening the Republican Party leadership of moderate Gov. Pete Wilson. Combining forces with anti-tax and gun-owner groups, religious right activists from San Diego to Sacramento are following up a massive "in pew" voter registration drive by distributing 3.9 million voter guides on "family issues" to more than 15,000 churches statewide.

A church-state watchdog group has asked the Internal Revenue Service to investigate eight churches that allegedly violated their tax-exempt status by distributing Christian Coalition voter guides the Sunday before the November elections. The Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of the Washington-based Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said the "partisan" guides were "deliberately designed" to help elect conservative Republican candidates.

Surrounded by Republican congressional leaders, the Christian Coalition on Wednesday issued a 10-point legislative program that would restrict late-term abortions, permit greater religious expression in schools and other public places and eliminate the Department of Education. "Our purpose is not to legislate family values, it is to ensure that Washington values families," said Ralph Reed, executive director of the 1.6-million-member organization, founded by Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson.

How big is the Christian Coalition, the conservative public policy advocacy group that has become a major player in the nation's political arena? The coalition, founded by religious broadcaster Pat Robertson, says it has 1.8 million "members and supporters," up from 1.7 million at the time of its national Road to Victory conference in Washington in September.