Christian Coalition in a Good Spot to Show It’s More Than Just a GOP Arm

Not many legislators were still on the House floor when Rep. Glenn Poshard stood up late on the evening of March 23 to deliver a few remarks. Nothing surprising about that: Poshard isn’t the kind of politician to draw a crowd. A 49-year-old Democrat now serving his fourth term, Poshard represents a rural south-central Illinois district (the big city is Decatur) where people work mostly with their hands. There’s nothing flashy about the place, and nothing flashy about Poshard himself.

In Congress he’s been a man of the center, tilting a bit to the left on economic issues, a bit to the right on social policy. He supports an increase in the minimum wage, and opposes gun control and legal abortion. With apparently equal reverence, Poshard describes himself “as a Democrat . . . a Christian (and) . . . a Southern Baptist.” In many respects, he’s a throwback to the lunch-bucket populism that defined the Democratic Party before it was carried uptown by the social upheavals of the 1960s.

So it was somewhat surprising when Poshard that evening took aim at the Christian Coalition, the political organization founded by televangelist Pat Robertson after his bid for the 1988 Republican presidential nomination. In five years, the group has enjoyed enormous growth, attracting 1.5 million members into almost 1,500 local chapters. It has quickly become one of the most powerful forces in the conservative coalition, though lately it has been under fire from critics who say Robertson’s last book, “The New World Order,” contains anti-Semitic passages, a charge Robertson has strenuously denied but not shaken.

What provoked Poshard wasn’t that dispute, but letters he had received from the Christian Coalition supporting the GOP welfare reform plan then awaiting final passage and the tax credit for families with children that the House approved late last week. The letters, Poshard made clear, disturbed him on two counts.

Poshard’s first objection was to the suggestion that there was a “Christian position” on the proposals. The Christian Coalition publishes a score card on members of Congress, which it distributes to millions of households each election; the results have enough impact that legislators and other interest groups sometimes privately lobby Ralph Reed, the group’s executive director, to have votes included or left out. “Almost always,” Poshard said, the group judges a “good” vote to be one that agrees with the Republican position.

“By and large,” Poshard said, “Democrats score poorly. And as a result of that, although it is not explicitly stated, the inference drawn by Christian Coalition members is that Democrats are less Christian, more ungodly.

“What troubles me,” he went on, “is when I see a particular position . . . being portrayed as the ‘Christian position’ and yet in my heart I feel, as someone who has shared this basic Christian culture all my life, that the position doesn’t match up to my understanding of the Bible.”

That brought him to the welfare bill then pending in the House. The bill, as approved the day after Poshard’s remarks, would allow states to cut off aid to welfare recipients at any time, though it provides no new funds for training or education; would require states to deny assistance to women who have additional children while already on the rolls, and prevent states from providing cash assistance to women under 18 who bear children out of wedlock.

Quoting the New Testament, Dorothy Day and Mother Teresa, Poshard questioned how those proposals squared with the message of the Bible. “Let me say,” he began, “I do not believe that God’s response to the poor is some wild-eyed liberalism running around with a guilt-ridden conscience, trying to do more things, asking neither responsibility nor good judgment from those we seek to help.

“But,” he continued, “neither do I believe that God’s response to the poor is to treat them as though they are the least priority. . . . And with all due respect to the Christian Coalition and its position on this . . . and the tax relief legislation . . . where does it say in the Scriptures that the character of God is to give more to those who have and less to those who have not?”

Marshall Wittmann wrote the letters that prompted Poshard’s speech. An affable and articulate 41-year-old who once organized a grape boycott for the United Farm Workers in Detroit, Wittmann monitors Congress for the Christian Coalition from a townhouse above a popular restaurant on Capitol Hill.

Wittmann says that Poshard is wrong when he claims the group implies its opponents violate Christian principles. “We never, ever, ever suggest that we are articulating the Christian position on an issue,” says Wittmann, who is Jewish. “It is indeed ironic for me, since I wrote the letter (and) I would be the last person to suggest what the Christian position would be on an issue.”

But the picture isn’t quite so black and white. In its congressional score card, the Christian Coalition does caution that: “Scores . . . are not to be taken as a commentary on the personal faith of individual members of Congress.” But it also says the results are intended “to make sure Christian voices are heard in government.” Both Poshard and Wittmann can find support in that language for their views on whether the score card equates a higher score with greater devotion. But even if Poshard is right, the Christian Coalition is far from the first organization to suggest biblical values undergird its views; that argument has rippled through religiously based social movements since the abolitionists.

Poshard’s speech itself reflects that tradition. After criticizing the coalition for seeming to suggest that the GOP view on welfare was the Christian position, Poshard turned around and argued the Bible against the legislation.

Religious values cannot be the only, or even the predominant, guide to policy in a diverse society. But it is equally misguided to suggest that Poshard or the Christian Coalition or any group cannot marshal religious arguments behind their cause.

The balance, argues Pete Wehner, policy director at the conservative think tank Empower America, comes with “humility”--the understanding that on almost any issue, there is no “monolithic Christian position,” much less one that defines all religious faiths. While religious texts “speak to principles,” Wehner argues, they do not offer definitive guidance on how to implement those principles with specific policies.

Indeed, Wittmann himself implicitly acknowledges as much in disputing Poshard’s second argument--his criticism of the Republican welfare plan. Wittmann says he doesn’t quarrel with Poshard’s contention “that the Scripture gives an important priority to helping the poor.” His difference “is on how best to achieve that objective. . . . We believe the most compassionate system should be starting to stop dependency.”

Is the gulf between Poshard and Wittmann on welfare unbridgeable? It need not be. Compassion imposes the obligation to help the poor, but compassion should not equal license. When it comes to uplifting those without, social obligation (to train and educate and ensure a minimal safety net for children) and personal responsibility (to accept work and avoid self-destructive behavior like repeated childbearing out of wedlock) are not incompatible. But the House welfare bill stresses the latter to the virtual exclusion of the former.

With its close ties to the Republican leadership, and its transcendent responsibility to the values that Poshard so eloquently cites, no group would be better positioned than the Christian Coalition to advocate a more balanced approach. Ralph Reed fervently insists that the coalition is more than an arm of the Republican Party--a claim of which Poshard, like many others, remains dubious. The welfare debate now moving into the Senate offers Reed an unparalleled opportunity to begin changing their minds.