Some Ministers Remain Wary : Political Clout Escapes Christian Voter Group

During the 15 1/2 years that he served as a pastoral minister, the Rev. Billy Falling became intimately familiar with the need for faith and patience.

However, the lofty aspirations that Falling has for the Christian Voters League, a 2-year-old organization that he hopes will transform American politics by refocusing attention on “traditional values,” may put his ministerial confidence to a more severe test than it ever faced during his days in the pulpit.

Professing faith that the Escondido-based religious-political group is poised to “take off like wildfire” amid planning for a weekly television program next year promoting it, Falling hopes to see the league’s membership swell to 1 million families by 1990. To do so, the group’s track record will have to make a meteoric rise, because since Falling officially launched the CVL in the fall of 1984, only about 800 individuals and families have enlisted in his crusade to restore his conservative vision of decency and morality to government.

Within 10 years, Falling expects to see CVL chapters established in 8,765 major communities throughout the nation. To date, however, there are only three chapters in North San Diego County--in Escondido, Vista and San Marcos--and one in Hemet, in Riverside County.

Under another major goal established by Falling, CVL members or politicians sympathetic to the group’s concerns would dominate literally thousands of city councils and school boards across the nation by the end of the century. However, most local politicians currently view the group with either indifference or suspicion, while nearly two-thirds of the North County candidates asked to respond this fall to the CVL’s “Biblical Scoreboard” questionnaire on issues such as abortion and pornography simply ignored the survey with impunity, demonstrating how political clout remains more a dream than reality for the organization.

Yet, like a fervent true believer, Falling scoffs at any suggestion that his goals may be a bit unrealistic or that his conservative, fundamentalist message may find a considerably more limited audience than he envisions.

“We as Christian leaders do live by faith, and that’s certainly the case here,” Falling said. “I do feel this is the biggest test of my faith that I’ve ever experienced in the ministry.

“We’re at the starting line, we know that. We recognize that we’re not going to change everything in 20 minutes or 20 days or even 20 months. It may take 20 years. . . . But I believe it is going to happen and that, someday, we will prevail.”

From the outset, Falling, a 47-year-old Oklahoma native who moved here 12 years ago, decided that the CVL should focus on local government--city councils and school boards. That decision was based partly on Falling’s realization that his still-small group’s effectiveness could be maximized, at least for the foreseeable future, at the local level, but also from a basic philosophic assumption.

“Washington, D.C., and Sacramento are like outer space to a lot of us,” said Falling, who was born on a Cherokee Indian reservation--he is five-sixteenths Cherokee--and grew up in the Los Angeles area. “Besides, people spend their money, educate their kids, live their lives right here. We decided to concentrate right here in River City where we’ve got big problems.”

Intending to pursue a law career, Falling attended Los Angeles City College, but, after a two-year stint in the Army, “realized my calling” and enrolled in L.I.F.E. Bible College in Los Angeles, graduating in 1968.

After preaching at a church in Manhattan Beach for three years, Falling became the pastor of the Assemblies of God Church in Escondido in 1972. About a year later, when he was ousted by that church’s congregation as a result of what he termed “personality problems,” Falling and 24 followers formed the Faith Center of Escondido. At its peak, the Faith Center had about 200 members, Falling said, but had dwindled back down to about two dozen by the time it closed in the early 1980s.

An imposing, husky 6-footer with thick dark hair and a pulpit-honed verbal intensity, Falling has been at the forefront of the movement through which conservative religious leaders and church officials have become increasingly active in local politics and government in recent years.

A few years ago, Falling, who has been married 22 years and is the father of two teen-agers, was instrumental in efforts to remove programming that he considered pornographic or “objectionable” from North County cable television. Though that crusade failed twice at the ballot box, Falling takes credit for the ultimate removal of the Playboy Channel from a Times Mirror Cable Television service in early 1985, arguing that “we raised such a ruckus” that mass cancellations of the sexually explicit channel eventually made it unprofitable. (Cable officials, however, explained their action as a business decision that stemmed from problems attributable to constant viewer turnover, not the two widely publicized campaigns. Times Mirror Cable is a subsidiary of Times Mirror Co., which publishes the Los Angeles Times.)

Regardless, the cable TV battles helped crystallize a notion that had been forming in Falling’s mind for some time--the belief that his own evangelical work, as well as that of other priests, pastors and ministers of all faiths should not stop at the church door. It was that guiding tenet--the conviction that politicians and public officials “were just undoing what we were trying to accomplish” in church--that prompted Falling to incorporate the Christian Voters League in September, 1984.

Though individuals like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and scores of others at the local level had long since blurred the lines between politics and religion, the principle of the separation of church and state posed a formidable philosophical barrier that one CVL official, the Rev. Roger Friend of Vista Christian Fellowship, described as “a big rock, a monolith that we’re still chipping away at.”

For his part, Falling refers to the church-state separation issue as “the Big Lie . . . force-fed to the church.”

