Ralph Reed, the former head of the Christian Coalition, bless his sincere Christian heart, in 1998 sent Jack Abramoff a letter asking for help in making business contacts. He said he was done with electoral politics and, “I need to start humping in corporate accounts.” I am so very very proud of our Christian spokespersons.
Yes, we have some legitimate Christians claiming to speak for the rest of us–people like Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, James Kennedy, and James Dobson. But they rarely make me proud. These guys are hugely influential gatekeepers to Christian audiences. Therefore, political operatives and lobbyists suck up to them, coddle them, do whatever it takes to gain their ear. And when Pat and Jerry and the Jims speak, I’m afraid they too often parrot the sentiments of somebody lurking in the background. Which may explain why they say so many stupid things.
Then there are other conservative voices who cloak themselves in conservative values, speak Christianese, know how to push Christian buttons, and pretend to be Christians on TV–people like Ann Coulter (who can write a book about God and politics without quoting any Scripture), Tom Delay, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Karl Rove, Ralph Reed, and legions of political operatives. Personally, I don’t trust any of them. I think most of them just use Christians as pawns in political games (because that’s what they’re paid to do). They conduct seminars on how to mobilize us, how to get our dander up, how to extract money from us, and how to generally use us. Call me cynical. Frankly, I’ve just had enough of this stuff.
Which is why I shed no tears when Ralph Reed, running for Lieutenant Governor of Georgia, lost in the primary last week. Interesting things happen to morality and values when they become entwined with politics. Reed, once the baby-faced posterboy of the Christian right as head of the Christian Coalition, was a good friend of Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist who will be wearing stripes for a while. Abramoff asked Reed to mobilize Christians against gambling. Reed got his network of pastors and laypersons to start a grassroots war against gambling, and collected a $5.3 million paycheck from Abramoff. Now it turns out that Abramoff was actually working for an Indian tribe, and the money came from casino revenues. The Indians didn’t want to ban gambling; they just used Reed’s grassroots war to scare away new competition.
Time magazine, in writing about the downfall of Ralph Reed, says that to Reed, “Christian voters were pawns in a game of power swapping.” Now, Reed ended up being a pawn. He hoped to move from Lieutenant Governor to Governor to…Senator? President? Now he’s done, and will need to return to, uh, what was that word he used?
Reed concluded his concession speech with these words: “Stay in the fight, don’t retreat and our values will win in November.” Well, let’s hope it is more “our” values than the values of Reed and all the other charlatans who play gullible Christians like a violin.
