That changing God lobby in DC

Believe it or not, politicians used to be able to assume that when the U.S. Catholic bishops spoke on an issue, that meant that the nation's Catholics had spoken. That was so mid-20th century.

Before long, Catholic liberals -- backed by Playboy's Hugh Hefner and others -- would dare to create a pro-abortion-rights group called Catholics for Free Choice.

Before long, American Catholics would become so divided that traditionalists felt the need to form a group called Priests for Life.

Catholics were not the only believers rocked by the earthquakes of the 1960s and '70s. Evangelicals ventured out into the public square, inspired first by a born-again Democrat from Georgia and then by the Hollywood Republican who promised to defeat him. The Protestant mainline declined and then splintered. Pluralism and globalization tested old coalitions and inspired old ones.

All of this caused radical changes in the nation's capital. The number of organizations engaged in advocacy work linked to religious issues has increased fivefold in four decades -- from 37 in 1970 to at least 211 today.

"No matter how small the group, everyone feels the need to open an office in Washington, D.C., so that their voices can be heard," said political scientist Allen D. Hertzke of the University of Oklahoma, lead researcher for a new study of religious advocacy groups conducted by the Pew Forum for Religion and Public Life. "All of this is evidence of the growing pluralism on the American scene and the fact that religion is playing an even more prominent role in our politics."

According to this survey, Catholics of one stripe or another are behind one out of five (19 percent) of advocacy groups with offices in Washington, D.C., and evangelical Protestants support almost as many (18 percent). While 12 percent of these groups are Jewish, only 8 percent represent the old Protestant mainline. In fact, Muslims support 17 advocacy groups, while the historic mainline churches now have 16.

Hertzke said it's significant that the largest category -- one quarter of the groups studied -- consists either of interfaith groups or organizations that work on religious issues that involve believers in multiple faith traditions. Nearly two-thirds of these groups work on both domestic and foreign issues.

While one church-state lawyer's "advocacy" is often another's "lobbying," 82 percent of the groups in the Pew Forum study operate as nonprofit, tax-exempt organizations. Thus, they focus most of their work on public policy issues broadly defined, as opposed to specific legislation or candidates.

However, the survey's broad definition of "religious advocacy" included "attempts to influence, or urge the public to influence, specific legislation, whether the legislation is before a legislative body, such as the U.S. Congress or any state legislature, or before the public as a referendum, ballot initiative, constitutional amendment or similar measure." It also included "efforts to affect public policy, such as activities aimed at the White House and federal agencies, litigation designed to advance policy goals, and education or mobilization of religious constituencies on particular issues."

It was easy to describe the groups doing this work in the years after World War II. They were "largely denominational," explained Hertzke, each representing a specific body of believers -- Catholics, Jews, Baptists or mainline Protestants, such as Episcopalians, Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans and others.

By the start of the 1970s, evangelicals were gaining power through the growth of nondenominational groups, educational institutions and media ministries. Then Roe v. Wade changed the shape of American politics -- especially for evangelicals and traditional Catholics. Meanwhile, President Jimmy Carter inspired some Baptists and infuriated others. The ground was moving.

Many of the advocacy groups launched during this period were ecumenical or interfaith, uniting liberal and conservative believers on opposite sides of hot-button social issues. At the same time, some historic churches began to splinter.

In the '90s, religious activism went global in a world transformed by the fall of Soviet Union, digital communications and growing Third World concerns about poverty, human rights, AIDS and religious liberty. Meanwhile, the face of religion in American began to grow more complex before and after 9/11.

"There has definitely been a globalization of religious advocacy work, with all of these trends and issues making their way back to Washington," said Hertzke. As a result, "ecumenical and interfaith work is now normal. We all live and work in the same world, now. Everything is connected."

Alveda King's old dream

Fox News star Glenn Beck staged the show at the Lincoln Memorial, and then fired up his flock by claiming, "Something that is beyond man is happening. America today begins to turn back to God." Mama Grizzly Sarah Palin almost stole the show with a political shot at President Barack Obama, telling her fans, "You too know that we must not fundamentally transform America as some would want. We must restore America and restore her honor!"

But there was only one African-American preacher present whose last name was spelled K-I-N-G. There was only one orator who could infuriate pundits simply by standing with Beck on the 47th anniversary of her martyred uncle's "I Have a Dream" speech.

Tears of rage? Tears of joy? The Rev. Alveda King knew she would cause both by linking the Rev. Martin Luther King's classic cadences with the religious and cultural issues that loomed over what Beck insisted was a nonpolitical rally. Once a Democrat in the Georgia Legislature, the evangelical minister now leads African-American outreach programs for the Catholic group Priests For Life.

First, she reminded listeners that her "Uncle Martin" had compared America's promise of equal protection to a check marked "insufficient funds." But when, she asked, will "we know that the check Uncle Martin spoke of is good?"

"We will know when prayer is once again welcome in the public squares of America and in our schools. We will know when our children are no longer in mortal peril on our streets and in our classrooms, and in the wombs of our mothers," she said.

"We will know when righteousness rolls down like waters, and justice like a mighty stream. Yes, I too have a dream ... that America will repent of the sin of racism and return to honor. I have a dream that white privilege will become human privilege and that people of every ethnic blend will receive everyone as brothers and sisters in the love of God. I have a dream that America will pray, and God will forgive us our sins and revive our land."

