Rev. Sheldon Basks in GOP’s Successes : Politics: The Anaheim activist prepares for ‘religious freedom’ amendment to be submitted to the Congress.

Inside a stately, pale yellow house situated in the shadow of the nation’s Capitol, the Rev. Louis P. Sheldon of Anaheim is serving up a strong mix of religion and politics.

“Religion has been discriminated against,” Sheldon tells a visitor at the home that serves as the Washington base for his Traditional Values Coalition. The time has come, he adds, to end “religious apartheid” by amending the U.S. Constitution to guarantee freedom of “religious acknowledgment and religious expression.”

Less than a year ago, while the Congress was under Democratic rule, Sheldon’s bold pronouncement might have received marginal notice.

Now, riding the conservative wave that led this year to a Republican-controlled Congress, Sheldon’s visibility--as well as that of other conservative and Christian evangelical leaders--has become more prominent in Washington.

Reaping the fruits of his labor as the head of the national church network that includes 31,000 churches, Sheldon, 60, is attempting to broaden his political influence in the nation’s Capitol.

Not only is the Anaheim minister a part of a conservative coalition that has drafted a “religious freedom” amendment to be formally introduced next month, he also has marched through Capitol Hill’s corridors of power, pressuring members of Congress to support welfare reform and tax cuts.

Some of Sheldon’s critics suggest that he may be too “far right”--even in this new political world of conservatism--to be considered an influential powerbroker on the national level.

But there are also signs suggesting he is becoming a major player.

A recent network television news story about Washington lobbyists, for example, showed Sheldon warmly shaking a congressman’s hand. And when the Republican members of Congress recently gathered on the steps of the Capitol to celebrate the completion of their 100-day “contract with America,” the House leadership looked to Sheldon to bring together a group of children for the ceremony. His four grandchildren led the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance.

“I would say it’s like I died and went to heaven,” Sheldon says. “I feel very good.”

For Sheldon, the recent legislative successes are personal victories over those critics whom he feels look disparagingly upon religious people.

The son of an orthodox Jew, Sheldon became a Christian when he was a 15-year-old high school student in Washington, after attending an evangelistic meeting.

“I could not understand why Bible reading was beginning to be questioned,” he says of a feeling that began to germinate after he became a Christian and continued when he started his ministry 35 years ago. A religious person, he felt then, was not being treated as a “first-class citizen.”

That feeling began to change, though, with the founding in 1980 of the Traditional Values Coalition, which grew out of unsuccessful political battles in the mid-1970s to criminalize acts performed in private between consenting adults and to ban homosexual teachers in California schools.

It is that anti-gay rights, as well as a strident anti-abortion agenda, that riles his political foes--and keeps some moderate Republicans at arm’s length.

In the skeptical world of Washington politics, friends and foes of Sheldon describe his organization’s current influence in Washington as “second tier” at best, not as power-packed as other longtime, high-profile groups such as the 1.5 million-member Christian Coalition.

The TVC does receive high praise from the office of Rep. John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), the Republican Conference Committee chairman who helped lead the 100-day lobbying effort for the “contract with America.”

The organization “was a very valuable part of the coalition that has been at the center of moving the Republican agenda here,” says John Czwartzcki, Boehner’s spokesman.

“They were there in the trenches, sleeves rolled up, working very hard” with an ad-hoc working group that included the Christian Coalition and other conservative “pro-family” groups, chambers of commerce and anti-tax advocates, Czwartzcki adds.

“They are part of a coalition that’s influential,” says a Capitol Hill staffer who is aligned with the TVC. “But are they in the same league with Gary Bauer at the Family Research Council? Absolutely not. Do they have a mailing list like the National Rifle Assn? Not that I am aware of.”

Still, if power is best judged by one’s political opponents, then Sheldon and TVC are becoming a force to be reckoned with.

“They are being taken more seriously than they used to be, or frankly, than I think they ought to be,” says Matthew Freeman, research director for People for the American Way, which monitors conservative Christian groups.

