Change in strategy - Christian right's recruitment of African Americans - Watch on the Right

The Christian right's recent overtures African-American church leaders provoked controversy in California last summer, when the San Francisco board of supervisors voted to remove from the city's Human Rights Commission one Reverend Eugene Lumpkin. The prominent black Baptist minister had inflamed public sentiment with his repeated descriptions of homosexuality as "an abomination against God." In the heat of the controversy, Lumpkin told a TV talk-show host that he concurred with the Old Testament's prescription of stoning "sodomites" to death. White preachers from the Traditional Values Coalition rallied behind Lumpkin at a press conference. (On Lumpkin's behalf, the Rutherford Institute, a Christian-right legal firm, later filed a lawsuit against the San Francisco mayor for supposed religious discrimination.) Charges of homophobia and racism flew fast and furious, and the whole incident threatened to rupture alliances between the city's black and gay civil-rights advocates. In the end, cooler heads prevailed, but not without raising concerns over the Christian right's efforts to recruit new members outside of its traditional all-white base of support.

In part, the Christian right's appeal to some black evangelicals is made possible by shared denominational traditions that cross racial lines: Baptists and Pentecostals have more in common with each other than they do with main-line churchgoers, irrespective of race. But if shared worship styles were the sole basis for bonds between conservative black clergy and the Christian right, why, then, is an alliance between the two camps emerging only now?

Central to the Christian right's new quest for racial diversity within its ranks is the drive to split gay-rights advocates from their natural allies in communities of color. Black churches have been a mainstay of the African-American civil-rights movement. They are now a target of Christian-right propaganda aimed at demonizing homosexuals, the latest group to assert its demands of legal equality.

Among the Christian right's new genre of anti-gay home video cassettes is Gay Rights, Special Rights: Inside the Homosexual Agenda, produced for the Traditional Values Coalition by Jeremiah Films and designed for an audience concerned about civil rights. The 40-minute scare flick relies heavily upon footage from the April 1993 gay-lesbian-bisexual march for equality in Washington, D.C. Featured are the obligatory transvestite strip-tease scenes and countless clips of lip-locked gay and lesbian marchers intercut with shots of young children's angelic faces. The film's crude theme is that gay "special rights" elevate chosen "life-styles" to the level of immutable racial categories and, thereby, effectively undermine the legitimate minority status of people of color. Mixed with footage from Martin Luther King, Jr.'s, famous "I have a dream" speech, we hear arguments against gay rights from, among others, two great civil libertarians: former drug czar William Bennett and former Attorney General Edwin Meese.

Undoubtedly, the African-American community as a whole is no more homophobic than the white population. Few will be fooled by the specious claims that gay-rights initiatives will adversely affect the laws outlawing racial discrimination. But the Traditional Values Coalition and its ilk are counting on support from that small but vocal number of preachers who may use racially charged arguments to disrupt civil-rights coalitions in cities where gay rights are controversial.

Beyond this type of opportunism, the Christian right's new-found racial inclusiveness is taking other forms, both cultural and decidedly political. Within the evangelical subculture, black and white church leaders are beginning to communicate openly about racism among Christians. A recent Christianity Today cover story, "The Myth of Racial Progress," featured complaints about racism in the church from prominent African-American ministers, plus a special message from the magazine's cofounder, Billy Graham. "Racism--in the world and in the church--is one of the greatest barriers to world evangelization," Graham wrote,

Evangelicals' efforts at what they call "racial reconciliation" have been increasingly evident in the pages of Charisma, a popular magazine geared less toward clergy and more toward everyday admirers of the leading religious broadcasters. Charisma's own recent cover story, "Healing the Rift Between the Races," profiled some of the largest of the new racially mixed charismatic churches: John Meares' Evangel Temple in Washington, D.C.; Rod Parsley's World Harvest Church in Columbus, Ohio; Benny Hinn's Orlando, Florida, Christian Center; Dick Bernal's Jubilee Christian Center in San Jose, California; and Joseph Garlington's Covenant Church of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Every month Charisma is loaded with ads for "camp meetings " At these two, or three-day mini-vacations for born-again Christians, the entertainment is gospel music and high-energy preaching by charismatic celebrities. Recently, Charisma has advertised a slew of such camp meetings headed by black preachers. More impressively, the gatherings are increasingly interracial. In Tulsa every June, Oral Roberts and the 70-odd "trustees" of his "International Charismatic Bible Ministries" put on one of the biggest of the tent revivals. At this camp meeting, well-known white TV preachers (Oral's son Richard Roberts, Paul Grouch, Kenneth Copeland, and Marilyn Hickey, to name a few) share the pulpit with their black counterparts.

The most prominent of these is Carleton Pearson, a graduate and regent of Oral Roberts University. Pearson's racially integrated church is one part of his fast-growing Higher Dimensions Evangelistic Center, based in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Pearson's ministry is explicitly aimed at interracial recruitment. He calls his traveling revival shows "Azusa Street" crusades, invoking the early his, tory of American pentecostalism. (From 1906 to 1913, the Azusa Street Mission in Los Angeles was led by a black Holiness preacher who drew an interracial following.)