Critics were not kind.

Chatting with MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, columnist Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post dismissed Alveda King as a "convenient figurehead or puppet. ... She's a fundamentalist, very conservative Christian. ... She's estranged from the rest of the King family, and from the keepers of his legacy."

And in a Washington Post essay before the rally, Martin Luther King III anticipated the coming efforts to embrace the causes now identified with the first family of civil rights. His father's dream, he stressed, "rejected hateful rhetoric and all forms of bigotry or discrimination, whether directed at race, faith, nationality, sexual orientation or political beliefs. ... Throughout his life he advocated compassion for the poor, nonviolence, respect for the dignity of all people and peace for humanity."

For Alveda King, these debates are signs of painful divisions -- many of them theological -- inside the Civil Rights Movement, black churches and the extended King family. While the late Coretta Scott King supported abortion rights and gay rights, other members of the family have fiercely questioned whether the views of her husband would have evolved in that direction.

One debate, for example, focuses on the significance of the decision by the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., to accept the Margaret Sanger Award from Planned Parenthood in 1966. Alveda King and other opponents of abortion note that this was six years before Roe v. Wade and only three years after a Planned Parenthood pamphlet warned that, "An abortion kills the life of a baby after it has begun."

America's ongoing battles over abortion, insisted Alveda King, are one of many symptoms that her uncle's work remains unfinished.

"Our material gains seem to be going the way of our moral losses," she said, in her Aug. 28 sermon. "We are still suffering from the great evil divide of racism. Our children are suffering in failing school systems. Our sons and daughters are being incarcerated at astronomical rates. Sickness, disease and poverty of the spirit, soul and body are plaguing our communities. The procreative foundation of marriage is being threatened, and the wombs of our mothers have become places where the blood of our children is shed in a 'womb war' that threatens the fabric of our society. ...

"Yet, we are not without hope. Faith, hope and love are not dead in America. Hallelujah."

Breakfast prayer wars

The way President Barack Obama sees things, Americans should be able to find unity in prayer -- even if they disagree on the details of faith and politics. That's true in the current debates about health care, poverty and even gay marriage, he said, at the recent National Prayer Breakfast.

"Surely we can agree to find common ground when possible, parting ways when necessary," said Obama. "But in doing so, let us be guided by our faith and by prayer. For while prayer can buck us up when we are down, keep us calm in a storm, while prayer can stiffen our spines to surmount an obstacle -- and I assure you I'm praying a lot these days -- prayer can also do something else. It can touch our hearts with humility. ...

"Through faith, but not through faith alone, we can unite people to serve the common good."

But while the president preached unity, this year's National Prayer Breakfast was surrounded by controversy. There were signs this event on the semi-official Washington, D.C., calendar may no longer be able to serve as a safe forum in which a wide variety of religious and political leaders can unite their voices. The breakfasts began in 1953 and every president since Dwight Eisenhower has taken part.

Before the event, the leaders of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington sent a letter to the White House and to Congressional leaders calling for a boycott. They also urged C-Span not to televise the breakfast. Meanwhile, a coalition of gay-rights activists and religious liberals announced a series of alternative "American Prayer Hour" events in Washington and other cities nationwide.

Both groups focused intense criticism on The Fellowship, the nondenominational Christian organization that sponsors the prayer breakfast and similar networking events in Washington and around the world. The key is that numerous Ugandan leaders are active in Fellowship activities in that country, including the politician who introduced anti-gay legislation that includes capital punishment for some offenses.

The ethics group's letter accused this organization -- often called "The Family" -- of being a "cult-like secret society with unknown motivations and backing" that preaches an "unconventional brand of Christianity focusing on meeting Jesus 'man-to-man.' " The American Prayer Hour coalition simply called it a "secretive fundamentalist organization." The New York Times noted that the group has no "identifiable Internet site, no office number and no official spokesman."

However, some religious conservatives have also expressed doubts about The Fellowship. In an investigation of its property holdings in and around Washington, World magazine called attention to The Fellowship's "muddy theology," its "distain for the established church" and an emphasis on privacy that "grew into an obsessive culture of secrecy."

Describing the participants in Fellowship events, Republican Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma told World: "Some of them are Muslims. Some of them are Christians. But they meet in the spirit of Jesus, so it's not a denominational thing, it's not even a Christian thing, it's a Jesus thing."

The ultimate issue is that this organization needs to admit that it exists and talk openly about its activities and goals, said journalist Jeff Sharlet, author of "The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power." It's a sign of progress, for example, that many Americans who are active in the organization have rejected the Ugandan legislation and communicated their dismay to their contacts in Uganda.

When it comes to the National Prayer Breakfast, the Fellowship's leaders "should go completely public," said Sharlet, by email. They should "acknowledge their existence, the fact that this is their event, make their account of it accountable (it was not Ike's idea), explain the process by which people are invited and ... make explicit that this is about consecrating leadership to Jesus. Everybody is welcome, but it's about Jesus."

This kind of transparency might accelerate what already seems to be happening. Some leaders -- on the left and right -- might reject the big-tent approach offered by the National Prayer Breakfast and create their own events, which could focus on more explicit messages about faith and politics.

If the Fellowship's leaders are truly "serious about what they're about," noted Sharlet, this "would be great by their lights. They would lose a lot of clout, but the prayer breakfast movement would at last become an actual movement, of many strands."