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The Christian Right
Is Sneaking Back In
New York (JTA) — The
"stealth" candidates of the
Christian religious right
who have been winning local
political races around the
country pose a serious threat
to Jewish interests, Jewish
community activists say.
And the success of these
candidates has created new
challenges for the organized
Jewish community.
Organized nationally and
regionally in groups with
innocuous-sounding names
like CARE — Citizens Ad.
vocating Responsible Edu-
cation — and CEE —
Citizens for Excellence in
Education, these candidates
have been running suc-
cessfully for seats on school
boards, local Republican
committees, water commis-
sions and real estate zoning
boards.
These "stealth" can-
didates earned their
moniker because individuals
running for office cloak their
affiliation with the Chris-
tian organizations until they
are safely in office.
"They bury their stealth
message beneath honeyed
words," said Maxine Cohen,
director of the Jewish Com-
munity Relations Council in
San Antonio, Texas.
While they have been par-
ticularly successful in
California, Texas, Florida,
Minnesota and Mississippi,
they are also advancing in
Northeastern cities, in-
cluding Philadelphia and
New York.
CEE, which was started in
1989, has 925 chapters
around the country and was
able to get 1,965 of its can-
didates elected in 1990, ac-
cording to Jodyne Roseman,
chair of the San Diego Jew-
ish Community Relations
Council.
Roseman spoke at the an-
nual plenum of the National
Jewish Community Rela-
tions Advisory Council, held
in Washington Feb. 13- 17.
CEE has promised to get
3,500 more of its candidates
elected in 1994, she said at a
session on "Responding to
the Resurgent Christian
Right in Local Schools and
Grass-Roots Politics."
But perhaps the most im-
portant group on the Chris-
tian religious right, which
spawned many of the local
efforts, is the Christian Co-
alition, which grew out of
Pat Robertson's failed 1988
presidential bid.
It was after November
1988 that Ralph Reed, the
founder and head of the
Christian Coalition, who
was then Robertson's polit-
ical director, turned his
sights from presidential con-
tests to the underpinnings of
national political success --
t local races.
His group says it now has
250,000 members in 550
chapters nationwide.
In the last few years its
candidates have won a large
number of the races they
have entered.
People for the American
Way, a liberal, Washington-
based group, monitored 500
local races last year.
The Christian Coalition-
endorsed candidates won in
42 percent of those races,
said Matthew Freeman, di-
rector of research for the
watchdog group, in an inter-
view.
And their goal, ultimately,
is to have a national impact.
They want to "take over
the Republican Party by the
year 2000," according to
Beth Rickey, formerly a
member of the Louisiana
State Republican Com-
mittee, and founder of the
Louisiana Coalition Against
Racism.
They want to use the
Republican party "as their
vehicle for creating a Chris-
tian nation," she told the
Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
In the meantime, running
as "stealth" candidates in
local races, they make their
views known quickly once
elected.
Once on school boards, for
example, they advocate
school prayer, teaching crea-
tionism in science classes,
removal of books with con-
tent they consider profane
and eradicating AIDS edu-
cation in favor of teaching
abstinence.
They say that "AIDS edu-
cation may lead to (sexual)
experimentation, that
critical thinking spiritually
destroys children, that
schools are atheistic institu-
tions, and that the First
Amendment is for the
freedom of religion, not
freedom from religion in
schools," said Ellen Faust,
chair of the Jewish Com-
munity Relations Council of
Greater Dayton, Ohio.
In Dayton-area elemen-
tary and middle schools,
fundamentalist Christians
"demanded to go through
classroom shelves book by
book," she said.
Classroom "discussion of
Halloween was limited be-
cause of its association with
witchcraft.
"And teachers were asked
for their lesson plans.
Teachers have felt that the
pressure is leading to self-
censorship," she said. "They
are looking for allies."
According to Roseman
from San Diego, where two-
thirds of the Christian Co-
alition candidates won in
1990 local races, the funda-
mentalists' agenda even in-
cludes the removal of sub-
sidized breakfast and lunch
programs and health care
clinics at schools.
They want to get rid of
"anything even approaching
They are
advancing in
northeastern
cities.
the traditional role of
parents," she said.
Despite its deep in-
volvement in school board
activities, CEE "is really
committed to eliminating
public education. In 1994
they intend to push for the
voucher system,-" which
would enable parents to use
federally provided vouchers
to send their children to pri-
vate and parochial schools,
said Roseman.
In addition to the agenda
which is anathema to most
of the Jewish community's -
concerns, many of the re-
ligious-right groups are also
anti-Semitic, according to
Louisiana's Rickey.
"They share conspiratorial
beliefs and believe Jewish
people are in a conspiracy to
control the world. They also
use the word 'liberal' inter-
changeably with Jew,' " she
said.
In trying to counter the
success of the "stealth"
strategy, the Jewish com-
munity faces several
challenges of its own.
First, the candidates' af-