News Intelligence Analysis
From the
Los Angeles Times
Grooming Politicians for Christ
Evangelical programs on Capitol Hill seek to mold a new generation
of leaders who will answer not to voters, but to God.
By Stephanie Simon
Times Staff Writer
August 23, 2005
WASHINGTON — In the blue and gold elegance of the House
speaker's private dining room, Jeremy Bouma bowed his head before
eight young men and women who hope to one day lead the nation.
He prayed that they might find wisdom in the Bible — and
govern by its word.
"Holy Father, we thank you for providing us with guidance,"
said Bouma, who works for an influential televangelist. "Thank
you, Lord, for these students. Build them up as your warriors
and your ambassadors on Capitol Hill."
"Amen," the students murmured. Then they picked
up their pens expectantly.
Nearly every Monday for six months, as many as a dozen congressional
aides — many of them aspiring politicians — have gathered
over takeout dinners to mine the Bible for ancient wisdom on
modern policy debates about tax rates, foreign aid, education,
cloning and the Central American Free Trade Agreement.
Through seminars taught by conservative college professors
and devout members of Congress, the students learn that serving
country means first and always serving Christ.
They learn to view every vote as a religious duty, and to
consider compromise a sin.
That puts them at the vanguard of a bold effort by evangelical
conservatives to mold a new generation of leaders who will answer
not to voters, but to God.
"We help them understand God's purpose for society,"
said Bouma, who coordinates the program, known as the Statesmanship
Institute, for the Rev. D. James Kennedy.
At least 3.5 million Americans tune in to Kennedy's sermons,
broadcast from Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale,
Fla. Since 1995, the unabashedly political televangelist has
also reached out to the Beltway elite with his Center for Christian
Statesmanship in Washington.
The center sponsors Bible studies, prayer meetings and free
"Politics and Principle" lunches for members of Congress
and their staffs, often drawing crowds in the hundreds.
The Statesmanship Institute, founded two years ago, offers
more in-depth training for $345.
It's one of half a dozen evangelical leadership programs making
steady inroads into Washington.
The most prominent is Patrick Henry College in Purcellville,
Va., an hour's drive from the capital. The college was founded
five years ago with the goal of turning out "Christian men
and women who will lead our nation with timeless biblical values."
Nearly every graduate works in government or with a conservative
advocacy group.
The Witherspoon Fellowship has had similar success, placing
its graduates in the White House, Congress, the State Department
and legislatures nationwide. The fellowship brings 42 college
students to Washington each year to study theology and politics
— and to work at the conservative Family Research Council,
which lobbies on such social issues as abortion and same-sex
marriage.
Such programs share a commitment to developing leaders who
read the Bible as a blueprint.
As Kennedy put it: "If we leave it to man to decide what's
good and evil, there will be chaos."
"I'm sure there are people who won't appreciate the fact
that this class goes on here in the Capitol," Myal Greene
said one recent evening.
He glanced around the stately dining room, reserved for the
institute by a member of Congress. (House regulations allow private
groups to hold events in the Capitol as long as they are noncommercial,
nonpolitical and do not discriminate based on race, creed, color
or national origin.)
To Greene, there could hardly be a more appropriate location.
He considers his private faith and his public duty inseparable.
Greene, the deputy press secretary for a Republican congressman
from Florida, signed up for the Statesmanship Institute in part
because he felt his Christian ethics were under constant assault
— from lobbyists offering him free steak dinners, from friends
urging him to network over beers.
The seminars proved a revelation. In one, Greene learned that
ministers ran many of America's earliest schools. He hadn't thought
much about education policy before that class. Now he plans to
fight for history lessons on the Founding Fathers' faith, science
lessons drawn from the Book of Genesis and public school prayer.
"It's one thing to have a [biblically inspired] position
on one or two issues," said Greene, 26, who was wearing
a wristband printed with the slogan "Jesus Is My Homie."
"This class has you look deeper. It gives you an intellectual
consistency."
On this night, the topic was bioethics. As the students unwrapped
deli sandwiches and brownies, prominent bioethicist Nigel M.
deS. Cameron praised them for thinking about the "great
questions of the day" through the prism of faith.
Too often, he added — to a few startled looks —
"Christians are not noted for using their brains."
In an hourlong lecture, Cameron argued that Christians must
move beyond denouncing abortion to see the "moral outrage"
in other common practices, such as paying Ivy League students
to donate eggs in the quest for a perfect baby.
"Taking human life made in God's image may not be as
bad, from God's point of view, as making human life in your own
image," said Cameron, a professor at Chicago-Kent College
of Law. "Our humanity, warts and all, is what we have been
given to steward. It's not to be manipulated."
When Cameron called for questions, one student tentatively
raised his hand to ask about embryonic stem cell research —
specifically, the use of "spare" embryos, frozen in
fertility clinics. "Under current practice, they're going
to be discarded" unless they're used for research, he said.
"What do we say about that, as Christians?"
Cameron did not hold back.
"They're going to die anyway, right?" he said, indignant.
"We don't apply the same principle to death row inmates.
They're going to die anyway, so why can't we get some use out
of them? We'd be able to do some fascinating experiments.
"The principle of manipulating human life to get experimental
benefit," Cameron said, "that is a very, very serious
line to cross."
The philosophy animating Cameron's lecture — that federal
law should be based on biblical precepts — troubles the
Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for
Separation of Church and State.
"This nation was founded specifically to avoid the government
making religious and theological decisions," Lynn said.
"We are not to turn the Holy Scriptures of any group into
public policy."
Kennedy counters that evangelicals have every right to put
up candidates who vote what they believe to be God's will —
and let voters judge them.
