Alliance Seeks to Counter Religious Right

As Ralph Reed, executive director of the Christian Coalition, exhorts his conservative membership to soften its rhetoric--and a recent national survey indicates that Americans are increasingly willing to listen to their spiritual leaders on social issues--a new coalition of voices from the other side of the political spectrum is preparing to emerge at full volume.

After six months of meetings, the Progressive Religious Alliance is poised to launch its own religious-political campaign to counter what it calls the “inauthentic message” and divisive agenda of the conservative Christian Coalition.

“When the right emphasizes individualism over the common good, and budget cuts that would . . . cause the poorest to suffer, that is repugnant to the Judeo-Christian tradition,” said the Rev. George Regas, pastor emeritus of Pasadena’s All Saints Episcopal church and vice chairman of the alliance.

“That is why we have to mobilize religious people to build a movement that raises the quality of public discourse,” he said. “There is no ambiguity in the Bible that the central value of faith is that there be justice in the land.”

Sarah Hardman, state chairman of the Christian Coalition, said groups like the alliance encourage the kind of divisiveness they criticize by targeting the religious right. “We don’t claim to represent all Christians,” she said, “only those who are like-minded.

“If they want to speak out against us, that’s their right. But division is killing this country.”

The alliance, whose leadership includes Unitarians, Jews, Episcopalians, Methodists and Seventh-day Adventists, has been meeting regularly since December to hone an organized response to the conservative message of the religious right.

The group’s mission statement emphasizes inclusiveness, tolerance and diversity. And its members intend to speak out in support of a women’s right to choose abortion, equal rights for homosexuals, immigrants’ rights, and the separation of church and state on such issues as school prayer.

The group is planning to get its message out with a hotline that will alert clergy and others of upcoming events. And, assisted in its coordinating efforts by the American Jewish Congress, the alliance is also preparing a roster of religious leaders who will make themselves available to speak about important social and political issues.

With discussion of morality and “family values” expected to dominate political discussions this summer leading up to the November election, the alliance is planning its own event to give religious leaders the opportunity to present their respective views.

In San Diego, the site of the Republican National Convention in August, the alliance plans to hold a “Debate on Family Values,” featuring representatives from its group and the Christian Coalition.

On a recent visit to Los Angeles, the Christian Coalition’s Reed accepted an invitation from alliance Chairman Rabbi Allen J. Freehling to participate in the debate, Freehling said, and details are being worked out now.

On the weekend prior to the convention, several thousand people are expected to attend an interfaith rally sponsored by the group and billed as “a Sabbath of prayer and action,” said Freehling, of University Synagogue.

The group’s mission statement has garnered the endorsements of such varied religious bodies as the Los Angeles Council of Religious Leaders, the Pacific Conference of the United Methodist Church, the Union of American Hebrew Congregations and the Buddhist Sangha Council of Southern California, and the board of the California Council of Churches.

The Rt. Rev. Frederick H. Borsch, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, has also endorsed the statement. And Planned Parenthood-Los Angeles this week honored the group with its annual Distinguished Service Award.

“People are hungry for religious voices to be more vocal on issues of social justice,” said the Rev. Nancy Wilson, of the Metropolitan Community Church of Los Angeles, which has a large gay and lesbian congregation.

Until now, the alliance’s leaders contend that conservative groups like the Christian Coalition have commandeered the discussion over moral values, exerting a disproportionate influence on American policy.

A recent national survey of religion’s place in politics concluded that the conservatism of white evangelical Protestants is the most powerful religious force in American politics today. And, the Christian Coalition’s Reed, speaking at a luncheon in Los Angeles earlier this year, predicted that “religious conservatives will be shaping the course of American politics and choosing its leaders into the next millennium and forever.”

Yet, alliance member Rabbi Jim Kaufman of Temple Beth Hillel said, “We represent the majority of religious people in this country, and it’s time for that majority to have a voice.”

The Los Angeles group is not the only clergy-driven coalition in the country intent on challenging the moral positions and influence of the Christian Coalition. In Chicago, Protestants for the Common Good is meeting with a huge response. Philadelphia’s the People of Faith is addressing economic justice issues. And the Interfaith Alliance--based in Washington and co-sponsoring the San Diego rally with the Progressive Religious Alliance--is an organization of mainstream religious leaders from around the country whose stated mission is to create a “counter-voice to the extreme religious right.”

“The success of this effort is a matter of life and death,” said the Rev. Ignacio Castuera, who serves with Regas and Wilson as an alliance vice chairman.

“An organism will die if there is not enough light and that is why, for the life of religious truth, we must recapture the discussion of ethics in this country and reframe it in ways that are open and light and life-giving.”