Saying there is nothing in the Constitution precluding churches’ entry in the political arena, Falling argues that, for too long, church leaders ignored “government’s attempt . . . to push us off into a political ghetto.”

“The church has cut off one of its legs,” Falling said. “It emphasizes telling people what to believe. But the other side of the Gospel is telling people how to live. . . . If the church hadn’t abandoned its responsibilities in the past 40 years, there wouldn’t be a need for the Christian Voters League.”

“God belongs in every aspect of life,” added Cynthia Samaniego, a CVL parish representative at St. Francis Catholic Church in Vista. “A big part of our job is education on that subject.”

Fearful of being lumped together with, in Falling’s words, “wild-eyed . . . crazies” and the more extremist elements of the conservative movement, CVL members, from Falling on down, are extremely mindful of the group’s image. To illustrate the point, Falling noted: “We’re opposed to abortion, but we’re also opposed to bombing abortion clinics.”

“We don’t want to come across as fanatic, Bible-thumping extremists who want everyone else to burn in hell if you don’t agree with us,” added Samaniego, secretary of the CVL chapter in Vista.

That image, however, is precisely the one that many leaders within North County religious and political circles have of the CVL--largely because of the vitriolic rhetoric that occasionally spews from Falling himself.

Typical of the verbal bombast that raises suspicions of the group’s goals and motives is that found in a videotape that Falling distributes to local chapters.

“For the past 15 years . . . while I have seen the churches of America grow phenomenally, I have also witnessed, like yourself, the decline of our moral values of our nation,” Falling says on the tape.

“Basically today, we have a public educational system that is atheistic. The hedonistic entertainment industry of Hollywood is flooding our land with pornography and the bed-hopping filth that comes from that community. The courts of our nation have abandoned their base for law, which has been the Bible, and have based our system of law upon humanistic values. Our news media and press have have become anti-Christian and sympathetic to the Communist world view. And government itself has become socialistic in nature, extracting approximately 40% from every wage earner of America in one form of taxes or another.

“The American dream is vanishing before our very eyes as we pay the bills for a drug-crazed culture that is promoting sexual perversion and the destruction of our traditional values. I for one want to change all of this.”

While many of Falling’s fellow ministers say they concur in general with his lament, they vigorously disagree with the way he is going about trying to do something about it. In addition, the CVL’s crusades against abortion, pornography and homosexuality have persuaded other church leaders to keep their distance--again, not necessarily because they personally disagree with the CVL’s stands on those and other issues, but because they see the group, contrary to its leaders’ protestations, as too far to the political right and too narrowly focused in its mission.

“I don’t see anything very Christian or biblical about what they’re doing,” said the Rev. Steve Gilbertson, pastor of House of Prayer Lutheran Church of Escondido. “To me, they fail to take into consideration Christian precepts such as compassion, forgiveness and grace. They view the world from a rather black-and-white perspective.”

“I don’t appreciate groups that try to tell everybody else what they ought to do,” added the Rev. Bob Brashares, pastor of the First United Methodist Church of Escondido. “I’m troubled by movements that claim the support of all right-minded people, because that implies that if you don’t agree with them, then you’re not right-minded or moralistic. That’s an effort that borders on blackmail.”

In the name of denominational unity, Falling has sounded the rallying cry that the battles that his group is waging “are not ones that Catholics or Protestants or Baptists . . . can win by themselves.” Even Falling acknowledges, however, that his appeal has met with only limited success.

While generally conservative churches such as the Catholic, Pentecostal and Evangelical have responded warmly to Falling’s plans, he notes that Lutherans, Methodists, Episcopalians and “other liberal churches . . . haven’t come running.”

Seeking to avoid the “one-issue” fringe group label that many of the CVL’s critics would place on it, Falling contends that his organization deals with a diversity of topics that encompass “the social issues of the ‘80s--abortion, pornography, AIDS, public education, teaching homosexuality, health clinics.” Beyond querying political candidates on those topics, CVL members also frequently picket abortion clinics and pornography stores, and have lobbied local governments to take action relating to those issues.

However, one skeptic, the Rev. Charles Rines of Trinity Episcopal Church in Escondido, noted: “This may be triple-issue voting, but it’s the same principle.”

For example, the “Candidates Biblical Scoreboard” that the CVL prepared in rating candidates in the Nov. 4 election dealt with a fairly narrow range of issues such as abortion, contraceptives’ availability to minors, homosexuality, pornography, prayer in schools and the teaching of creationism.

Of the 85 candidates surveyed, only 29 responded, with most of the others arguing that the questions dealt with issues unrelated to their official duties or were too complex to be answered with a simple yes or no.

While Falling railed that the non-respondees “spat in the face of our form of representative government,” none of them suffered negative repercussions at the polls, despite the fact that about 71,000 of the questionnaires were distributed throughout North County, mostly through churches.

