Posted on 01/23/2004 9:26:50 AM PST by Valin
Conservative Episcopalian bishops and church leaders are organizing a network of socially conservative parishes in order to stem the tide of liberalism within the Episcopal Church USA. Frank Griswold, the leader of the movement, emphasizes that the members of the new network will remain Episcopalian and that their mission is both religious and political.
The new group, The Network of Anglican Communion Dioceses and Parishes, joins the diverse group of religious conservatives commonly known as "The Religious Right."
In "The Orthodox Alliance" (November/December 1995), Fred Barnes discusses how theological conservatives of Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant churches, who now have more in common with each other than with their liberal co-religionists, have put their theological differences aside to combat moral decadence in America.
The Orthodox Alliance
By Fred Barnes
The head table at the Christian Coalition's "Road to Victory" conference in early September was a mosaic of ecumenism. Seated in front of the podium was Rabbi Daniel Lapin, an Orthodox Jew from Seattle and founder of Toward Tradition, a conservative group. Nearby was the Reverend E. V. Hill, a black Baptist preacher from Los Angeles. Not far away was the Reverend Michael Goodyear, a Roman Catholic priest from Washington, D.C.
And of course Pat Robertson, the Christian Broadcasting Network executive and chief honcho of the Christian Coalition, was there. Robertson and his sidekick, Ralph Reed, have long been eager to reach beyond evangelical Protestants and create what might be called the Interfaith Coalition. The demographics of the head table showed they're making headway.
And Robertson and Reed aren't the only religious conservatives bent on transcending centuries of distrust, fighting, bigotry, and anti-Semitism to embrace allies of radically different theology. When Orthodox Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, president of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, began exploring the idea of opening a Washington office, he called on Bill Bennett, the former drug czar and a Roman Catholic, for advice.
When James Dobson, an evangelical Christian, wanted to bolster his attacks on "moral decline," he invited movie critic Michael Medved, an Orthodox Jew, on his popular "Focus on the Family" radio show to talk about Hollywood and films. When Bennett gathered a group in Washington to discuss ways to halt cultural decay, he invited, among others, Catholics (George Weigel of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and Russell Hittinger of Catholic University and the American Enterprise Institute) and Jews (Lapin and Bill Galston, a former Clinton White House aide) and Protestant evangelicals (Chuck Colson of the Prison Fellowship and Lou Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition).
"These things are happening all the time and there's an explanation for it," says Michael Cromartie of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. "There's a new ecumenism. Divisions that separate Catholics and Jews and Protestants are breaking down because of the culture war. These people are so concerned about the moral decline of the country that they're willing to bracket aside their doctrinal differences in order to rebuild a culture."
This is a rapidly congealing movement with extraordinary potential. It represents an historic breakthrough, uniting conservative religious groups that bitterly scorned each other until recently. And it may emerge as a majority coalition in American politics.
Pollster Fred Steeper of Market Strategies concluded after the 1994 election that the agenda of religious conservatives is shared by most Americans Reed says when he was hired in 1989 to run the Christian Coalition, Robertson declared: "If you can get the evangelical Christians and the pro-family Roman Catholics to work together, there isn't any bill you couldn't pass in Congress or in any state legislature in the country."
Robertson still believes that. One result is the founding of a new offshoot of the Christian Coalition, the Catholic Alliance. (In studying the demographics of its 1.7 million membership, the coalition had discovered it was already 16 percent Catholic and nearly 2 percent Jewish.)
Hired to run the alliance was Maureen Roselli, a former staffer of the National Right to Life Committee. "We're not trying to get the bishops involved in politics," says Reed. "We want to provide a vehicle for lay Catholics who are pro-family and pro-life." The Christian Coalition's Washington office is already such a vehicle: the staff consists of four Catholics and one Jew.
There's a backdrop to this union of Catholics and evangelicals: the pro-life movement. It was predominantly Catholic until the 1980s, when Protestant evangelicals swept in. Still, the Catholic-evangelical tie was a tenuous one.
In 1987, Bennett was invited by the Reverend Jerry Falwell to deliver the commencement address at Liberty University. Falwell told Bennett: "I'm going to put my arm around you and destroy your career." And a student was quoted in a local paper as expressing surprise that Bennett openly admitted he's Catholic.
"You don't get that now," says Bennett. At the 1994 "Road to Victory" conference, Reed gave Bennett an award as Catholic Layman of the Year. "I didn't know you were authorized to do this," quipped Bennett.
At the 1995 conference, Bennett joked in his speech, "I'd have quoted the Bible but I'm not allowed to read it." Laughter erupted. "That's O.K. We wrote it," Bennett then said. That produced more laughter.
The bond between Catholics and evangelicals was formalized in a manifesto signed by three-dozen Christian intellectuals in 1994. Called "Evangelicals and Catholics Together," it laid the groundwork for unity on non-theological matters and on a cultural and political agenda.