To which Lynn responds, with exasperation: "He says that
because he knows in a majority Christian country, the Christian
view is going to be expressed by more voters. They have no problem
imposing their biblical worldview on every American."
Evangelical conservatives acknowledge that's their goal.
And they now have a systematic plan for achieving it.
Early evangelical leaders were determined social activists,
championing causes such as the abolition of slavery and the prohibition
of alcohol. But in the 1920s, a theological dispute split the
movement. The more liberal ministers pushed for continued engagement
in politics — and went on to take leading roles in the civil
rights movement and Vietnam War protests.
The conservative faction called for withdrawing from politics
and focusing instead on building up the church.
"Getting into politics didn't fix anything. It just diverted
them from saving souls," said Jim Guth, a political science
professor at Furman University in Greenville, S.C.
With the legalization of abortion in 1973, some fundamentalists
began to argue that they had an obligation to try to arrest society's
moral decay.
"We realized we [were] having our little holy huddles
but not having any influence in Washington," said George
Roller, a former public school teacher who now directs Kennedy's
Center for Christian Statesmanship.
Ministers such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson jumped headlong
into politics. They succeeded in helping to elect conservatives,
starting with President Reagan. "But things haven't changed
very much," said Robert D. Stacey, chairman of the government
department at Patrick Henry College.
"Our candidates tick off the right policy positions,
but it turns out, once they're in office, they're willing to
compromise an awful lot — not just to bend but to break,"
he said. "Now, religious conservatives are saying they want
the real thing."
To develop such steadfast politicians, evangelicals are building
on decades of work by nonprofit groups such as the Leadership
Institute and Young America's Foundation, which train conservatives
in grass-roots activism, effective campaigning, even how to launch
a right-wing magazine.
The new evangelical initiatives reach out to the same up-and-coming
leaders, but put them through courses that sound a lot like a
seminary.
"If you're clinging to conservatism just because you
like conservatism, you don't put yourself on the line for your
beliefs," Stacey said. "Your positions need to come
from something deeper and more meaningful."
That message resonates with Jessica Echard, 23, who completed
the Statesmanship Institute last year.
Growing up in rural West Virginia, Echard believed passionately
in her church's teachings against abortion, but thought little
about such issues as economic policy or foreign trade.
The institute gave her a framework for evaluating those topics.
Now the director of the Eagle Forum, a conservative lobbying
group founded by Phyllis Schlafly, Echard says Jesus would approve
of a call for lower taxes: "God calls on us to be stewards
of our [own] money."
She dips into the Bible to explain her opposition to most
global treaties, reasoning that Americans have a holy obligation
to protect their God-given freedom by avoiding foreign entanglements.
"The Scripture talks of taking every thought and making
it captive to Christ, and that's what the Statesmanship Institute
helps us do," Echard said.
Like other evangelical training programs, the institute avoids
endorsing any party or position. Lecturers this year include
a Democratic congressman and a Republican who says the Lord inspired
him to buck President Bush by demanding a timetable for withdrawing
from Iraq.
Homework includes readings from the Bible — but also
from Nietzsche, Engels, Machiavelli and Henry Kissinger.
"We don't tell our students what to think," Roller
said.
Yet professors also make clear that "there absolutely
is an objective truth," in the words of Paul J. Bonicelli,
academic dean at Patrick Henry College.
Hannah Woody, for instance, came away from the institute's
seminars confident that abolishing the Department of Education
is not just a Republican goal, but also a Christian imperative.
The Bible gives parents — not some distant bureaucracy
— the primary responsibility for raising children, said
Woody, 26, who hopes to one day run for governor in her home
state of North Carolina. (For now, she's working as a legislative
assistant for a Republican congressman from Kansas.)
Kennedy offers a similar take on education policy in the gilt-edged,
leather-bound Bible his staff delivers to each new member of
Congress. In an introductory essay, Kennedy quotes Scripture
to explain God's views on taxes, capital punishment, gay rights
and a dozen other issues. Most of the policy prescriptions he
finds in the Bible dovetail neatly with the Republican agenda.
That focus on legislative victory disturbs some evangelical
leaders, who would prefer to work on spreading Christian values
throughout society.
"Too many programs start with the idea that if we [enact]
right-wing, conservative policies, we'll change America and God
will be pleased," said Ryan Messmore, who runs a leadership
academy aimed at helping young Christians share their faith through
the arts, the media and other professions.
But to Rep. Walter B. Jones, a North Carolina Republican,
it's clear the institute is "doing the Lord's work."
The nation needs more politicians who take their cues from
God, not Gallup, or "our morality will crumble," he
warned. "We won't recognize America."
Roller shares that fear. So he ended the recent class on bioethics
with a plea: "Heavenly Father, we pray you will help us
to know how we should respond to these issues."
The students answered as one: "Amen."
Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times
Send a letter
to the editor
about
this article
My Right-wing Degree
How I learned to convert
liberal campuses
into conservative havens at Morton Blackwell's
Leadership Institute, alma mater of Karl Rove,
Ralph Reed, Jeff Gannon and two Miss Americas.
By Jeff Horwitz
May 24, 2005 | One recent Sunday,
at Morton Blackwell's
Leadership Institute, a dozen students meet for the second
and final day of training in grass-roots youth politics. All
are earnest, idealistic and as right wing as you can get.
They take careful notes as instructor Paul Gourley teaches
them how to rig a campus mock election.
Read All the
Articles on Dominionism:
Directory of the Rise
of Dominionism
in America
This article is copyrighted material, the
use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright
owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to
advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights,
economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc.
We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted
material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law.
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material
on this site is distributed without profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information
for research and educational purposes. For more information go
to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml.
If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes
of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission
from the copyright owner.