Looking for a Promised Land

Old Time Religion and the Politics of the New South

THE PRIZE. Perhaps not since December 1860, when South Carolina became the first state to secede from the Union, had it been the focus of so much national attention. Four Republican presidential candidates were hoping that South Carolina, where the Confederacy was born and the first shots of the Civil War were fired, would once again lead its southern neighbors. So the candidates, and the media, marshaled their forces and launched an all-out assault on this pivotal political battleground.

South Carolina's second-ever Republican presidential primary was scheduled for March 5, just three days before the vote-rich, make-or-break "Super Tuesday" primaries in 14 southern and border states. The political wisdom was that the results of the South Carolina primary would likely affect Super Tuesday returns; a victory in South Carolina would provide the all-important momentum that could translate into hundreds of southern delegates on March 8 and, perhaps, the inside track on the Republican Party nomination.

So the Republican candidates -- Vice President George Bush, Sen. Robert Dole, Rep. Jack Kemp, and former television evangelist Marion G. "Pat" Robertson -- set about to woo the voters of South Carolina with all the fervor usually reserved for more romantic pursuits. For two weeks they crisscrossed the Palmetto State, traveling the rolling green hills of its Piedmont, the river bottoms and Cypress forests of its coastal region, and the expansive plains of its Lowcountry.

They logged thousands of miles on bus tours, delivered a hundred stale stump speeches, shook hands, kissed babies, and made countless appearances in textile mills, universities, nursing homes, shopping center parking lots, and the courthouse squares of small, but proud, out-of-the-way towns that inevitably featured monuments honoring the Confederate soldiers who had fought and died in "the war of northern aggression."

Certainly no one worked the Palmetto State harder than Pat Robertson, who -- to the surprise and horror of his campaign staff -- had thrown down the gauntlet to Vice President Bush there. The South Carolina primary was "do or die," first place or nothing, for his campaign, Robertson said.

Robertson spent more time and money in South Carolina than any other candidate. But on election day, all the rallies, "video parties," phone-banking, advertising, and efforts to get out the vote were over, and all that was left for Robertson and his supporters was to await the results -- and then to put the best possible face on them.

By the time some 200 Robertson faithful had gathered on election night for their "victory celebration" at the Holiday Inn in downtown Columbia, early returns were showing Robertson running a close third behind Bob Dole. But the "celebration" went on as planned.

Several female vocalists entertained the spirited crowd with songs such as "This Land is Your Land," "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," "Rock of Ages," "Victory in Jesus," "A Mighty Fortress," and "Because He Lives." This was not exactly standard political fare, but then nothing about Robertson's campaign -- or his supporters -- was "standard."

When all the results were in, Robertson had finished third in South Carolina, garnering only 19 percent of the vote to Bush's impressive 48 percent and Dole's 21 percent. Robertson then went on to register still poorer showings in the Super Tuesday and Illinois primaries.

ROBERTSON'S CAMPAIGN HAS BOTTOMED out and, to the great relief of many observers -- conservatives, moderates, and liberals -- he is no longer a factor in the 1988 presidential campaign. The man who shocked the nation by defeating the vice president in the Iowa caucuses has almost disappeared from the political landscape.

But it would be a grievous error to write Pat Robertson off as simply another also-ran. Robertson's unsuccessful 1988 campaign will continue to impact the Religious Right and its future role in electoral politics long after the inauguration of our next president. Those observers who would interpret the failure of Robertson's candidacy, and his inability to garner a majority of even the evangelical vote, as proof of the weakening of the Religious Right and the waning of its political influence are sorely mistaken.

On the contrary, the candidacy of Pat Robertson represents a major step forward, a qualitative difference, in the nature and strength of the Religious Right. In the late 1970s and early '80s, the efforts of the Moral Majority, the Christian Voice, and other right-wing groups were concentrated primarily on getting Christians to the polls every two or four years to vote for or against certain candidates according to their positions on key issues. Until 1987, the political influence of the Religious Right was confined largely to the voting booth and selective lobbying efforts.