The document grew out of a conference in 1992 in New York sponsored by the Institute on Religion and Public Life. The institute's head, Father Richard John Neuhaus, is a conservative Lutheran pastor who became a Catholic priest, thus a perfect bridge figure. The 1992 session was devoted to lectures on the Pentecostal revival in Central America, where Protestants and Catholics were killing each other.
Hearing this, Colson said evangelicals and Catholics should draft a statement on how to work together, not fight. Neuhaus agreed, and two years later, the manifesto appeared. (A book with three pieces by evangelicals, including Colson, and three by Catholics, including Neuhaus, is in the works.) Among the signers are Robertson, Bill Bright of Campus Crusade for Christ, John Cardinal O'Connor of the Catholic Archdiocese of New York, and Mary Ann Glendon of Harvard University.
Their agenda is similar to the Christian Coalition's. "We will not be discouraged but will multiply every effort...to secure the legal protection of the unborn," they said. School choice and parental rights were warmly endorsed, pornography denounced as "cultural and moral debasement." They also advocated "a renewed spirit of acceptance, understanding, and cooperation across lines of religion, race, ethnicity, and class." And they praised "a vibrant market economy" and "a renewed appreciation of Western culture."
Moreover, they insisted all this does not constitute a "religious agenda." Rather, "this is a set of directions oriented to the common good and discussable on the basis of public reason."
That's an important point. While religious faith brings them together, it's obviously not what they agree on. Their goals are cultural and political, not religious. "These people are getting together not to discuss who Jesus is but how to rebuild the moral and cultural fabric of the country," says Cromartie. "There's a common enemy out there, the decadent culture of America," says Bennett.
"Heresies aside, schisms aside, theological disquisitions aside, this is the dividing line. America is divided between people who believe there's moral decline and people who say, 'What do you mean by moral decline?'"
Adds Reed: "The reality is the darkness is so pervasive that it forces those of us who share the light to come together in spite of our theological differences." Echoes Lapin: "Despite doctrinal and theological differences, we are unified by a moral consensus.... There is no earthly hope of Orthodox Jewish life continuing in America in security and prosperity if there's a breakdown in society."
The first public campaign by evangelical Protestants, Catholics, and Jews was in the New York City school board races in 1993. The issue was the "Rainbow Curriculum" that taught details about homosexuals and their lifestyle to grade school kids. The leader was Mary Cummings, a Queens Catholic who'd fought the curriculum in her school district.
Reed dispatched a Christian Coalition organizer. Lapin provided help. Christian Coalition voter guides were passed out at Catholic parishes. And religious conservatives won roughly half the local school board seats.
Bringing Jews into the movement was important. (Lapin is now one of the most applauded speakers at Christian Coalition events.) But there's a limit on how many will be attracted because it is Orthodox Jews--roughly 10 to 15 percent of American Jews--who have been most willing to affiliate with evangelical and Catholic conservatives. "Jews are not responding with the alacrity Catholics did," says Elliott Abrams, the former Reagan State Department official.
Most are secular and liberal, and thus feel threatened by the Christian Right. They shouldn't, argues Dennis Prager, an Orthodox Jew and radio personality in Los Angeles. He tells the hypothetical story of a woman working late who walks to her car down a dark alley.
She's approached by eight men. Would it be consolation to her, Prager asks, if she knew they were coming from a Bible study?
Even the relatively small number of Jews who've joined conservative Protestants and Catholics have been influential. They've changed the image of the Christian Coalition. "It's allowed us to shatter the stereotype of a white, male, Protestant, evangelical movement," claims Reed. "And it's changed us as a movement. It's made us a lot more sensitive to issues of religious bigotry toward Jews and Catholics."
Diversity has become a conservative Christian value. "We haven't made diversity a litmus test," says Reed, "but it's become highly valued in the movement."
Given this close contact, religious friction is inevitable. Jews are wary of Christian proselytizing, but there's been little. Lapin says he's been witnessed to three times. Abrams was approached by a man identifying himself as an ex-Marine as he left the hall following a Christian Coalition panel in September. "I'm married to a Jewish woman," the man told Abrams, and the couple worships at a "messianic congregation." Abrams ought to attend such a congregation, the man said.
"Those are Christian congregations," Abrams replied. Yes, the man nodded, and he didn't press the point. Abrams, not offended, says it "was not an unpleasant experience."
Fred Barnes is executive editor of The Weekly Standard.
Obviously to discuss how to tear down "the moral and cultural fabric of the country."
No I didn't. Tell those who didn't about it.
foreverfree
They never seem to confront them with the right questions.
O'Reilly doesn't KNOW the right questions.
He talks a lot about being Catholic--but it's obvious if you watch for long enough that he's long on talk, short on substance.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.