Christian Coalition of America
This article is about the organization presently operating in the United States. For the short-lived New Zealand political party of the same name, see Christian Coalition (New Zealand).
The Christian Coalition of America is a US Christian political advocacy group, which includes Christian fundamentalists, Evangelicals, Pentecostals, Roman Catholics and members of mainline Protestant churches; it claims 1,200,000 members but other sources say it has less than 400,000. [1] The Christian Coalition was founded by Rev. Pat Robertson, who served as the organization's president for some time. The current president is Roberta Combs.
Its aims are consistent with those of the Christian right. On its website it states that it is:
- (An) active conservative grassroots political organization in America. The Christian Coalition of America offers people of faith the vehicle to be actively involved in shaping their government - from the County Courthouse to the halls of Congress[2].
Brief History
Following a well-funded but failed bid for the U.S. presidency in 1988, Pat Robertson used the remains of his campaign machinery to jump-start the creation of a voter mobilization effort (which claimed to be bipartisan) dubbed the Christian Coalition.
Under the leadership of Robertson and Ralph Reed, the Coalition quickly became the loudest voice in the conservative Christian movement, its influence culminating with an effort to support the election of a conservative Christian to the presidency in 1996.
Ralph Reed takes control of day-to-day operations of the coalition in 1989.
Ralph Reed left the coalition in 1997.
Following Bill Clinton’s victory in the election and Reed’s departure in 1997, the organization has made only limited progress and has been unable to revive the passion it seemed to evoke in the mid-1990s.
In 2000 the coalition moved from its long standing base operations in the Chesapeake Bay area to an office on Capitol Hill in Washington.
In both the 2000 and 2004 Presidential elections, voter mobilization efforts of conservative Christians tended to be focused internally within the machinery of the Republican Party, as opposed to lobby groups and voter mobilization organizations such as the Christian Coalition. In a related example of this more "in-house" approach to mobilizing votes from the conservative Christian community, Ralph Reed served as Southeast Regional chairman for the Bush-Cheney campaign during the 2004 Presidential election.
In the 2000 Presidential elections, the organization distributed over 70 million voter guides in churches all across America, including over 5 million in spanish, (apprx. 2 million of which were distributed in Florida alone). In 2004, the group distributed approx. 30 million voter guides, but this time in targeted states and congressional districts, choosing instread to focus its efforts on areas that were more politically competitive.
In 2005, the Coalition concluded a settlement agreement with the Internal Revenue Service, ending its long-running battle with that agency regarding its tax exempt status. As a result, the IRS has now recognized the Coalition's tax exempt status, the first time in the Agency's history that it has granted a letter of exemption to a group that stated in its application that it would distribute voter guides directly in churches.
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