Now, inspired and led by Robertson's candidacy, those same people -- and many more -- who used to do little more than vote in November have realized that if they really want to change things in this country, they need to be part of a mainstream political party. So thousands of Robertson supporters -- most, but not all, of them right-wing evangelicals or charismatics -- have flocked to precinct, county, and state organizations of the Republican Party.

There is now a new Religious Right with a new and improved political strategy. The mission of the "old" Religious Right was to have an impact on American politics; the goal of the "new" Religious Right is to reshape and reorient American politics completely by systematically infiltrating and taking over its basic political structures.

The Religious Right has discovered grassroots politics, and already it is building a formidable power base from which to shape and direct party politics for years to come. In little more than a year, Robertson supporters have gained considerable influence over Republican Party structures in Michigan, Georgia, Washington, Alabama, Hawaii, Nevada, and other states.

The long-term impact of Robertson's candidacy will be far greater than his showing at the polls, and it will be found in the impassioned participation and unshakable determination of the hundreds of thousands -- perhaps millions -- of people Robertson has brought into the political process. Their political concerns and their hunger for morality and traditional values have been building for more than 20 years.

Ronald Reagan had given lip service to their moral and social concerns, but then he failed to deliver the promised actions on abortion, prayer in schools, and tuition tax credits. Finally, in Pat Robertson these conservative Christians felt they had a candidate they knew and could trust, who felt the same way they did about things, and who would bring morality and order back to America.

Robertson's candidacy validated their concerns and gave them the political tools needed to do something about them. And neither they nor their concerns are going to retreat to the political fringes just because Robertson will not be elected president in 1988.

"One thing about this 'invisible army,'" a campaign worker told Robertson's cheering supporters in Columbia on March 5, "we stick together through thick and thin. No matter what happens in South Carolina, we're going to continue the fight. America will once again be one nation under God ... because we're not going to give up!"

The Believers

THE TERM "PAT ROBERTSON'S INVISIBLE army" more aptly reflects the shortcomings and biases of the secular media, which coined the catchy label, than the true nature of Robertson's supporters and their organization. Politicians and the media have shown a reluctance to try to understand conservative Christians, and they have failed to realize that the moral hunger these people express is shared by millions of other, more "typical," Americans.

"There is no 'secret army.' It's right in front of your face," Roberta Combs, South Carolina state coordinator for Robertson's campaign, explains. "It's grassroots politics."

These Americans are not invisible, but they have been made to feel that way. The secular media have portrayed them as religious fanatics occupying the fringes of society, inconsequential in number and influence, unworthy of serious attention. They often feel like second-class citizens.

"I think the media want to portray pro-lifers as uneducated, uninformed, Bible-toting crazies, and that is just not the case," says Karen Walker, a 43-year-old precinct captain in Macon, Georgia. "We have lawyers, doctors, plumbers, military people, all kinds of people in my precinct," she boasts.

So when a writer from a Christian magazine in Washington, D.C. appeared in small southern towns wanting to interview these misunderstood and maligned people, they said, "Praise the Lord!" and talked freely and openly for hours on end.

In the two weeks preceding the South Carolina and Super Tuesday primaries, I interviewed more than 50 Robertson supporters in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. I met many good and sincere people, and our conversations were, without exception, honest and cordial. We knew that, despite our theological and political differences, we were compelled -- by nothing less than our common bond in Christ -- to hear and honor one another.

"A LOT OF PEOPLE ARE WAKING UP," 41-year-old Lois Theiss told me as I prepared to leave after a two-and-a-half-hour conversation with her and her husband, Dave, at their home in tiny Ellaville, Georgia (see "Telling Time in Ellaville," page 26). "I just hope we haven't woke up too late," she added.

The Theisses and others are hoping they have not already lost the battle for the control of the future of America. For them it is a conflict that represents nothing less than spiritual warfare between good and evil. For too long, they fear, they have stood silently on the sidelines while others played the game.

Contrary to many characterizations of Robertson's supporters, their primary goal is not to impose their theology and their value system on everyone else. These people are "basically decent and honest, neither paranoid nor bigoted," but they "are anxiety-ridden over what frequently appears to them to be an inexorable assault on their personal value system," Peggy L. Shriver wrote in her book The Bible Vote.

