Another Christian Voice Sounds on Politics : Religion: Group of 100 leaders offers ‘ideological cease-fire’ in war of words on church and state. ‘Cry for Renewal’ statement seeks broader viewpoint.

Calling for an “ideological cease-fire” in the partisan warfare over religious principles, a group of Christian clerics and lay leaders Tuesday offered what they described as a broader-based alternative to the controversial tactics and doctrines of the Christian right.

More than 100 religious leaders, including not only liberal Protestants and socially active Catholics but also more than a score of traditionally more conservative evangelicals, endorsed the founding statement of the group, titled “The Cry for Renewal: Biblical Faith and Spiritual Politics.” After issuing the statement, representatives of the group met on Capitol Hill with leaders of both parties to discuss the objectives spelled out in the statement.

“The religious right has one perspective and deserves to be heard,” said Jim Wallis, editor of Sojourners magazine and one of the principal authors of the statement. But other voices should also get a hearing in the political arena, Wallis contended. The new group, still unnamed, is seeking “an honest dialogue” with the leaders of both political parties and intends to hold politicians accountable on moral grounds, he added.

Although the new group included representatives from a broad range of Christian denominations, it did not include any non-Christians. Jim Rice, one of the organizers, said that the group’s leaders felt Christians had a “special responsibility” to respond to the Christian right because its adherents had put themselves forward as representing the Christian point of view in politics.

Rather than competing directly in politics by conducting massive voter education programs--the path followed by the Christian Coalition, the largest of the politically active conservative religious organizations--the “Cry for Renewal” group will try an indirect approach, working with other institutions and organizations.

“We believe that our impoverished political process needs the moral direction and energy that spiritual and religious values can contribute to the public debate,” the statement says. “Recently, the increased influence of religion in politics has too often made our political debate even more divisive, polarized and less sensitive to the poor and dispossessed.”

The statement criticizes both ends of the religious-political spectrum.

“The almost total identification of the religious right with the new Republican majority in Washington is a dangerous liaison of religion with political power,” it says. On the other hand, “the continuing close identification of religious liberalism with political liberals and the Democratic Party has demonstrated a public witness often lacking in moral imagination or prophetic integrity.”

A spokesman for the Christian Coalition denied that his group is partisan. “We agree that no movement, either faith-based or secular, should be a wholly owned subsidiary of any political party,” said Mike Russell.

After separate meetings later in the day with House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.), Wallis said that both men told him “it was good to have a new voice in the mix.”

Times staff writer Larry Stammer in Los Angeles contributed to this story.