Freedom Writer - April 1995

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What went wrong?The Religious Right and the American Jewish community

By Edmund D. Cohen

The recent cooperation of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) with Delaware 
Valley freethinker and civil libertarian groups uniting to oppose 
the sectarian devotions that open Interboro, Pennsylvania school board 
meetings is one of many signals of a fundamental shift in the attitude 
of Jewish civic groups toward the Religious Right.

From the rise of Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority to national prominence 
in the late 70s until last year, the relationship between American 
Jews and conservative Christians appeared to be one of forbearance 
and accommodation. American Jews welcomed strong political support 
for Israel coming from occupants of a sector of the political spectrum 
that used to belong to anti-Semites. Never mind that this support 
was predicated on end-of-the-world rhetoric involving either the gathering 
of all Jews in Israel so that they could be converted en masse to 
Christianity in some scenarios, or all killed in the battle of Armageddon 
in others.

Last summer, the ADL published _The_Religious_Right:_The_Assault_on_
Tolerance_&_Pluralism_in_America_. After many years of concentrating 
its attention on overtly anti-Jewish groups like the Ku Klux Klan, 
neo-Nazis, and so-called Identity Christians, the ADL now openly criticized 
Pat Robertson, Jay Sekulow, Ralph Reed, Donald Wildmon, and Phyllis 
Schlafly, among others.

The ADL was soon joined by other Jewish civic groups, including the 
American Jewish Congress and the World Jewish Congress, in sending 
out fundraising letters identifying the Religious Right as a threat 
to be combatted. With remarkable unity, the Jewish community ended 
its virtual moratorium on such criticism and crossed the Rubicon in 
its relations with the Religious Right.

There was no obvious reason for this change to come at this particular 
time. The people I know in the Jewish community had never lost their 
traditional mistrust for Christian evangelization. For them, to go 
back to having their children be subjected to Christian devotions 
under duress in the public schools would be the moral equivalent of 
requiring Black children to go back to drinking from separate water 
fountains.

Since the change came before the Newt Gingrich revolution and the 
accompanying reactivation of the school prayer amendment issue, these 
could not have been the precipitating factor. American Jews had long 
been liberal, inclined to vote Democratic, and strong supporters of 
reproductive rights. They had little in common with the Religious 
Right except political support for Israel. Every domestic element 
bearing upon Jewish attitudes toward the Religious Right remained 
as it had been. The Jewish civic organizations could have struck a 
responsive chord with their constituencies by going after the Religious 
Right at any time. But until the summer of 1994 they did not do so.

In my opinion, relations with Israel precipitated the change. (Other 
commentators I have spoken with are skeptical about this conclusion.) 
During the Reagan-Bush years, Religious Right leaders got VIP treatment 
from the right-wing Likud party leadership of Israel. The Religious 
Right, like Likud, favored an intransigent stand toward Muslims. When 
the Labor Party came to power and Yitzhak Rabin became prime minister, 
the peace initiative with Yasir Arafat commenced. The welcome in Israel 
for Religious Right leaders with their malignant prattle about blowing 
up the Dome of the Rock so that the Third Temple could be built and 
animal sacrifices resumed, cooled.

An important clue on the "700 Club" of January 7, 1994, passed unnoticed. 
Ralph Reed, the head of Pat Robertson's political arm, the Christian 
Coalition, was visiting Israel, and lobbied peripheral members of 
Rabin's governing Knesset coalition. Reed gleefully announced in a 
telephone interview that Rabin's coalition was about to split. The 
Rabin government would fall, and Likud would return to power, disavowing 
the peace agreement and bringing the peace process to a screeching 
halt. The implication was that Reed's lobbying was responsible for 
this suppositious result. (More than a year has passed without the 
fall of the Rabin government. This was far from the first time that 
a purported scoop on the "700 Club" turned out to be wrong.) My inference 
is that the Likud leaders found American Religious Right representatives 
to be useful pawns, and the former used their influence with American 
Jewish leaders to obtain their forbearance toward those pawns. The 
Labor Party, on the other hand, has found the Religious Right to be 
an impediment, and so is likely to have left American Jewish leaders 
to do what they thought was right.

Another factor in the relationship of the Religious Right and the 
Jews has been Pat Robertson's 1991 book, _The_New_World_Order_. Even 
though the book was on _The_New_York_Times_ bestseller list for a 
number of weeks, the mainstream media ignored it. But it has been 
conspicuously revisited in a recent issue of _The_New_York_Review_
of_Books_. _The_New_York_Review_'s article shows how the conspiracy 
theory Robertson spins out not only resembles anti-Semitic diatribes 
of the past, but cites some of those diatribes in its bibliography. 
It calls the purported conspirators by different names than the overtly 
anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists of yore did. Since Robertson is 
the prime mover of the Religious Right in the 1990s, those who make 
common cause with him must take some responsibility for the sheer 
madness of the views he has often expressed.

The current Republican revolution in Washington has had an ironic 
effect on the Religious Right -- and on Pat Robertson in particular. 
So long as Republicans remained opposition voices crying in the wilderness, 
they had no problem with Robertson as a player with a place at their 
table. Now that they have power and respectability to lose, Robertson 
becomes an embarrassment to the leading Republicans. I have enjoyed 
watching Dole, Gingrich, Armey, and others treat him gingerly these 
past few months.

During the same period, ADL leaders met with Reed: non-apologies were 
tendered and accepted on both sides. But I gather that it was made 
clear that neither the fiction of voluntariness, nor the pretense 
of student initiation could make a school prayer amendment to the 
United States Constitution palatable to American Jews. In recent weeks, 
I have heard Robertson, Reed, and Sekulow all declare their intention 
not to push for a school prayer amendment. (The Christian Coalition 
did not, however, stop raising contributions on the promise of pushing 
for such an amendment.)

Robertson made it clear that he felt that Republican leaders were 
offering the Religious Right a mere sop by lofting a school prayer 
amendment knowing it would never pass. In his many recent talk show 
appearances, Reed has disavowed many of Robertson's oft-expressed 
views. To hear Reed tell it, Christian Coalition stands only for the 
stock conservative political and economic issues, and it has only 
been the predacious liberal media which have made it seem that his 
organization ever stressed the social agenda. 

The discrepancy between Robertson's views and the more moderate image 
Reed attempts to project was underscored in two recent Frank Rich 
columns in _The_New_York_Times_. The question is whether or not, in 
its rush to affect mainstream respectability, the Coalition will lose 
its constituency to more militant competitors.

The overall result is not devoid of comfort, even in these adverse 
times. Even if Likud does return to power in Israel, the breach between 
the influential American Jewish community and the Religious Right 
will not be healed. That community will continue to help counterbalance 
the Religious Right. As we have always insisted, the underlying ideas 
do matter. 

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Copyright 1995 IFAS
The Freedom Writer / ifas@crocker.com

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