Christian Coalition Courts Minorities

Quoting the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and standing shoulder to shoulder with black and Latino clergy, the leader of the predominantly white Christian Coalition issued a call Thursday for his followers to make racial reconciliation the “centerpiece” of their legislative agenda.

The faith-based organization, generally associated with conservative social causes, signaled an effort to broaden its appeal by urging the new Congress to pass a package of bills offering scholarships, tax credits, urban empowerment zones and other measures targeted at improving poor black and Latino communities. Christian Coalition Executive Director Ralph Reed dubbed the proposals “the Samaritan Project.”

Reed also said the group hopes to help calm racial strife by raising at least $10 million over three years for black and Latino churches to use in outreach ministries.

“For too long, our movement has been primarily--and frankly almost exclusively--a white, evangelical, Republican movement, whose center of gravity focused on the safety of the suburbs,” Reed said. “The Samaritan Project is a bold plan to break that color line and bridge the gap that separates white evangelicals and Roman Catholics from their Latino and African American brothers and sisters.”

Skeptics, such as Laura W. Murphy, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Washington office, rejected the agenda as “window dressing. . . . It is conceivable that black leadership could be siphoned off by Ralph Reed because this is a very slick and sophisticated snow job. . . . But it’s a Trojan horse.”

Those standing with Reed disagreed, saying the Christian Coalition is misunderstood. Noting the group’s offering of $750,000 and other forms of aid to rebuild black churches burned during a series of mysterious fires, the ministers said Reed has convinced them of his sincerity.

“We in the black community were looking for a leader to come from the black community,” said the Rev. Lawrence F. Haygood, who founded a church-based community college in Tuskeegee, Ala. “But that leader didn’t appear. He appeared in a white form in the image of Ralph Reed.”

Reed said that the group’s legislative goals include approval of government-supported scholarships enabling low-income children from the nation’s 100 worst school districts to attend private schools, a program costing as much as $500 million annually. The group’s political agenda also calls for $500 tax credits for those who donate 10 hours in volunteer activities on behalf of the poor.

Reed said that the coalition, made up of an estimated 1.7 million people who attend 100,000 churches, is not abandoning its past political goals, including opposition to abortion rights, gambling and a big-government approach to social programs. But, he said, the coalition wants to do its part for hard-pressed minority groups.

“This crisis of the soul presents us with the question that Martin Luther King called ‘the most persistent and urgent question’: What are you doing for others?” he said.