POLITICAL CHANGES IN THE SOUTH

...Instead of negotiating for influence in the campaigns of the mainstream competitors, and in the next administration if one of the competitors wins the presidency in 1988, the Robertson campaign is forcing much of the conservative Christian community to place all its chips on a campaign sure to lose the nomination...

...In this context, another strong supporter of Robertson, Jamie Buckingham, founding pastor of the Tabernacle Church in Melbourne, Florida and publisher of the religious newsletter the Buckingham Report, reflected the potential for divisiveness when conservative Christians are pulled together within one campaign...

...senator, graduate of Yale Law School, and the successful entrepreneurial developer of a spectacularly successful religious-commercial television broadcasting empire grossing over $200 million annually—would provide broader credibility and legitimacy to his presidential bid...

...Basically, what has happened is the white community is now in the position that the black community was in before...

...All this adds up to a high probability of conflict within the GOP, undermining the Republican party's ability to maintain the highly fragile coalition that worked so well for President Reagan...

...From another vantage point, however, the outcome of the New Orleans election—which was replicated in the Atlanta September congressional fight, when whites effectively elected John Lewis over Julian Bond— suggests a potential lessening of political conflict between blacks and whites, the most divisive force in the Democratic party...

...This process is critical for any group seeking to gain political influence and leverage...

...The emergence of Swaggart as an important force in presidential politics epitomizes the prospective difficulties for the GOP...

...Just as it is reducing the ability of such other prospective candidates as George Bush, Jack Kemp, and Paul Laxalt to bargain with the religious right, Robertson's drive is functioning to meld together those forces seeking to force action on the most divisive political matters: abortion, school prayer, tuition tax credits, and other "value laden" issues...

...This is a phenomenon which in the long run can only help a beleaguered southern Democratic party...

...Working and middle-class Catholics, however, have been an essential ingredient of recent Republican success, and Swaggart provides the Democratic party with material almost perfectly designed to push Catholics back into the Democratic fold...

...Swaggart is a sharp critic of other religions, particularly Catholicism which he has denounced as a "false cult" and a "doctrine of devils...

...Black politics in many communities has entered a new stage in which the struggle for black control has been achieved, and the battle is now between various black factions...

...When blacks were in the minority, they could decide who would be the white candidate," Barthelemy said...

...Within this community, the presidential campaign of television evangelist Marion G. (Pat) Robertson is serving to lessen prospects for a successful alliance between traditional country-club Republicans and politically converted fundamentalist Christians...

...Willie Herenton, the respected superintendent of schools...

...the Reverend Tim LaHaye, founder of the American Coalition for Traditional Values and perhaps the leading critic of "secular humanism...

...THE SECOND, AND RELATED, consequence is that the Robertson campaign has become a magnet coalescing much of the religious right...

...Presidency...

...There is a growing feeling among many Christians—myself included—that Robertson may be ordained by God for this task...

...In fact, both developments represent embryonic trends within the Democratic and Republican parties that are likely to intensify conflict within the GOP coalition and to ameliorate some of the tensions within the Democratic coalition...

...These findings were a severe blow to a man who had considered that his background— as old-line Virginia gentry, son of a U.S...

...These developments in New Orleans, Atlanta, Memphis, and in scattered legislative districts in Alabama and Virginia put whites back in the political equation in majority—or near majority— black communities...

...One of the major successes of the GOP over the past two decades has been the driving of wedges between important elements of the Democratic coalition, as the forces and mechanisms for compromise and negotiation within the Democratic party weakened during the Vietnam and civil 21 rights conflicts...

...two former presidents of the Southern Baptist Convention, Charles Stanley and Jimmy Drapper...

...This ability to hear from God should be the number one qualification for the U.S...

...First, Christian leaders already committed to a candidate are taken out of the bargaining process normal in the early phases of selecting a presidential nominee...

...The placement of a substantial bloc of the leadership in what is sure to be a losing campaign almost guarantees deep resentment and anger within the Christian community when the GOP rejects Robertson...

...and Ed McAteer, president of the Religious Roundtable...

...The coalescing of Christian support behind Robertson has two consequences...

...Until now, the political process in many of these communities has functioned in many ways to convert the two-party system into a means of dividing the races...

...The success of this drive has surprised both religious and more pragmatic Republican strategists, as many Christian leaders who were openly or privately scornful of Robertson have been forced by pressures within the fundamentalist Christian community to join the Robertson bandwagon...

...and the endorsement of the Reverend Marion G. (Pat) Robertson's bid for the Republican presidential nomination by televangelist Jimmy Swaggart...

...Even in Memphis, a city where blacks are about to become a majority and where race has been the single most important factor in politics for the past two decades, blacks and whites have been quietly discussing the possibility of joining forces to beat the conservative white mayor, Richard Hackett...

...The victory of the black woman resulted from a unique set of alliances in the byzantine politics of Memphis, but it set in process a quiet examination of a biracial alliance to back a moderate black for mayor in 1987, including such prospective candidates as Dr...

...In an interview with Christianity Today, Buckingham said: "Now we need a man to call us back to righteousness...

...Robert Grant, head of Christian Voice, a lobby that issues moral "report cards" on elected officials...

...In the months after the Michigan primary, Robertson has focused his activities on firming up his own base within the conservative fundamentalist and evangelical communities...

...In Memphis, there has been an extraordinary correlation between the racial makeup of a precinct and its Democratic and Republican margins...

...Among those who have endorsed Robertson or are leaning his way are Swaggart, who had earlier described the Robertson bid as a mistake...

...From another vantage point, however, exit polls of the voters in the Michigan primary revealed strong suspicion and hostility toward his candidacy among Republican primary voters, as even bornagain Christians were more supportive of Bush than Robertson...

...In first a primary and then a run-off, Barthelemy defeated credible white and black opponents...

...White voters supported Barthelemy by large margins, after deciding against throwing their votes away on a white candidate sure to lose a run-off against a black...

...This division by race was partially repaired only recently when moderate whites, including many Republicans, backed a black woman over a white man—both Democrats running in a nonpartisan election—to elect the first black to a citywide post...

...In Michigan's August 1986 primary, Robertson's Freedom Council demonstrated the power of the Christian movement to influence a complex, low-turnout political event by winning a substantial number of "precinct delegates" while coming in second to Vice-President George Bush in the first test of prospective candidates for the 1988 GOP nomination...

...Jim Duffy, a political consultant who has worked on campaigns throughout the South, recently noted: "Once the fight is between black factions, the white vote becomes a 20 central factor, and in this kind of contest, the code words for a successful candidate are: 'I am going to be fair, I'm going to be the elected official of everyone.' " Fundamentalists Splitting Republicans WHILE TRENDS IN THESE CITIES are encouraging COalition politics, just the opposite is taking place within a key constituent group of the Republican party: fundamentalist and evangelical Christians...

...If Christians believe God has a plan for this nation, shouldn't we want a man in the White House who listens to God, rather than a man who acts on the basis of political expediency...

...The election of Barthelemy in New Orleans was significant because it reflects the revival of the importance of white voters in majority black communities...

...IN ONE RESPECT, THE VOTING PATTERNS suggest the undermining of black voting strength by a white minority in a process the local paper, the Times Picayune, called "the white veto...

...It is, however, expediency that gives strength to successful political alliances, both in the case of the biracial drives for elective office in the South and in the case of the alliance between martini-drinking Republicans and Bible-thumping fundamentalists as they line up at the polls...

...In the final election between two blacks, Barthelemy and William Jefferson, Barthelemy lost in the black community but overwhelmingly carried the white community...