“The Christian Coalition has many more members that they can bring to bear,” Freeman adds. “Lou Sheldon is considered to be further out of the mainstream than others . . . but on certain issues, like school prayer, (TVC leaders) hold sway.”

Doug Hattaway of the Human Rights Campaign Fund, a national gay and lesbian group, argues that Sheldon does not have enough influence to move votes in Congress. But he concedes that “Sheldon clearly has some piece of (House Speaker Newt) Gingrich’s ear.”

Even before Republicans won control of Congress in the elections last fall, Sheldon was scoring political points.

Arguing that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s federal guidelines on workplace discrimination were biased against religion, TVC mobilized its churches to overturn the rules, contending to have produced more than 103,000 petitions.

“He definitely has an active and visible presence here,” says Mark J. Pelavin, director of the American Jewish Congress, which dealt with TVC from the opposite side of the EEOC issue. “He brought more passion than precision to his discussions.”

Last September, and again in January, Sheldon received a commitment from Gingrich to hold congressional hearings on whether federal funds should be taken away from schools that offer programs promoting homosexuality.

Although Sheldon is expecting the hearings to take place this summer, a spokeswoman for Rep. Bill Goodling (R-Pa.), chairman of the House Economic and Educational Opportunities Committee, says no such hearings are scheduled.

Hattaway’s group takes credit for stalling the hearings after meeting recently with Goodling. The Human Rights Campaign Fund recently added to its staff Gingrich’s sister, Candace Gingrich, who has become a spokeswoman for gay and lesbian rights.

“It certainly makes Newt Gingrich look bad to pick on members of his own family,” Hattaway said. Sheldon “is a liability to the Republican Party and they pander to that ilk at some peril. As long as he stays away from gratuitous gay bashing, he would be more likely to win some credibility.”

Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.), however, defends Sheldon, saying he has been “very helpful” in opposing gays in the military and in seeking the removal of former U.S. Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders.

“There are lots of (conservative) groups on the Hill, but he personally is involved,” Stearns says. “He has the courage to come forward in the face of criticism. . . . He represents, from many standpoints, a perspective that a majority of Americans believe in.”

Sheldon says his anti-gay stance is greatly exaggerated, adding that he and Newt Gingrich read from “the same sheet of music.”

“I suppose there’s always a black sheep in each family,” Sheldon says of Gingrich’s sister. “Newt loves her and we love her, but . . . the (homosexual) lifestyle should not have any significant bearing on the shaping of public policies in the public schools, in the military and in other kinds of situations.”

For the first 100 days of the new Congress, Sheldon and his daughter, Andrea Sheldon, who serves as TVC’s government affairs director, spent little time on the anti-gay agenda, focusing instead on issues related to the GOP’s “contract with America.” As members of the ad-hoc Coalition for America’s Future, which included a cross-section of conservative family and business groups, Andrea Sheldon served as co-chair of the group’s media and message subcommittee.

“The Book of Genesis teaches you to succeed by the sweat of your own brow,” Louis Sheldon says of the need for welfare reform.

On the tax-cut package, he argues: “Any kind of tax is a sin. . . . We do believe in government, but when it gets to the point that our government got to, the sin is unbearable with the tax burden.”

In addition to their church network, Sheldon says his group’s lobbying effort “to make the whole system family-friendly is what we brought to the table consistently.”

After months of negotiations, “religious freedom” advocates have settled on a proposed amendment that goes beyond voluntary school prayer. It states that federal and state governments shall not “abridge the freedom of any person or group, including students in public schools, to engage in prayer or other religious expression in circumstances in which expression of a non-religious character would be permitted.”

It is not just a Christian document, Sheldon emphasizes, but a freedom that will apply to Jewish, Muslim, or any other religion.

“Religious freedom is the grease upon which the Gospel is given the right to be exposed,” Sheldon says. “So, to have that, I’m willing to let any other Christian have the same” right.