Coalition Targets Christian Fundamentalists for Election Defeats

Declaring that public schools are under attack by the religious right, a new coalition of teachers, parents and clergy announced Monday that it will campaign to defeat conservative Christian candidates running in local elections in San Diego County.

“We have no objection to people with strong religious beliefs running for or holding public office,” said Michael Parrish, chairman of the Community Coalition Network. “But we do oppose the use of public office to impose sectarian beliefs and values.

“The goals of the religious right wing are clear and unambiguous: to attack the public schools locally from within, to attack them statewide through the Legislature, and to turn the public schools into institutions that support and teach their religious values,” said Parrish, a UC San Diego legal history professor and former Encinitas school board member.

The coalition’s announcement comes as a grass-roots rebuttal to Christian fundamentalists, who have had dramatic success in electing candidates.

They won two-thirds of the San Diego County races in which they ran candidates in 1990, including many school board seats. Along the way, the Christian activists have grown from being a key voting bloc into a political operation that orchestrates campaigns and runs candidates. Their tools are quiet promotion through church networks to blanket church parking lots with pamphlets and use church directories for phone canvassing.

Pioneered in San Diego County, the winning tactics of the Christian right are being used widely in California.

Parrish stated at five news conferences held throughout the county that the coalition is building grass-roots support in county churches, teachers unions and parents groups.

One minister, the Rev. Jerald Stinson of Pilgrim United Church of Christ in Carlsbad, said the religious right promotes itself as the one and only form of Christian thought.

“Students need to be aware of the richness of all religion, not forced to accept any one religion,” Stinson said. “Our schools should sponsor the study of religion, not the practice of religion, and in so doing expose students to a wide diversity of religious views.”

Parrish said the coalition particularly objects to the fundamentalists’ efforts to promote school prayer and the teaching of “creationism” as a science, and to ban sex education.

Further, he said, “they want to siphon money away from the public schools to support private ones. But what of the people who cannot afford to take advantage of private schools, even with a generous tax credit? They will be left with an ever-deteriorating public system supported by dwindling resources. How will our children learn to live in a pluralistic society if increasingly we segregate them by race, religion and income during their formative years?”

The coalition was launched last summer by parents, teachers and ministers concerned with inroads made by fundamentalist politicians. “We are a very broad and very diverse network” consisting of Republicans, Democrats and independents and members of many religious denominations, Parrish said. “We don’t subscribe to any particular political philosophy.”

Parrish and other coalition members charged that many conservative Christians are not forthcoming about their religious backing when they talk to non-church groups.

“Frequently, people voted for them without knowing what they stood for,” he said, adding that the coalition wants candidates on both sides to be open about the groups that back them and thus avoid “stealth” campaigns.

The coalition Monday sent to San Diego County school board candidates copies of its Declaration of Principles, which advocates separation of church and state. The group vows to back office seekers who sign the statement and oppose those who refuse.

Besides endorsements, the coalition also will raise money to support political campaigns.

Three candidates have already been singled out for defeat, because “they have been notorious organizers of this ‘stealth’ campaign” on behalf of the fundamentalist cause, Parrish said.

Targeted for opposition are Republican candidates Connie Youngkin, Steve Baldwin and Dan Van Tieghem. All seek election to the state Assembly from San Diego County.

Responding to the coalition’s announcement, Van Tieghem said he and other Christian candidates have been open about their allegiances, and that it is the liberals who hide their support from groups such as the National Abortion Rights Action League.

He said he is not concerned about being targeted for defeat by the coalition.

“We represent the mainstream,” Van Tieghem said. “It’s evident that we are because a lot of people are starting to vote for us.”