Coalition Man
WITTMANN, MARSHALL
Politics Coalition Man by Marshall Wittmann For two years of my life, I spent a good deal of time answering the question, What is a nice Jewish boy like you doing in a place like this? It used to...
...During my two years with the Christian Coalition I never encountered even a trace of anti-Semitism from the organization or its members-but I did witness intolerance directed at the coalition by an established Jewish organization, the Anti-Defamation League...
...They ought to realize that religious conservatism is the nation's most dynamic political movement-and that no non-Jewish group in America is more committed to the security of Israel...
...Besides, I am a baby boomer and had seen Christians and Jews allied for civil rights and against the Vietnam War...
...But the radical separation of church and state is an article of faith in the liberalism that is many Jews' ersatz religion...
...In the end, the group most discomfited by my job was my own family...
...But in the mid-1960s, liberalism suffered a nervous breakdown...
...That reality does not dispel the alarm Jews express at conservative Christians' desire to allow religious expression in the public square...
...My first day working for the coalition, a page-one story in the Washington Post described the followers of Pat Robertson as "poor, uneducated and easy to command...
...But America is not Europe...
...It was with some trepidation that I set out for my first encounter with the Christian grass roots at a coalition meeting in Baton Rouge in March 1993...
...It is also, however, politically incorrect-and thus fair game for stereotyping...
...My boss, George Bush, had just lost an election...
...The Democrats dominated the White House and the Hill, and many Republicans blamed Bush's defeat on the "religious right...
...It used to remind me of the old ad for rye bread: "You don't have to be Jewish to love Levy's...
...Many legislators were pleasantly surprised that we did not pass judgment on their religious bona fides...
...as deputy assistant secretary of Health and Human Services, I had fought to sustain Bush's pro-life vetoes...
...I believe these protests are misplaced...
...In fact, a culture of tolerance has grown from our country's Christian roots, with the result that American Jews face a greater threat from assimilation than from persecution...
...The Christian Coalition was opening a Washington office, and I decided to send my resume to Ralph Reed, who appeared to be a real mensch and an unflappable spokesman for a movement whose obituary was prematurely being written...
...And as one committed to the security of Israel, I felt that Pat Robertson was good for the Jews...
...Over and over, I pointed out that we were a public-policy lobby, not a theological organization...
...I found it amusing to hear Jews devalue evangelicals' support for Israel by attributing it to "biblical" teachings about the end of time...
...I was already a foot soldier in the culture war...
...My grandfather emigrated to Waco, Texas, from Poland at the turn of the century and ended his life a pillar of that Southern Baptist community...
...Where did Jews acquire their interest in Israel if not from the Bible...
...My first job out of college was organizing for the United Farm Workers, whose key backer was the Catholic Church...
...Jews ought to be more receptive than that...
...In June 1994, with the coalition already under attack from the national Democratic party, the ADL issued a report suggesting that religious conservatism was anti-Semitic...
...My relatives, good open-minded liberals, thought I was meshugah...
...It also helped that I was Jewish...
...And well they might...
...Thirty years later, it is obvious that our nation must experience a cultural rebirth and that central to its regeneration is putting faith and families first...
...The Christian Coalition is not asking for government to impose morals, only to ensure that government does not undermine the Judeo-Christian values that built our nation and that are crucial to our future...
...Religious conservatism is nothing more than a moral environmental movement...
...In that early phase of my association with the Christian Coalition, even I wondered what truth there might be in the general assumption that my new crowd was bigoted and backward...
...The media will take seriously a moral message expounded by an Irving Kristol that they would dismiss coming from a Christian conservative...
...The Post was immediately inundated with faxes reporting the bank balances and advanced degrees of evangelicals, and we distributed a button on Capitol Hill that read: "Poor, uneducated and easy to command...
...National Jewish organizations often join with civil liberties groups to protest voluntary prayer in schools and the display of creches in front of city halls...
...In early 1993, Washington was unfriendly to my new employer in more ways than this...
...Still, attitudes changed as legislators learned about our mainstream program for family tax relief and school choice and against federal funding for abortion...
...In December 1992, I was on the verge of unemployment...
...Tossing old truths aside, liberal elites propagated the view that drugs were okay, the two-parent family was optional, criminals were misunderstood, prayer in public places was bad, and abortion was just another form of birth control...
...Marshall Wittman is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation...
...To them, a "Christian coalition" evoked pogroms and worse...
...What I found were educated, family-oriented, middle- and upper-middle-class people who actually hungered for Jewish allies...
...Millions of Jews have similarly thrived as a minority in Christian America...
...These Republicans urged greater distance between the party and the movement...
...That is why it is kosher for a nice Jewish boy to have worked for the Christian Coalition...
...Working the Hill as a lobbyist, I sensed in others the same discomfort I had felt myself before that trip to Baton Rouge...
...At a time when our children suffer from a lack of character education and the vulgarization of the popular culture, reminders of our Judeo-Christian heritage should be welcome...
...Well, you don't have to be an evangelical Christian to see the need for a return to traditional values and hence to appreciate the work of the Christian Coalition...
Vol. 1 • September 1995 • No. 1
