‘Purist’ Right: Upward, Christian Soldiers

They are the hard-core, pro-Bush supporters at this Republican Convention, the single-minded troops of the “religious right” who honor God, flag and family and, with equal fervor, damn homosexuality, abortion and pornography.

Working quietly from the precinct level up to presidential campaigns, these evangelical and fundamentalist Protestants were a major force at the convention this year, making up an estimated 20% of the delegates.

Purists rather than pragmatists, they tend to reject traditional political compromise, a stance that often produces conflict with many members of the Republican Establishment.

They put their stamp on the GOP platform, a hard-right document that declares the party’s adherence to Judeo-Christian ideals, prayer in schools and federal tax subsidies for private schools, and its total opposition to abortion. Although these Christian conservatives are solidly behind President Bush’s reelection, their hearts are more with Vice President Dan Quayle, as well as such other prospective 1996 presidential contenders as Pat Robertson, the religious broadcaster, and William J. Bennett, the former Bush Administration drug czar. All three articulate their Christian values.

Richard Weinhold, a 39-year-old advertising man from Bedford, Tex., and chairman of the Texas Christian Coalition, is at the convention because the Bush campaign arranged for him to be an at-large delegate.

His organization, he said, has 7,000 members in 70 county chapters, each with a coordinator to encourage voting and participation in election campaigns at the local level. Although the coalition is nonpartisan, he said, the overwhelming percentage of its members are pro-Bush.

“The big issue is family values,” Weinhold told a reporter. “But we’re concerned about economic issues too. It’s hard to raise a family when taxes go through the roof.”

Others describe religious experiences as their motivation for going into politics.

Alaska delegate Kim Gaines, who opposes abortion because she had one at age 14, said she suffered a miscarriage last year and was “personally devastated.”

“I want a child in the worst way. But now I realize that it was God’s way of getting me here.”

When she began to recover from the miscarriage, she realized she wanted to be a Bush delegate--but she had missed the filing deadline. She persuaded friends to vote for her as a write-in, bypassing the local party organization.

In other cases, however, conservative Christians have taken over GOP organizations at county and state levels to exert political power.

In the San Diego area, for example, a low-key campaign by church-oriented groups in 1990 succeeded in helping two-thirds of their slate’s 88 candidates win elections to party posts.

Religious fundamentalists now control a majority of California’s 58 Republican county organizations.

Christian candidates have won by blanketing church parking lots with campaign pamphlets, using church directories for telephone canvassing and avoiding public candidate forums or muting their religious beliefs if they appear before outside audiences.

“It’s like guerrilla warfare,” Ralph Reed, executive director of the Virginia-based Christian Coalition, told The Times last spring.

“You’ve got two choices: You can wear (camouflage uniforms) and shimmy along on your belly, or you can put on a red coat and stand up for everyone to see. It comes down to whether you want to be the British Army in the Revolutionary War or the Viet Cong. History tells us which tactic was more effective.”

James L. Guth, political science professor at Furman University in Greenville, S.C., said a study done with three colleagues estimated that politically conservative Protestants account for 23% of the voting age population.

Times staff writer Connie Stewart contributed to this story.