One has only to attend an "Americans for Robertson" rally to see indisputable evidence of this anxiety. Robertson's supporters respond to his almost every statement, even those on such relatively neutral subjects as phonics, with an emotional fervor that is shocking and somewhat frightening in its intensity. They clearly are worried about what they see happening in their country, and they are scared about what it is doing to their children.

Tired of feeling like religious and cultural refugees in their own country, these people have decided to attack the problem head-on. All the alienation and resentment they have felt for years is now being expressed with a passionate determination to reclaim and defend their rights against an amoral assault.

The "assault," the systematic tearing down of America's traditional value system and its time-honored synthesis of God and country, began in earnest in 1962, when the U.S. Supreme Court banned prayer in public schools, they believe. Since then they have seen the Supreme Court legalize abortion and school busing. They have watched drug abuse, sex, and pornography permeate television, movies, and magazines, becoming staples of popular American culture.

They have felt attacked on every front that is dearest to them. They believe that the Equal Rights Amendment, feminism, and civil rights for gays and lesbians threaten to destroy their families, and they feel their religious freedom is besieged by the Internal Revenue Service and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

Secular humanism is the common thread uniting these "enemies," these conservative Christians believe. They perceive a conspiracy by intellectual and media elites, the ACLU, the Supreme Court, People for the American Way, and other secular humanists to destroy the Judeo-Christian values on which their country was founded.

WHEN TALKING TO A ROBERTSON supporter, one can almost miss phrases such as "the liberals" and "the people who want to do our country in" that are nonchalantly sprinkled throughout a conversation. The phrases come in sentences such as, "The people who want to do our country in realize that by indoctrinating young people they will eventually play right into their hands. They're teaching the opposite of the Bible."

Doug Thompson, a 31-year-old charismatic Christian who is a field organizer for the Robertson campaign in three Georgia congressional districts, knows this because he has read his 13-year-old daughter's social studies book. "It says Cuba went communist because the United States treated it badly," Thompson says with incredulity.

Still, "the people who want to do our country in"? Yes, people like David Rockefeller, Armand Hammer, wealthy industrialists, Thompson says. Organizations such as the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, the National Education Association. Hammer is "what we call a 'globalist,'" Thompson explains. "He doesn't see himself as part of the United States; he sees himself as part of the world. He's moving us toward a one-world government, and that's prophesied in Revelation."

Robertson supporters and other new Religious Right adherents have watched Congress and the Supreme Court expand and defend the rights of feminists, atheists, racial minorities, and gays and lesbians, and they wonder what has happened to their own rights. "We're for liberty -- constitutional liberty, religious liberty," says Mark Anthony, media coordinator and southern field organizer for the Robertson organization in Georgia. "Atheists should have rights, but a small group [atheists] doesn't have the right to subvert the rights of a larger group [Christians]."

Robertson supporters feel that America has been taken away from them, and now they're working to take it back. "I'm not terribly politically minded," explained a campaign volunteer in Darlington, South Carolina, "but if we don't put God back in our country it's going to go to ---- in a handbasket," she said, unwilling to utter the word "hell."

"Moral decay," "moral deterioration," "moral degradation," and "immorality" are the most common responses Robertson supporters give when asked to name our country's biggest problems. The rather vague "morality problem," which seems to encompass everything from sexually explicit television shows to drug abuse to a perceived increase in homosexuality, is followed closely by abortion. Other problems commonly cited include education, the "anything goes" attitude, broken families, the federal deficit, communism, and "the move toward socialism and a one-world government."

The country's greatest needs, therefore, are to restore morality and the family, outlaw abortion, "put God back into the schools," improve public education, and increase tax deductions. Always, it seems, there is the need to "go back" to how things used to be. The achievement of such goals, Robertson supporters realize, would require much more than the leadership of a Robertson administration. They must also stack state legislatures, Congress, and the Supreme Court with officials who share their views.

THEY GO TO CHURCHES SUCH AS PRAISE Assembly, Abundant Life, Shield of Faith, Holy Spirit Harvest, Family Worship Center, and Higher Ground Christian Fellowship. And many of them can quote Pat Robertson almost as well as they can quote their Bibles -- chapter and verse. But the ranks of Robertson supporters cross party, income, and education lines, and not all of them are evangelical, fundamentalist, or charismatic Christians.

