CHRISTIANITY TODAY/November 7, 1986
‘Lone Ranger’ group keeps score on Congress while it battles rumors of Unification Church ties.
A fade-out by some Religious Right groups in Washington before the November elections has left a gap being filled by Christian Voice, a group with alleged ties to the Unification Church. Christian Voice now appears to have inherited the tasks of grassroots organizing and political persuasion pioneered by such groups as Pat Robertson’s Freedom Council, Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority, and Tim LaHaye’s American Coalition for Traditional Values (ACTV)—groups that have for one reason or another disbanded or shifted focus in the last few months.
Christian Voice is best known for distributing report cards on candidates. In the month before the November 4 elections, it distributed millions of full-color magazines, called the Candidates Biblical Scoreboard, rating nearly 3,000 candidates for state and national office.
Few recognized Christian leaders endorse the group or cooperate with it. But an aggressive effort by Christian Voice to attract media coverage has succeeded, bolstering the group’s claim to speak for 45 million evangelical Christians. Media quotes, in turn, are sprinkled throughout Christian Voice fund-raising tools to garner financial support.
The director of the National Association of Evangelicals’ (NAE) Washington office, Robert P. Dugan, Jr., has expressed concern about the group, saying, “Christian Voice has succeeded in convincing some gullible media people that it speaks for all evangelicals. That is not the case. Christian Voice is not constructed to be a representative organization, and its political positions may well be determined by a handful of activists meeting over lunch. They are accountable to no one but themselves.”
Christian Voice employs 17 field directors who monitor politics in two dozen states and organize churchgoers into what they say will become a potent voting bloc. Through those contacts, between 10 and 20 million report cards on individual candidates were distributed this fall.
In Washington, Christian Voice is known for its “Lone Ranger” style of operating, and some political consultants are warning candidates for office to keep their distance.
What Is Christian Voice?
In 1976 Christian Voice was chartered in California under the name Citizens United. Its purposes were to promote anticrime legislation and community awareness. In August 1978, the group changed its name to American Christians United, and in October 1978 it became Christian Voice, Inc. In 1981 the group’s purpose was changed to the following: “To educate the public on Christian moral issues … [and] to educate religious leaders and the laity on the principles of ethical and moral stewardship and responsibilities.”
On the basis of its mailing list of 350,000, including 50,000 ministers, Christian Voice presents itself as the premier Christian political organization in Washington. Gary Jarmin, the group’s lobbyist and political consultant, says membership is built from direct-mail recruitment, television fund raisers, and grassroots organizing.
“We have no membership criteria,” Jarmin said. “There are no minimum contributions or dues. Our membership is based on the number of people who give to the organization, whether it’s $5 or $5,000.”
Christian Voice’s publication, Candidates Biblical Scoreboard, identifies 19 “family-moral-freedom” issues that it uses to rate members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. The magazine describes itself as “nonpartisan and nonsectarian,” yet it presents political issues using the terminology of far Right rhetoric. For example, the Scoreboard describes support for President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI)—also called Star Wars—as a “pro-biblical” position, saying “letters to the editor, generated in Russia, are appearing in American newspapers protesting ‘Star Wars.’ ”
Capitol Hill Presence
Literature distributed by Christian Voice calls the organization “the nation’s largest Christian conservative religious lobby.” But according to the clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives, the organization has no registered lobbyists. Groups planning to influence legislation through direct contact with elected officials are required to file with the Office of Records and Registration in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Jarmin, who lobbies for Christian Voice on a part-time consulting basis, registered in 1980. But because the Office of Records and Registration has not received a report from him since 1981, he is considered inactive, according to Mimi Engler, of the House of Representatives clerk’s office.
When asked why he is no longer a registered lobbyist, Jarmin said, “We represent a lot of different groups, and to me [registration] is just an enormous waste of paperwork. I believe, quite frankly, that the lobby laws are unconstitutional.”
Not all Washington lobbyists file with the House of Representatives, especially if their main purpose is to alert a constituency to an issue they consider important in order to mobilize a telephone or letter-writing campaign to Congress. This is the way Christian Voice has operated recently, in addition to distributing report cards and its Candidates Biblical Scoreboard. In the past several years, however, according to Christian Voice chairman and president Robert Grant, the organization has done a substantial amount of face-to-face lobbying on issues such as school prayer.
