From: altheimm@nextnet.csus.edu (Murray Altheim)
Subject: REPOST: Theocracy in America? 
Organization: California State University Sacramento
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1992 20:04:17 GMT

[I've had quite a few requests for the "Theocracy in America?" 
article, so here's the repost. It went through MS Word and back, so it 
varies in format from the original post, but is unchanged in content. 
My thanks to Ben Delisle for the original post.  -- Murray]

From: delisle@eskimo.celestial.com (Ben Delisle)
Subject: Theocracy In America?
Summary: Xian take over of American government and politics, and take 
over of the GOP
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 92 10:25:52 PST

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Theocracy in America?
[Reproduced without permission from the Denver Post, October 25, 1992]

"We are going to place Pat Robertson on city councils, school boards 
and legislatures all over this country" -- Pat Robertson

Born Again Politics The Religious Right and the GOP Story by Claire 
Martin

When Pat Buchanan announced, "There is a religious war going on in our 
country for the soul of America" at the Republican National Convention 
last August, he was surrounded by GOP delegates who knew exactly what 
he was talking about.

Forty percent of those delegates came to the convention through 
campaigns orchestrated by members of the Christian religious right -- 
a collective term for fundamentalist, Pentecostal, evangelical and 
charismatic Christian Republicans who believe in a narrow, literal 
interpretation of the Bible. Most are newcomers to politics, elected 
through campaigns conducted through churches, fighting for dramatic 
changes at every level of government.

They see themselves in a holy war, "Godly people" crusading against 
abortion-rights activists, gay and lesbian civil rights activists, 
family leave advocates, divorce, working women and feminists, sex 
education programs and school curricula that ignore creationism and 
other Bible-based teachings, including prayer.

Most Americans have ignored the religious right, or dismissed it as a 
minority fringe. But the religious right is a powerful group, with a 
formidable political network that crosses state lines and an agenda to 
reconstruct this country's government from school boards to the Oval 
Office.

When national campaign efforts foundered -- the 1988 presidential bids 
of televangelist Pat Robertson (now president of the Christian 
Coalition) and former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke (whose campaign 
manager, Billy McCormack is now the Christian Coalition's Louisiana 
director) -- the religious right shifted its attention to local 
elections.

After successfully placing candidates during 1990 local elections in 
California and Virginia, the religious right has multiplied its 
efforts. This year, though a network of Christian-based advocacy and 
education groups, it has coordinated campaigns and ballot initiatives 
throughout the country. Some examples:

 o Christian conservatives in Colorado network with Christian 
conservatives in Oregon, Missouri, Maine and Florida, sharing 
strategies to promote anti-gay rights initiatives. Two brochures 
advocating the Colorado and Oregon initiatives are almost identical.

 o In Iowa, Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum and a Michigan member of 
the Christian Coalition are working with the Iowa religious right to 
defeat a proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the Iowa Constitution.

 o Republican caucuses in Colorado, Washington, Louisiana, Kansas, 
Michigan, Arizona, Oregon and other states were dominated by religious 
right delegates. They approved extremely conservative party platforms, 
alienating many mainstream Republicans. The Washington state platform 
recommends outlawing witchcraft and yoga, and the Republican national 
platform calls for a barrier on the U.S.-Mexico border.

 o Throughout the United States, hundreds of religious right 
candidates with no previous political experience won 1992 primary 
elections and caucuses, often to the surprise of longtime GOP 
politicians.

Most of the religious right candidates -- including state legislature 
candidate and Fort Collins evangelical pastor Dan Nygaard -- won 
primaries in counties where religious right groups conducted election 
training seminars and distributed campaign guides laced with biblical 
references. (Although Nygaard's First Christian Church hosts a 
Citizens for Responsible Government seminar, he says he didn't attend 
it and decided on his own to run for office.)

"It is a much more widespread phenomenon than most of us realize," 
says Chip Perlez of Political Research Associates, a political 
watchdog organization in Boston.

"The Christian Right is much more powerful in the Rocky Mountain West 
and the West Coast than it is in the East or the traditional Bible 
Belt. This is a particular brand of fundamentalist Christianity that's 
much more radical than the Bible Belt Christians."

With a November ballot that focuses on several of the religious 
right's key issues -- gay rights, school vouchers and limited taxes -- 
as well as elections featuring newcomers with ties to conservative 
Christian churches, Colorado is among the states that the religious 
right apparently has targeted in 1992.

