You're In The Army Now

The following statement is quoted directly from 'Citizen Action,' the Christian Coalition's recruitment manual:

"Our mission is to change the laws under which our nation is governed."

(In other words to subvert the Constitution as created and envisioned by our founding fathers.)

This is the same Christian Coalition which tells the Federal Government, the Internal Revenue Service, and the public at large that they are 'non-partisan,' that their sole function is to educate us all on how congressmen and senators vote.

With this in mind, let's examine this statement which appears under 'Petition Drives':

"Petition Drives are an excellent way to influence your local, state or federal government."

Then, as one advances within the organization and begins to hear the word from closer to the source, the language becomes more pointed, as these statements from the 'Leadership Manual' demonstrate:

"Welcome to an exciting two days of training and education! As a student of the Christian Coalition Leadership School, you are engaged in one of the most extensive and ambitious training programs in the history of Christian political action.  When the first year of the Leadership Schools draws to a close, tens of thousands of new members will have been recruited into the Christian Coalition.   Over one thousand five hundred students will have graduated from the Leadership School and will be trained to work in campaigns and causes in their states."

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that one cannot work in a campaign and still be 'non-partisan.' T he Religious Right is very much like the Emperor Who Had No Clothes: they are blinded by their arrogance.

The 'Leadership Manual' then goes on to say,

"Christian Coalition staff and Regional Directors (including your instructors for this school) will have logged an estimated 150,000 miles in one year, recruiting and training Christians in thirty states.   During the next two days you will participate in one of the most intensive and comprehensive reviews of grass roots political technology in the nation."

Pat Robertson will state over and over again that the Christian Coalition does not endorse any political candidate.  When word got out that the Christian Coalition had endorsed Bob Dole as the Republican nominee for President, Robertson and Reed quickly told the press that it was a couple of individuals, who happened to be Christian Coalition Directors, who were in favor of Dole, but that they were only expressing their own personal opinion, and were in no way speaking on behalf of the Christian Coalition. Since Dole represents the antithesis of what the Coalition supposedly stands for, and especially in view of the fact that there were other candidates needing help who were far closer to Christian ideals, this could have been damaging to the firm.  Robertson and Reed assured everybody once again,

"Christian Coalition does not endorse or oppose any candidates."

As with most politicians, when Pat Robertson speaks in public he is usually working from a script.  One day, however, on April 2, 1996, while he was talking on The 700 Club, he went off on his own train of thought and the result was a remarkably truthful moment.  The L.A. Times had run a Conrad cartoon on the previous day, depicting Bob Dole on a cross, wearing a crown of thorns labeled, "Christian Coalition."  The cartoon had upset Robertson, and the more the good Reverend talked about it, the more his ego whipped his righteous indignation into a fury, and soon he was stammering away as follows,

"But this is, this is just an outrage.  I mean in the first place ... the Christian Coalition, without it, probably Bob Dole wouldn't be the nominee.  They've helped him!  But to put that up and say this is a crown of thorns and Bob Dole being crucified on , ah, the week before Holy Week.   This, this, this whole thing is just an absolute outrage.  And if people of faith permit this kind of thing to happen, ladies and gentlemen, then they'll be emboldened to do it over and over again ... but the press has an anti-Christian bias.   I've seen it over and over and over again ... I think that it'd be important that there's a tremendous ground swell of anger against this kind of thing ... if you happen to be a subscriber, one of the best ways to send a message is to cancel your subscription to the paper!  That is the best message you can send."

Pat Robertson supported George Bush in his run for the Republican party's nomination for the presidency, as indeed have many Americans. But Robertson hid that support from those who support him, the people who contribute to the Christian Coalition, the 700 Club, and his other businesses.  Out of sight of all these people, behind the scenes, where power is brokered by the powerful, it was agreed long ago that George Bush would be the Republican nominee.  And Pat Robertson was a part of that decision, in exchange for a position of power in the event that George Bush became the next president. This is politics as usual, but Robertson doesn't want the general public to know about it because it runs contrary to the image he projects, and it most definitely runs contrary to the Christian Coalition's stated philosophy. Robertson's message and his ministry are a tangled web of lies and half-truths, and while it's true that everybody is entitled to live their lives as they please, this man sets himself up as a role model for good, decent Christians, taking their time, taking their money, taking their faith, and not giving a damn about their immortal souls.

The depths of Pat Robertson's sincerity can be judged by reading the instructions regarding the 'Petition Drives' that he urges his followers to create. As reported earlier, in Chapter 3, the Christian Coalition stated that a petition drive can be created over anything, that this is in fact simply a tool for identifying possible new recruits. All the names of these new prospects are funneled back into the huge databases the Coalition maintains at their headquarters in Virginia Beach, and are then used as a basis for their massive fund-raising activities.

Then, in the 'Citizen Action' manual, we find the statement,

"Signatures from the petition drive will serve as an excellent list of potential pro-family voters, Christian Coalition activists, and donors." Right there, in that sentence, the Christian Coalition's true colors show through, and their fundamental cynicism is revealed, that all who have eyes may see.

As I've shown, the Christian Coalition's campaign is centered around the church, and the targets are the many trusting and unwary Christians who consider the church to be their spiritual home. One of the first things new Coalition recruits are instructed to do is to obtain membership lists from local churches. These lists are then passed on to the phone workers, or, as one might say in the commercial world, the telemarketer. Let's face it, that's what they really are. Volunteer 'phone canvassers' are given specific, highly detailed instructions for every aspect of their duties, including when to make the calls and how many hours to work. Here's a quote from the 'Citizen Action' manual:

"Find a local businessman with several phone lines in his or her business. Arrange for you and your team of volunteers to use those phones for two to three nights a week for three weeks. Ask your volunteers to make calls for three hours each night. This is consistent enough for them to get through the lists and infrequent enough for them to stay motivated and not be overwhelmed by the task. Schedule volunteers on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday nights and have them make calls between six and nine in the evening. Do not schedule someone for more than one night a week. Do this for sixty days. Keep in mind the lists you are calling. If your volunteers are calling church lines they will get more positive response than if they are calling the voter registration list."

