The Christian Right has been the target of a spate of books lately, even demonized for its forays into politics and fearless methods to ensure its brand of people of faith will have their hands on the nations and communities controls. So its no surprise that Focus on the Family intends to come to the aid of the Republican Party to spur new voter registrations in anticipation of the ballot battles this November.James Dobson, Focus on the Family founder, and one of the evangelical Christians kingpins, plans to carry out a massive registration drive targeting religious voters in critical states. According to Peter Wallsten of the Los Angeles Times, the plan is to insert registration information into church publications and set up voter registration tables on patios and in fellowship halls next to the sign-ups for cookies for the fall tea and Sunday school registration. The states where the big push will be made are Maryland, Montana, Tennessee, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Minnesota.
Dont look for Focus on the Family to recruit voter registrars at United Church of Christ, Unitarian Universalist, Quaker or metaphysical churches like Unity or Religious Science. Otherwise, they might just end up registering too many folks from the wrong political party. One of their worries is that this is not a presidential election year and some of those they stirred up to vote in 2004 will sit up mid-term elections. Even in that election, about 25 million evangelicals failed to cast ballots. Focus on the Familys John Paulton doesnt want further fall-off of voters. Its a question of how much, he said, telling Focus activists in an e-mail, You could argue that the fear of of what could happen if many more liberal politicians take over could be very motivating to get out and vote as strongly.
He is asking Focus on the Family coordinators in each county to be willing to work five hours a week recruiting key evangelical churches. Among their instructions would be to encourage pastors to speak about Christian citizenship, to organize voter registration drives, give out voter guides and push folks to vote.
The Internal Revenue Service is charged with policing churches and other non-profits to make sure they dont violate their tax-exempt status and engage in political activities. Given the growing defiance about anything that might restrain religion, we can look for political evangelicals to press the envelope and push as far as they can before discipline is threatened or meted out. The outspoken executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Barry Lynn, termed the Focus on the Family-led drive for more eligible voters a blatant effort by Dobson to build a partisan political machine based in churches.
He has made it abundantly clear that electing Republicans is an integral part of his agenda, and he doesnt mind risking the tax exemption of churches in the process, Lynn continued. Dobson wants to be a major political boss, and this is his way to get there.
In his reporting, Wallsten said drive organizers vow to stick to pure registration and only discuss values, without endorsing any candidate or political party. But, they acknowledge, the goal is reaching the conservative base, he writes. In always-crucial Ohio, their goal is is to distribute items to 15,000 churches and get their stuff inserted into three million church bulletins. The meat of the voter guides will be candidates opinions on abortion, stem cell research, same-sex marriage and the conservative movements boiler-plate topics.
Theres just so much more work to get done at church these days.
I stopped going to Evangelical Christian churches when I realized that they were run by rightist political agendists who insisted that if you did not think George Bush was the second coming, you weren’t a Christian. From Jerry Falwell to Pat Robertson, to Pat Buchannan to Oliver friggin North, for crying out loud, they take their dog and pony show to the congregations and browbeat their political bent on the unsuspecting masses. I some how don’t think thats what Yeshua had in mind…