"I would say the national Christian Coalition is interested in a state 
whose ballot had any issues or any concerned candidate with true moral 
standards -- and by `moral standards' I mean biblical standards, 
really -- that are what we consider traditional family values," says 
David Nelson, director of the Christian Coalition's Colorado chapter.

"The national Christian Coalition would be more interested in the 
results of that state's election than a state where none of the issues 
are being discussed or elected on."

"One reason the religious right is hard to get a handle on, and a 
reason that the national media was surprised in Houston (at the GOP 
national convention), was that they fly under the radar," says David 
Crane, vice president of People for the American Way, the liberal 
Washington, D.C. organization that monitors the religious right and 
other groups.

"They work on obscure elections, not state house or congressional 
races. They focus on school boards, planning boards and hospital 
boards -- elections where turnout traditionally is very light. 
Everyone looks at David Skaggs and the national picture. But the 
interesting thing is these stealth races -- elections that people pay 
no attention to. Those are the models for what's going on. One day, 
people are going to wake up and find the religious right running 
schools, city councils and their congressional districts."

That is what some see happening in San Diego County, Calif. In 1990, 
the religious right backed a slate of nearly 90 candidates, including 
the local director of the Christian Coalition, for school boards, 
county council, hospital boards and other offices.

Two-thirds of those candidates were elected, largely through campaigns 
conducted through fundamentalist churches. The candidates rejected the 
usual publicity of public debates, media interviews, candidate forums 
and sample questionnaires.

Instead, volunteers for religious right candidates put fliers on cars 
in certain church parking lots, and campaigned by telephone using 
church directories. Volunteers distributing leaflets were instructed, 
in writing, to "be quiet about the flier project."

One religious-right candidate, Tony Snesko, played down his religious 
beliefs during the Poway city council campaign. After his election, he 
began quoting scripture to support his opposition to gay-right 
initiatives.

The success of largely unknown and inexperienced candidates astonished 
many San Diego citizens, spurring the formation of the Mainstream 
Voters Project, a nonpartisan watchdog group.

"Our concern was that we had people elected to school boards, hospital 
boards, city councils, planning boards and other boards who did not 
campaign visibly at all," said Rita Collier, a San Diego resident who 
helped form the Mainstream Voters Project.

"It wouldn't have been so surprising if they hadn't been elected. 
Who'd have cared? But when they were elected, you began wondering how 
they were elected, and as we looked into it, we found an underground 
campaign network among fundamentalist churches: phone banking, fliers 
in parking lots and less-visible means of getting out the word on 
candidates who, for the most part, had no previous experience."

The newly elected board immediately had an impact on county policies. 
In Escondido, home of the Christian Voters League, a majority 
religious-right school board came within one vote of stripping an 
abstinence-based sex education course of all information on birth 
control.

In other San Diego school districts, newly elected conservative board 
members objected to using federal Department of Agriculture surplus 
foods for school breakfast programs.

"They said it was socialism and if we feed these children at school, 
it takes away from parental responsibility," Collier said.

In November, about 200 religious-right candidates are on the San Diego 
ballots. The Christian Coalition also supported 16 candidates for the 
California legislature, with contributions ranging from $12,000 to 
$102,000. Twelve of the 16 candidates will be on the ballot.

"We expect the religious right to export their San Diego tactics 
around the U.S., to other communities that might be ripe for 
takeover," Crane says. "Colorado and Oregon could become the next San 
Diegos."

Christian Coalition Executive Director Ralph Reed, Jr. says San Diego 
is "a model of what Christians and evangelicals and pro-family Roman 
Catholics are attempting to do around the nation."

"We're trying to generate as large a voter turnout as possible among 
our constituency by communicating with them in a way that does not 
attract the fire of our opponents," Reed told 1,000 people at the 1991 
Road to Victory conference sponsored by the coalition.

During the past two years, the Christian Coalition sponsored Road To 
Victory conferences, where Christian Coalition officials pass out 
detailed manuals on the Republican delegate selection process in each 
state. This year Reed is distributing 40 million voter's guides to 
"pro-family" issues and candidates in dozens of elections, including 
Colorado candidate races and ballot initiatives.

Local political activists in Colorado and other states are trained in 
seminars taught by the Christian Coalition Leadership School, Focus on 
the Family, Citizens for Responsible Government and other Christian 
groups. Instructional pamphlets like Dan Dazlich's "A Christian Guide 
to Colorado's Political System" explain the election process. The 
seminars emphasize intense last-minute campaign blitzes that target 
conservative church congregations.

"I think this will be the most effective coordinated activity by 
evangelical Christians that we've ever seen," Reed told The Washington 
Post earlier this month.