After further instructions on "personal visits," there is more evidence of just how cold and calculated this whole program really is:

"Whether you use phoning or door-to-door canvassing, the format of "how" you ask will always be the same. The following script is designed for use by phone volunteers, but is also suitable for any other form of voter identification. The main thing to keep in mind while phoning or canvassing is to be as pleasant as possible."

CHRISTIAN COALITION

VOTER IDENTIFICATION SCRIPT

Hello, may I please speak with

Hello, I am your neighbor

(name of voter.)

in (name of town/city) and I am taking a brief voter survey to get a better idea of the issues of concern to our community. Would you mind answering four brief questions? Great. Thank you.

1) What do you consider to be the most important issue facing the citizens here in ?

2) When do you think abortion should be legal?

A)  first trimester;

C)  All cases of rape, incest, or when the life of the mother is endangered;

D) when the life of the mother is endangered.

E) Question of local interest. (Must be pre-approved by the Christian Coalition national office.)

Would you like for me to send you some information on how to register to vote? (Do not ask this question if you are contacting a list of registered voters.)

This concludes our survey. Thank you for your participation.

To that friendly 'neighbor' who calls you, you are just a "number" to bring him or her recognition if you can be successfully steered toward joining the cause. To the caller's guru, Pat Robertson, you are nothing but a "mark," which is a word used by unscrupulous carnival people to identify someone they consider to be sucker, someone they think they can take advantage of and fleece. Every iota of my research proves time and time again that nobody in the Christian Coalition really cares about you as a person. That is a very sad thing to have to say about a group of people who consider themselves to be a Christian organization.

As we have seen, Pat Robertson considers all churches not as houses of God, but as personal distribution centers for his political material. This becomes very obvious as one reviews the Coalition's schools and training manuals. Here is the Voter Guide Checklist, as shown in the manual:

"A month before the election, hold a special meeting with all of the Church Liaisons in your chapter. The purpose of this meeting is to identify as many churches as possible that will serve as distribution points. Neighborhood Coordinators should put together a team of five to ten volunteers to assist in this effort."

"There may be some churches in your area that do not have Church Liaisons. Work with the Chapter Chairman in trying to arrange getting a shipment of voter guides to them."

"Meet with the pastors of those churches that do not have Church Liaisons. Give them the Christian Coalition Pastor's Information Packet. Ask them if they would be willing to have a voter guide inserted in their bulletin the Sunday before the election."

"List all of the churches that have committed to distribute the voter guides and begin assigning those churches to the volunteers for delivery."

"Arrange to have a team of phone workers call the local churches that have agreed to distribute voter guides to remind them that the voter guides will be coming and what to do with them. These calls will reaffirm the churches' commitment to distributing voter guides."

The next page of the 'Citizen Action' manual is titled:

LAYING THE GROUNDWORK

"Voter guides are distributed with the greatest amount of ease and effectiveness through the local churches. As you begin to structure your distribution system with the help of your county Chapter Chairman, you should first identify all of the church contacts willing to help distribute the voter guides."

"There may be some churches for which you do not have a Liaison. If this is the case, you should approach these churches, in consultation with your Chapter Chairman, to see if they would be interested in distributing voter guides. If the pastor is hesitant, or has questions, you should give him a copy of the Christian Coalition Pastor's Packet, which will address his questions.""Pastors should be assured that the voter guides are produced with their legal interests in mind and will in no way violate their tax exempt status as a 501(c)3 entity."

"Voter guides can be distributed by churches in several different ways. In order of effectiveness, voter guides can be distributed by:

* Inserting them into bulletins.

* Handing them out during the service.

* Handing them out before and after the service.

* Placing them on tables in the church."

"With the delivery of voter guides, please consider the following:

The deliveries should not be any sooner than two Mondays before the election. Ideally, you should arrange for a delivery the Tuesday before a Tuesday election. Most churches need to have time to structure their bulletins for the Sunday service and most churches can facilitate this with a Tuesday delivery."

"The volunteers should not just leave the voter guides at the church door. If possible, they need to deliver them to someone on the church staff. You should brief these volunteers with the information needed to answer basic questions about how the church should distribute them."

"Remind the churches that they should distribute the voter guides only on the Sunday before the election day."

The pastors really have no idea that they are about to be ambushed, and that people are gathering together behind their backs to come and restructure their churches. And the people who have teamed up with the Coalition's Liaison quite literally 'know not what they do.' They are fed a convincing line about restoring 'family values' to their church, and they genuinely belief that theirs is a noble mission. The final statement in the 'Citizen Action' manual is designed to reassure these 'soldiers' that theirs is an honorable war:

" Under the banner of the Christian Coalition, a vast network of volunteers is working to return America to the values that made it a beacon of freedom and liberty for the world. The State Chairmen, the Chapter Chairmen, the Church Liaisons, the neighborhood Coordinators (Captains), phone volunteers, voter guide distributors and all prayer supporters work together in unity of purpose to advance the influence of faith and family in American politics."

Now that we have learned something of the organization called Christian Coalition, let's meet the man behind it all. The man who wants to be America's leader and advisor. Ladies and gentlemen, The Reverend Pat Robertson.

GO TO CHAPTER FIVE

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