Religious Right Courted by Both Parties

The newly perceived political influence of the country’s evangelical/fundamentalist leadership was demonstrated dramatically at the National Religious Broadcasters’ annual convention here this week.

President Reagan appeared for the fourth year in a row, saying he almost “fired myself” for interrupting his work on the budget and the State of the Union Address to speak to the more than 3,000 television and radio broadcasters.

Vice President George Bush and Rep. Jack Kemp (R-N.Y.), two likely candidates to seek the 1988 Republican presidential nomination, also spoke here--though the congressman’s talk was at an auxiliary event.

But the predominantly Protestant broadcasters, an organization growing increasingly comfortable in identifying itself with the Republican agenda, also gave courteous treatment to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), who agreed to a convention debate with Moral Majority President Jerry Falwell.

Times Have Changed

Falwell said after the debate that he did not think a liberal politician would have found the time five years ago for such a discussion before a highly conservative religious group.

By accepting, Kennedy gave a sign that he recognizes that “these people are a legitimate segment of society, that they have a valid point of view,” Falwell said.

Ben Armstrong, executive director of the National Religious Broadcasters, said, “What’s really happened is that we’ve been given a voice after being forgotten for 40 or 50 years.”

That achievement also was claimed by the Rev. Tim LaHaye, who moved two weeks ago from San Diego to Washington, where he heads the umbrella religious right group, the American Coalition for Traditional Values (ACTV, pronounced “active”). His wife, Beverly, leads another lobbying group here, Concerned Women for America.

‘Evangelicals Are Real’

“Everyone, including the media, has come to grips with the fact that we evangelicals are real, we are part of the American scene . . . so they’re beginning to deal with us,” LaHaye said.

He said that a cordial visit to CBS last Sunday contrasted to “four years ago (when) they treated us like aliens who had no rights to speak up.”

Now, with their goal of respect more or less attained, fundamentalists are beginning to view the future in a different light.

If Falwell and his personal favorite for the 1988 Republican presidential nomination, Bush, have their way, there will be a lot of talk about pluralism, tolerance and decency.

(Falwell all but endorsed Bush for the 1988 Republican presidential nomination--not only by his laudatory convention introduction for Bush but also by a slip of the tongue, “my friend and President . . . Vice President George Bush. . . .”

After Bush’s address, Falwell said in an interview that he is backing Bush because he is the most realistic choice, he says all the right things on national defense, abortion, school prayer, etc., “and says them with conviction.”

Despite his adherence to the conservative planks--which critics regard as anything but pluralistic--Bush stressed the American ideal of “decency and respect for the opinions” of others, whatever their faith. Bush made the same points to Falwell’s Baptist Fundamentalism conference here last spring.

“I think our people, conservative religious Americans, are more and more embracing a pluralistic philosophy,” Falwell said. “I see a great deal more tolerance in our people than I saw 10 years ago.

“I personally feel that it doesn’t hurt (Bush) at all to say that to our people; I think it is necessary for him to say it. It’s an educational process.”

Even Reagan, it was noted, had a much more mellow remark about Communists than his “evil empire” characterization of the Soviet Union before the National Assn. of Evangelicals in 1983:

“In the last four years I’ve come to believe that we’re all God’s children--clerks, kings and Communists. We’re all made in the image of God,” the President said.

The budding friendship of Kennedy and Falwell, plus their cordial demeanor before the broadcasters, demonstrated a tone of civility that a leading religious commentator, Martin E. Marty, complained has been missing during the religious right’s resurgence.

Not that disdain for the “unsaved” and vitriolic abuse of “secular humanists” is at an end. Evangelist Jimmy Swaggert has angered Catholic groups while LaHaye and others are adamantly opposed to homosexual civil rights and feminist causes.

Former Congressman John Conlan and his Faith America group seek to forge closer identification of government with conservative Christianity. At last year’s broadcasters convention, Carolyn Brown Sundseth, associate director of the White House’s Office of Public Liaison, declared that everyone who works at the White House ought to get saved or get out.

Armstrong indicated he has changed along with his organization toward more involvement with social issues. He said he backed out of going to the 1980 meeting of the Religious Roundtable in Dallas-- one of the first major gatherings of religious right leaders--because “it seemed like a smoky room, a few people deciding things for other people.”

As a consensus appeared to build, the National Religious Broadcasters became more politicized, with open preferences for conservative causes.

At the same time, the organization is open to listen. Kennedy’s descriptions of hunger in Ethiopia and hardships in South Africa “scored very well among our people, many of whom have been involved in those problems.”

And it was another Democrat, a Southern Baptist named Jimmy Carter, who really emboldened “born-again” Protestants to “step out of the closet,” Armstrong said. Carter appeared once while he was President before the convention, but Armstrong said it was the Georgian’s frank statement of his evangelical beliefs in the 1976 campaign that had broad effect.

“What is now the basic support for Reagan started with Jimmy Carter,” Armstrong said.

Additional coverage in Calendar.