The organization’s practice of lobbying without being registered has drawn criticism from other Washington lobbying experts. “They need to play by the rules or they will give all of us a bad name,” said Paul Weyrich, founder and president of the conservative Coalitions for America.
A Moon Connection?
Conservatives in Washington are troubled by Jarmin’s outspokenness and by rumors of continuing ties between Christian Voice and the Unification Church and its related organizations. From 1967 to 1973, Jarmin was an active member and leader in the Unification Church. Today, he says he is not active in any church, adding that he attends a nondenominational “home church.”
In April and July, Jarmin spoke at political conferences sponsored by CAUSA USA, a political organization of Sun Myung Moon’s that recruits the support of Christian pastors in its fight against communism. “I see CAUSA and the [Unification Church-owned Washington] Times as basically co-belligerents in the battle,” Jarmin said. Asked his opinion of Moon, Jarmin said, “I don’t think I even want to comment on that. That’s a question I am quite frankly getting tired of answering. I don’t think it’s relevant, and I’d rather not even get into it.”
Reflecting concerns shared by many Washington political observers, the NAE’s Dugan says, “I find it revealing that Gary shows anger when he is questioned about Rev. Moon. A Washington activist said Jarmin assured him that ‘Moon is a prophet of God.’ In my experience, ex-cult members who become evangelicals are vocal in denouncing their cults’ heresies. Jarmin’s typical Washington ‘no comment’ is not good enough, especially when one understands the grandiose and blasphemous messianic claims of Sun Myung Moon.”
Jarmin left Christian Voice in 1984 to work for Tim LaHaye’s American Coalition for Traditional Values. But when Grant reorganized Christian Voice earlier this year, he hired Jarmin on a consultant basis, knowing the baggage he brought with him. “I’m willing to pay the price,” Grant said of suspicions about Jarmin’s Unification Church ties and his isolation from other groups. “I think Gary is probably the most gifted and knowledgeable lobbyist in this town who understands the issues and knows the players and how the town operates.”
Additional links between Christian Voice and Moon’s organizations are apparent. Grant, like Jarmin, has spoken at CAUSA meetings. As recently as last March, he addressed a two-day seminar in California which was cosponsored by CAUSA and the Washington-based Coalition for Religious Freedom. CAUSA provides pastors with all-expense-paid trips to conferences to present its philosophy of “Godism,” a counterproposal to communism based on Moon’s teachings (CT, June 14, 1985, p. 55).
Grant, a graduate of Wheaton College (Ill.) and Fuller Theological Seminary, is chairman of the executive committee of the Coalition for Religious Freedom, a group that opposed Moon’s 1985 conviction and imprisonment for tax evasion. Grant said the coalition “is funded by the Unification Church, and that doesn’t bother me a bit. The Unification Church puts money into an organization because they like what it is doing. They are not going to dictate what that organization does, because they believe in the ideal of religious freedom.”
At the same time, Grant insists, “I certainly don’t agree with the theology of the Unification Church.” He says his sympathies for Moon are based instead on constitutional guarantees of free religious exercise.
Christian Voice faces an uphill battle for credibility and influence. Disclaimers on the group’s report cards state that a candidate’s score is not meant to be a reflection of his or her personal faith or morality. But that message may be missed by voters.
In 1984, U.S. Sen. Mark O. Hatfield (R-Oreg.) received a 20 percent rating from Christian Voice. Known for his outspoken Christian witness in the capital, Hatfield received a copy of the report card from an irate Oregonian. A note was scrawled across the front: “As a Christian, you need to repent.… Study this and take notice.”
Incidents such as this make it likely that other Christians involved in politics will keep their distance from Christian Voice. Said Weyrich, “I have a theory that they are conservative first and Christian incidentally, as opposed to other groups that are Christian first and conservative incidentally.” Until Christian Voice proves otherwise, Christians need to weigh that theory carefully before they support the organization that says it speaks for them.
By Beth Spring.