>From these seminars spring "pro-family" candidates and delegates with 
tremendous support from local church congregations. With most of 
Colorado's 35 evangelical ministries (including Focus on the Family) 
based in Colorado Springs, the religious right is especially powerful 
there.

Marcy Morrison, a Colorado Springs Republican, probably was the first 
Colorado candidate who realized the power behind her opponent for the 
District 22 state legislative seat.

Newcomer Ken Gray was a graduate of the Christian Broadcast Network 
University's law school (now Regent University law school), which Pat 
Robertson established as a Bible-based law school. His campaign 
targeted evangelical churches.

Gray's primary campaign materials stressed his family values, but 
failed to discuss his anti-abortion stance -- something that Gray 
reserved for "targeted" audiences, he said at a New Life Church anti-
abortion seminar.

At the May GOP caucus in Colorado Springs, Gray walked away with 50 
percent of the delegates -- unprecedented for an inexperienced, 
unknown candidate, and something "that gave us our first clue," 
Morrison said, "that we were in trouble."

Although mainstream Republicans dismissed Morrison's fears, she 
campaigned vigorously, spending twice as much as Gray. She won by 27 
votes.

Other Colorado Republicans, including incumbents Bonnie Allison, Stan 
Johnson and Marlene Fish, were defeated by newcomers. Penn Pfiffer, 
Lynn Watwood, Dan Nygaard, Pat Miller, Bryan Day, Bob McDonald, Drew 
Clark and Victor Mote all ran "pro-family" campaigns closely linked 
with conservative churches, and beat opponents who wrote them off.

"He came out of nowhere," Alllison said of Watwood, an attorney who 
has worked for the Rutherford Institute and Colorado for Family 
Values.

"When I polled people in June, I was winning 2-to-1. My supporters 
assumed I'd be okay. Watwood got to his followers, and they all 
voted."

Allison has since endorsed Democratic candidate Mike Feeley, and 
changed her party affiliation to Independent.

"I think it's great that people are getting involved," says Dudley 
Brown, deputy campaign manager for Republican evangelical pastor Bryan 
Day's congressional campaign against David Skaggs.

"If school vouchers, pro-family values and limited government are the 
tenets of what you call the religious right, then I think people 
should be happy to be associated with it," Brown said. "The question 
is, if (the religious right) tries to impose (its) religious beliefs 
on others, then we have to be careful not to make a state-sponsored 
religion. But debate about all this is pretty healthy."

>From Byran Day to Lyn Watwood, newcomer "pro-family" Republican 
candidates are opposed to abortion and gay rights, and in favor of 
school vouchers, limited government and legally requiring a balanced 
budget. Those are the issues that matter most to their targeted 
constituents.

"When people talked to me, they asked how I felt about vouchers or 
abortion," says Morrison.

"Especially abortion, over and over. They didn't discuss experience or 
background or positions on other issues because they weren't 
interested. As soon as I said I didn't think government should be 
involved in abortion, it was the end of the conversation."

Abortion is a key issue for the Eagle Forum, Concerned Women for 
America, Focus on the Family, Iowa's Stop ERA, and other religious 
right groups. Lon Mabon's Oregon Citizens Alliance, which is backing 
the state's anti-gay rights Measure 9 this November, also has 
sponsored two unsuccessful anti-abortion ballot measures. The OCA also 
has opposed legislation for family leave and pre-kindergarten 
programs, objecting that the programs were anti-business and anti-
family.

Anti-abortion activists, led by Schlafly's Eagle Forum, also are the 
chief opponents of Iowa's Equal Rights Amendment. Marlene Elwell, a 
Michigan Republican who was the Midwest coordinator for Robertson's 
1988 presidential bid, directs Iowa's Stop ERA campaign. A "Stop ERA" 
fund-raising letter, written by Robertson described the Iowa ERA as a 
"feminist agenda" that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill 
their children, practice witchcraft and become lesbians."

In Colorado, Amendment 2's advocates include Colorado for Family 
Values, former U.S. Sen. Bill Armstrong and University of Colorado 
football coach Bill McCartney, both opponents of abortion; Concerned 
Women for America; the Eagle Forum; Traditional Values Coalition; and 
the Christian Coalition. The ultimate goal, CFV chairman Will Perkins 
says, is to have a Constitutional amendment restricting homosexuals.

"We operated a stealth campaign," CFV's Tony Marco told Christian 
American (the Christian Coalition's bimonthly newsletter), explaining 
CFV's signature gathering strategy for putting Amendment 2 on the 
November ballot.