Indeed, in most cases, those candidates who ignored the group’s “Biblical Scoreboard” and “Biblical Scorecard”--the former covering all local and statewide races, and the latter tailored to particular communities--generally ran far ahead of those contenders whose responses were ideologically compatible with the CVL.

“I’m proof that they weren’t very important--I got elected and I didn’t respond,” chuckled Jeannette Smith, one of two victors in the 10-candidate Vista City Council race. The other victor, Eugene Asmus, did respond, but noted: “It probably didn’t have that much impact. Growth and redevelopment were the key in that election.”

However, Gloria McClellan, the newly elected mayor of Vista and a CVL member herself, said that she regards CVL backing as one of several important ingredients in her victory, and differs with those candidates who characterized the group’s questionnaire as an improper intrusion into personal moral matters of no relevance to the jobs they were seeking.

“You’re constantly dealing with moral issues in local government,” McClellan said. “When you’re looking at whether to allow a bar next to a school, is that a moral issue? You bet it is. These questions are very appropriate to ask, because this tells people whether you have a strong religious background and strong moral fiber.”

By virtue of its tax-exempt status, the CVL’s national headquarters in Escondido is barred from endorsing or directly assisting political candidates. The local chapters, however, have that right and intend to exercise it in future elections, according to Virgil Ford, president of the Vista chapter.

Although the CVL currently has only about 800 individual or family memberships--each paying annual dues of $25--Falling claims that the group represents nearly 20,000 voters in North County who, given time and proper organization, can be mobilized on behalf of issues and candidates.

Falling emphasizes that he receives no salary from the CVL, though he said that he hopes to “eventually work into one” within a few years. The group now pays some of his expenses, primarily meals, but Falling said that he and and his family live on his “life insurance benefits” and honorariums that he receives when he speaks at churches in an attempt to garner new CVL members. In the past year, he estimates that he made less than $2,000 “from everything I’ve done” in connection with the group.

“I hope that eventually we can hire a full-time executive director so I can hit the road and really get this thing going,” Falling said.

Even some of Falling’s followers, however, question whether the group will ever be politically potent even in San Diego County, much less in thousands of communities across the nation.

One such skeptic is Kenneth Cunningham, a CVL member who finished fourth in a five-candidate race for two seats on the Vista school board.

“I’m afraid I feel that Christian candidates have very little chance of being elected,” Cunningham said. His behind-the-scenes backing from CVL members, Cunningham added, perhaps helped to attract conservative and pro-Christian votes, but “also likely alienated an equally big or bigger contingent of non-Christian voters.”

“The problem is that, to most people, the Christian message is seen as foolishness,” Cunningham said. “To others, it is offensive. Only to the select few is it a message of life and hope. So Christian candidates have two choices--trying to hide their religious background, or trumpeting it and risking the likelihood of a backlash.”

Falling, though, argues that the group is still in its fledgling stage and that it would be premature to conclude that it will never attain its goals, which are as sweeping as they are seemingly unrealistic--for the CVL or any organization.

In addition to the nationwide goals that call for 1 million members within five years and chapters in more than 8,700 communities within 10 years, a CVL brochure identifies three major objectives for each local chapter: becoming the largest organization of voters within the community within one year, electing a school board candidate and city council candidate within two years, and electing a majority to those governmental bodies within four years.

Drastically understating the obvious, Falling concedes that some of those goals “may take a little longer than we thought.”

He takes heart, however, from seemingly small encouragements--such as the fact that the CVL recently sent its “first out-of-state kit” to a group that hopes to organize a chapter in Bend, Ore. Early next year, he hopes to help launch CVL chapters in Orange County.

Moreover, with the CVL scheduled to begin a weekly 30-minute local television program on Cox Cable in January--a show that Falling plans to expand nationwide the following year, assuming memberships rise sufficiently to pay for it--he contends that the group’s ranks will “start increasing geometrically.”

When that happens, Falling says, the days of politicians “thumbing their noses at us” by ignoring the CVL’s questionnaires--or acting antithetically to its concerns--will end.

“When they feel the heat, they’ll see the light,” Falling said.

Many politicians and religious figures, however, regard the CVL as more of an ego salve for Falling than an embryonic political juggernaut, as typified by one minister who said: “He seems to see this as his shot at the big leagues.”

“I think he’s pretty ambitious for himself,” said Rines of Trinity Episcopal Church. “His interest has always seemed to be more in campaigning on these issues than in being the pastor of a small church. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But I think he feels he can really do something and make a name for himself in that field.”

“His nationwide plans strike me as pretty big hopes on a pretty slim program,” added Methodist minister Brashares. “But who knows? All kind of strange things have happened before.”

Smiling, Falling says that he understands such doubts, but adds that they do nothing to shake his confidence in the ultimate success of the crusade that he describes as “a vehicle for getting back what we’ve had taken away from us.”

“The issue is not Billy Falling,” he said emphatically. “The issue is Christians getting organized and seeing this nation return to a Christian consensus. . . . I have faith that, however long or whatever it takes, we’re going to see that.”