Is a political alliance between evangelicals and Catholics possible? Historically, the two groups have viewed each other as religious enemies. Theologically as well as geographically, evangelicals and Catholics still sit in very different pews. But according to University of Virginia sociologist James Davison Hunter, doctrinal differences among religious Americans are less important than cultural antagonisms between secular liberals and serious believers of all faiths. In today’s culture wars, Hunter argues, conservatives in both religious camps have discovered certain common concerns: opposition to abortion, support for parental choice in education and a shared sense of persecution in public life.
Robertson’s Christian Coalition hopes to exploit this cultural convergence among believers. His movement managed a significant breakthrough last May when New York’s Cardinal John O’Connor agreed to let the coalition distribute 100,000 voter guides in Catholic churches, pointing out which public-school-board candidates opposed condom distribution to students without parental consent. This month the coalition is mailing 2 million voter guides to Californians–including 400 to Catholic pastors in the hope that the clergy will support Proposition 174 (which would mandate school vouchers) from the pulpit. In Atlanta last week, a spokesman for Catholic Archbishop John Donoghue reported that the church shares “many common goals” with the Christian Coalition.
Overt support from Catholics could make an enormous difference to the Christian Coalition. One fourth of the American electorate identify themselves as evangelicals, another fourth as Catholics. “We expect to top out with 1 million Protestant members,” says Ralph Reed, the coalition’s executive director. “With Catholics, we can double that.” To that end, Robertson recently appointed Marlene Elwell, his Midwest campaign director in 1988, as liaison to U.S. Catholics. “Frankly,” Robertson writes in the current issue of his magazine, Christian America, “I feel I have a lot more in common with this Pope than with liberal Protestants.”
Despite these overtures, it is highly questionable whether many Catholics will heed Robertson’s call. For one thing, “there’s still a lot of residual hostility between evangelicals and Catholics,” says John Green, a political scientist at the University of Akron, Ohio, who specializes in religion and politics. At September’s Washington workshop, for example, a Catholic who has worked with Robertson complained that evangelical colleagues pestered her to leave the church so that she could be properly “saved.” Even Reed describes the coalition’s Catholic campaign as “outreach”-a word evangelists use when seeking converts. Moreover, where the religious right stresses conflict between the church and civil society, Catholics prefer to work cooperatively on common social issues such as health care.
But the biggest difference may be organizational. Robertson’s strength is in evangelical churches whose preachers can easily mobilize their politically homogeneous flocks. In contrast, Catholics are more diverse and resentful of politics from the pulpit. “A Catholic priest who takes a position is going to spark dissension no matter what he says,” observes Green. Reed says he would be satisfied if the nation’s Catholic bishops simply let their priests distribute the coalition’s tracts. He assumes American Catholics need Pat Robertson to tell them how to vote or work a precinct. With conservatives of their own like William Bennett and Patrick Buchanan, why should Catholics follow a leader who, religiously and politically, invokes an alien gospel?