"We went under their radar. They never knew what strength we had."

Since then, Marco also has advised and shared material with gay-rights 
opponents in Tampa, Fla., Portland, Maine, and Columbia, Mo. Anti-gay 
right brochures in those states, as well as Colorado and Oregon, 
liberally quote Paul Cameron, a Nebraska psychologist who believes 
people who are HIV-positive should be tattooed on their foreheads. 
(Cameron's controversial research on homosexual behavior caused both 
the American Psychological Association and the Nebraska Psychological 
Association to drop Cameron's membership, which CFV blames on 
political pressure from gays.)

Tampa activists, led by Florida Christian Coalition director Tom 
Scott, and Portland activists succeeded in putting their initiatives 
on local ballots. Columbia activists are having trouble collecting 
enough signatures to qualify for an initiative.

"It's fascinating what's happening around the country," says Eric 
Niewoehner. "We're mobilizing a section of society that hasn't been 
involved in politics, working with lay representatives from churches 
that have historically been low-key. Conservative Christians here have 
almost had a disgust for politics in the past. Now we're getting 
together, working on issues. Sex education. Pro life. The school 
prayer issue. I'd rather have these issues in an election because then 
people will show up (who) are more issue-based."

Voters almost never turn out en masse for local elections or party 
precinct caucuses. Few know the names of local school board members, 
or attend neighborhood precinct meetings. Often if you want to be a 
delegate or make sure your candidate has enough support to get on the 
ballot, it's as easy as showing up at a meeting.

"In some precincts, you can take over a caucus with only five people," 
says Denver Republican Diane Dillingham, who has hosted two precinct 
meetings where she was the only attendee.

"Send 40 people from your church, and you can control the caucus."

With the help of caucus and candidate election seminar leaders, that's 
exactly what the religious right did this year. Throughout the U.S., 
conservative Christians gained control, or near-control, of Republican 
caucuses and conventions in at least 12 states, including Colorado.

Kansas Republicans estimated that 84 percent of their precinct 
delegates were members of the religious right. Fifty-four of more than 
300 delegates in Kansas were arrested in 1991 Operation Rescue 
protests.

In Colorado, religious right delegates composed between 40 percent and 
50 percent of caucuses along the Front Range, targeting "certain 
counties -- Boulder, Jeffco, Weld and Larimer," says Republican Chris 
O'Dell.

"If they don't control the party machinery up there now, they will 
soon."

Nelson says his local Christian Coalition office has nothing to do 
with the success of conservative Christian candidates. He credits 
other groups, including Citizens for Responsible Government, a 
Christian anti-abortion group that distributed leaflets in 
congregation parking lots on the Sunday preceding the August primary 
and plans to repeat that tactic in November.

"I don't call the Christian Coalition that effective," says Day 
staffer Dudley Brown. "I was a delegate to Houston. I think that was 
the Republican Party, right there. There are liberals in the party 
that are calling that extreme. Look at our platforms. Always 
conservative. Always have been. Did the religious right nutty zealots 
do all that? No. It's been around for a while."

Although religious right candidates usually take pains to disassociate 
their campaigns from the Christian Coalition, it is Robertson's 
organization that ignited those campaigns and whose agenda goes beyond 
ensuring a public forum for its issues.

Robertson has said that he wants the religious right to control the 
Republican Party by 1996. That would save a country controlled by a 
"tightly knit cabal whose goal is nothing less than a new order for 
the human race under the domination of Lucifer and his followers," 
Robertson wrote in his 1991 book, "The New World Order."

The alternative to the current U.S. government system, according to 
many conservative Christians, is Christian Reconstructionism, a 
movement founded by Californian Rousas John Rushdoony. Christian 
Reconstructionism is based on the belief that civil law would be 
grounded in a literal interpretation of the Bible

Rushdoony is a regular on Robertson's "700 Club," envisions a 
theocratic United States. Churches, not welfare systems, would be 
responsible for the poor. Private schools would replace public 
schools. Whipping and capital punishment would punish prisoners, 
replacing prisons. That vision appeals to many who consider themselves 
"pro-family" and anti-government.

"They're trying to turn the country into a theocracy, and we're not 
going to let it happen," Anne Witte, a moderate Republican in 
Washington state, told the Seattle Times. Republicans formed the New 
Agenda, a pro-choice, pro-controlled-growth group to counter the 
impact of religious right Republicans

Other mainstream Republicans responded to the religious right by re-
registering as Democrats or Independent. Many are pessimistic: "Wait 
and see," said on Colorado Springs Republican. "They're going to make 
a dent in textbooks, they'll censor everything but the books they 
consider acceptable."