Among the promotional materials I received from Pearson's headquarters was a brochure listing his counseling center's support groups--including a special one for interracial couples and families. The premiere edition of Pearson's Azusa Fire magazine tells the story of Johnny Lee Clary, a former Klansman and bodyguard for David Duke who has now repented his gruesome past and joined Pearson's church.

Frank discussion of racial bigotry is now a frequent topic on evangelical TV talk shows. Night after night on the two Christian networks my cable service offers (Trinity Broadcasting Network and United Christian Broadcasting), the guest lists are increasingly integrated. Where else but through the multibillion-dollar religious-broadcasting industry can up-and-coming black preachers make themselves known to the multitudes? These new faces represent that minority of the African-American church community which is middle-class, upwardly mobile, and eager to collaborate with conservative politicians.

Carleton Pearson boasts of his past attendance at White House briefings with George Bush "in an effort to achieve unity among blacks and conservatives." Southern California's Reverend E. V Hill, a regular guest on Trinity Broadcasting Network, took to the airwaves to announce his appointment as an aide to Los Angeles' new conservative mayor, Richard Riordan. Hill's Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church lies in riot-torn south-central Los Angeles, and Hill--along with local chapters of the Christian Coalition--backed Riordan's campaign. In return, Riordan authorized Hill to convene a town meeting at which residents were invited to register their suggestions for how the city might solve neighborhood problems. To the extent that Christian right-linked black preachers make names for themselves on Christian television, they become--in the eyes of politicians--recognized spokespersons for "their people."

The whole question of who speaks for African-Americans was pivotal during Judge Clarence Thomas' Supreme Court nomination in 1991. As part of the Christian right's efforts to see Thomas confirmed, the Traditional Values Coalition in Washington, D.C., organized pro-Thomas rallies by black clergy. That same summer, in California, TVC's Steve Sheldon told me of his work mobilizing black churches to lobby against a state assembly bill for gay rights.

In these cases, white Christian-right activists forged alliances with black conservatives to make their causes appear more mainstream, less divided along racial and class lines. In this vein, the Family Research Council (the lobbying affiliate of Focus on the Family) recently named as vice-president Kay Cole James, a black anti-abortion activist. Like many of the professionals leading Christian-right organizations, James has a track record in government service. In the Bush administration, she served as assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services. Prior to that, she was appointed by Ronald Reagan to the National Commission on Children and to the White House Task Force on the Black Family.

James was one of several African, American speakers at last September's Christian Coalition "Road to Victory" conference. The Christian Coalition makes no secret of its intention to cultivate a mainstream public image. Last summer, the coalition's executive director Ralph Reed, in a New York Times commentary (excerpted from a longer article in the Heritage Foundation's Policy Review), urged the "pro-family" movement to pay more attention to bottom-line economic concerns affecting middle America: tax cuts, wage increases, and college scholarships. In a recent interview on National Public Radio, Reed elaborated on his goal of broadening the Christian Coalition's base across racial and ethnic lines. In October, the Christian Coalition's publication Christian American featured a front-page photo of a young black family next to a report on a poll commissioned by the coalition which showed that blacks and Latinos hold conservative views on social issues like abortion, gay and lesbian rights, crime, welfare, and affirmative action. Reed was quoted to the effect that the Christian right will no longer "concede the minority community to the political left," and he announced that the Christian Coalition will soon begin advertising on minority-owned radio stations and sending its literature to black and Latino churches.

All of this activity dispels the old stereotype of white fundamentalists as unrepentant racists. It has been easy for critics of the Christian right to point to the movement's lily-white membership and say that these people do not come close to representing the diversity found in the United States. It would be easy now to say that the Christian right's newfound racial inclusiveness is just another public-relations ploy, and there certainly is evidence to support such a case. The same October issue of Christian American, for example, recaps the Christian Coalition's September "Road to Victory" conference. Included among the participant photos is one of the Reverend Billy McCormack, a Robertson associate and coalition board member. Just two years ago, McCormack was an ardent supporter of "former" Klansman David Duke's gubernatorial campaign, as were many Christian Coalition activists. Also on hand, of course, was Senator Jesse Helms, who began his activist career years ago as a broadcast journalist and occasional contributor to the monthly magazine of the segregationist white Citizens' Councils.

The old sin of bigotry dies hard, but changing circumstances have forced a change in strategy on the Christian right. Even so, the Christian right's new recruitment of evangelical blacks says nothing about whether the movement will act in their interests or merely use them as multicultural window-dressing.

Sara Diamond, Ph.D., is the author of Spiritual Warfare: The Politics of the Christian Right (Boston: South End Press) and a columnist for Z Magazine. She recently received her doctorate in sociology from the University of California at Berkeley.

COPYRIGHT 1994 American Humanist Association
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group