Members of the religious right say that such changes are what this 
country needs.

"It's obvious we need new people in government, and the Christian have 
been in the background for too many years," the Colorado Christian 
Coalition's Nelson says.

"The fact they're getting involved now is good for everybody. We talk 
about traditional family values and morality, and the country needs 
both. We used to be PG-rated, and now we're an X-rated society."

To maintain the momentum, the activism will continue after Election 
Day. Focus on the Family and the Rocky Mountain Family Council are 
sponsoring a Community Impact Seminar in Colorado Springs next month 
to provide "practical guidance on how to speak on behalf of family 
concerns."

The same seminar, held last month in Denver, provides "the Biblical 
basis for political activism," according to a promotional letter about 
the event. The letter described Focus on the Family's "expanded 
involvement in the public policy arena," which the organization 
describes as educational and nonpartisan.

Mainstream Republicans question whether such seminars violate laws 
limiting the politics of tax-exempt churches. Dillingham admires the 
religious right's campaign coordination, but questions their forums.

"They say all they're doing is educating, not advocating, but where 
does educating become advocating?" she asked.

"We need to explore where they break down the traditional separation 
of church and state, like training sessions in their church, like the 
tacit compliance of ministers when pamphlets are passed out, or 
passing out "voters guides" in churches that are tax exempt but 
clearly indicate which candidate to vote for."

Other Republicans think it's too late to ask those questions.

"I think there elections are a warning in neon light to Republicans," 
says Republican Claire Traylor.

"Either we wake up to it and do something else, or we organize to 
reconstruct our party to it represents a broad base, the old values, 
and eliminate some of these new things being promoted by what I think 
is a small minority. But Lord knows if it's small anymore. We may have 
already lost the battle in Colorado. You and I don't know that. We'll 
find that out in the election, I guess.



The Organizations

While Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition is usually identified with 
the religious right, dozens of other organizations espouse the same 
values and causes. These organizations are among the most prominent 
groups in Colorado and nationwide. The national groups generally 
associated with state and local affiliates that may have different 
names. Membership figures were not available for all the 
organizations.



American Family Association

President: Rev. Don Wildmon.

National Membership: 450,000

Wildmon also has formed the American Family Association Law Center, 
which provides legal assistance in religious-right causes. AFA 
provided financial and organizing support to the Take Back Tampa 
Political Committee, which is fighting a Tampa, Fla., gay rights 
ordinance. It also is active nationally in challenges to the National 
Endowment for the Arts.



Christian Action Network

Founder: Martin Mawyer, a former Moral Majority official

Their current issue: "educat(ing) the American public on what Bill 
Clinton has promised the homosexual community" and working to repeal 
gay-rights ordinances in Colorado and Oregon. Creators of an anti-gay 
rights/anti-Clinton television commercial that is airing nationally on 
commercial and Christian television stations.



Christian Coalition

President: Pat Robertson.

National membership: 400 chapters in 46 states, with 175,000 members.

The coalition sponsors annual Road to Victory conferences to educate 
members on campaigning for local and state elections, as well as 
Christian Coalition Leadership School seminars throughout the United 
States to train political activists to conduct civic and partisan 
campaigns, hoping to train 25,000 activists by 1995. The group also 
supports efforts to overturn gay-rights ordinances, challenge public 
school textbooks and library books, oppose family leave and some 
federal assistance programs, including federally funded school 
breakfasts.



Citizens for Excellence in Education

President: Bob Simonds.

CEE's mission is to elect members of the group to all 16,000 school 
boards throughout the United States. Simonds also founded the National 
Association of Christian Educators and has published pamphlets and 
booklet, including "How to Elect Christians to Public Offices," a 
questionnaire for school-board candidates. CEE also mounts challenges 
to public school textbooks and library books. In the 1991-1992 school 
year, CEE activists objected to "Little Red Riding Hood," J.D. 
Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye," John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and 
Men" and other books, basing those objections on perceived references 
to satanism, occultism and New Age beliefs.



Colorado for Family Values

Chairman: Will Perkins

CFV began in 1991 to defeat a legislative initiative to protect 
homosexuals from harassment and discrimination, and a Colorado Springs 
gay-rights initiative. CFV is the driving force behind Amendment 2, 
and has assisted in anti-gay rights campaigns in Oregon, Columbia, 
Mo., Portland, Maine, and Tampa, Fla. CFV's board of directors include 
Sharon Bath, who attended the 1991 Christian Coalition "Road to 
Victory" conference; Barbara Sheldon of the Colorado chapter of the 
Traditional Values Coalition; Randy Hicks of Focus on the Family; the 
Rev. Leon Kelly, the anti-gang activist; and Bert Nelson, president of 
the Colorado chapter of Concerned Women for America.



Concerned Women for America

President and founder: Beverly LaHay.

Membership: Given as 500,000 to 600,000 nationwide.

This ultraconservative anti-feminist, anti-gay rights group supported 
U.S. Supreme Court nominees Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas, and has 
actively mounted grass-roots campaigns in many state and local 
elections. CWFA is fighting Iowa's Equal Rights Amendment and gay-
rights measures in Colorado, Oregon, Georgia, Florida and Maine. The 
group also has challenged public-school textbooks and library books 
for failing to promote biblical values.



Eagle Forum President

and Founder: Phyllis Schafly.

National Membership: Given as 50,000 to 80,000

This organization was active in locally based battles against abortion 
right, day care, family leave and other issues, especially the 1992 
battle to defeat Iowa's ERA. An offshoot of the Eagle Forum 
successfully campaigned in Jacksonville, Fla., to have the school 
board adopt "Teen Aid," a sex-education curriculum that advocates 
abstinence as the only form of birth control. A Planned Parenthood 
suit against the program claims it is religiously based, inaccurate 
and fails to meet state statutory requirements for sex education. 
Eagle Forum, with Colorado's Focus On The Family, also was active in 
pressuring the Alabama state school board to ban HIV/AIDS education 
material from state-approved school materials.



Focus On The Family

President: James Dobson.

This group is based in Colorado Springs and has a $60 million annual 
budget. It is active nationwide in supporting anti-abortion and anti-
gay rights candidates. Focus on the Family has several associate 
coalitions of special-interest groups who purpose, Dobson has said, is 
to ensure legislators "can no longer write off the concerns of 
conservative Christian families."

Active in opposing gay-rights and equal-rights amendment ordinances, 
and in challenges to public school textbooks and library books, Focus 
On The Family sponsors Community Impact Seminars, "encourag(ing) 
Christian involvement at a grassroots level," in Colorado and other 
states.



National Empowerment Television

Director: Paul Weyrich, co-founder with Jerry Falwell of Moral 
Majority.

NET stresses issues important to the religious right, featuring 
programs with high-ranking government officials including cabinet 
secretaries and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.



Rutherford Institute

Co-founder: R.J. Rushdoony

The institute is based at Virginia Beach, Va., near the Christian 
Coalition national headquarters. Rushdoony is a leading Christian 
reconstructionist who advocates restructuring civil law to be grounded 
on a literal interpretation of the Bible. The institute focuses on 
anti-abortion rights and "religious liberty" cases advocating public 
prayer, including creationism in public-school curricula. Rutherford 
Institute materials are used by gay-rights opponents in Colorado and 
Oregon.



Traditional Values Coalition

President: Lou Sheldon.

Membership: 7,000 conservative Christian churches in California and 
representatives in other states, including Colorado, where TVC of 
Colorado chairman Barbara Sheldon is an executive board member of 
Colorado for Family Values. TVC is a formidable force in California, 
campaigning against abortion and gay-rights laws. Working with other 
"pro-family" groups, Sheldon has announced plans to conduct 40 to 50 
seminars throughout California "to train our public affairs 
representatives to go back to their churches and educate people before 
talking about voter registration.



"You can have Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson stand in front of a bank 
of microphones and endorse our candidates, or you can quietly send out 
a pro-family slate that tells our community who the candidates are our 
ballot." 		-- Ralph Reed, Jr.

"America is at a crossroads. Either she returns to her Christian roots 
or she will continue to legalize sodomy, slaughter innocent babies, 
destroy the minds of her children, squander her resources and sink 
into oblivion. 		-- Pat Robertson

"We want as soon as possible to see a majority of the Republican Party 
in the hands of pro-family Christians by 1996." 		-- Pat 
Robertson

"It's very naive to think that there's a peaceful co-existence today 
(between liberals and conservatives), and the bottom line is, it's 
either us or them. 		-- The Rev. Billy Falling, Christian Voters 
League

 


-- 
Murray M. Altheim      "Ils ont l'orteil de Bouc, & d'un Chevreil l'oreille,
Instructional Consultant    La corne d'un Chamois, & la face vermeille
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