"I know piles of Catholics who listen to 'The 700 Club' and Dr. [James] Dobson for their pro-family attitudes," said Sheila Mallon, a 54-year-old Atlanta woman who was the pro-life coordinator of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Atlanta for eight years. "There's a lack in our own church in dealing with those subjects, and Catholics who are looking for it have to go somewhere else," she says.

And they have gone to Pat Robertson and his "700 Club" by the droves, according to Mallon. Other Robertson supporters have no strong religious affiliation, but they also believe America needs to "return to morality."

"I didn't like [Robertson] when I first heard about him," said Harrell Guy, a 26-year-old, blue-collar worker in Macon, Georgia. "My impression was immediately negative: an evangelist running for president. But it changed slowly. I talked to people and listened to his cassette tape. We have a problem with morals."

For many voters the Democratic Party has "just gotten too weird." The difference in perspective is greatest on the abortion issue. "All the Democratic candidates are pro-death," said one Robertson supporter. "There is nobody in the Democratic Party running for national office who isn't pro-abortion," Mallon says. "There's just nobody there. So I'm moving more and more to the Republican side ... and I have no intention of swinging back."

SO WHEN PAT ROBERTSON SAID HE WAS running for president to "restore the greatness of America through moral strength," he immediately touched a deep chord in millions of people who believed there had to be more to life than making money, getting ahead, and pursuing pleasure. They wanted an America founded on something more meaningful -- and more stable -- than the almighty dollar.

With the launching of Pat Robertson's candidacy, the institutionalization of the Religious Right had begun. All across the United States people who had never been involved in politics were joining the Republican Party and taking over local party structures.

Doug Thompson had been an issue-oriented activist for years, writing letters and voting for or against candidates according to their stands on abortion. But he often felt ineffective, and he was especially discouraged when Judge Robert H. Bork failed to win a hotly contested nomination to the Supreme Court.

"I have discovered that to be effective in politics you have to do it through the party," Thompson says. Formerly employed in a family business, Thompson began working full-time as a field organizer for Robertson.

Sammy Raffield, the 38-year-old Bibb County, Georgia coordinator for the Robertson campaign, "didn't know what a precinct was a year or two ago," he says. "I didn't know what congressional district I was in. I realize that before, when I showed up at the polls in November, I was voting on the leftovers. It's being decided right now.

"I'm one of those people they're referring to as 'green as grass,'" Raffield continues, "but I also believe I'm representative of millions of Americans who want a change." Raffield had watched Robertson on "The 700 Club" for years and had great respect for him, but he didn't think there was any way Robertson could win the presidency. He soon came to believe otherwise.

"I caught the vision," he says. "It's a grassroots movement. The woods are full of people for Pat Robertson. We just have to go out and identify those people and tell them what they need to do."

Gary Fisher, of Traveler's Rest, South Carolina, is one of the many political novices who have become Republican precinct captains because of Robertson's campaign. Fisher, a 34-year-old rug maker, is a member of a 300-member charismatic church that has "a lot of support for Robertson. There are two or three precinct captains in the church, all of them Robertson supporters," Fisher says.

Georgia field organizer and media coordinator Mark Anthony "came to know Jesus in a jail cell three years ago." He had flunked out of college and been discharged from the Marines before finally landing in jail for passing bad checks in five states.

"Now I'm in all the honor societies, I'm the editor of my college newspaper, and I have three years of life-change to glorify Jesus through," says 23-year-old Anthony, who also is now active in the Republican Party and organized counties in southern Georgia for Robertson.

Dave and Lois Theiss marvel at the enthusiasm and organization the Robertson campaign has created. "Last night we had six people at the Robertson phone bank. To me that's just amazing," says Dave, who has been elected chair of his county's tiny Republican Party. "We didn't even have six people at the Republican county convention two years ago. Robertson is bringing people into the Republican Party who have never been involved before, people who have never even voted before."

The Pitch

SOME 300 CHEERING PEOPLE HAD gathered in the parking lot of the Anderson Mall in Anderson, South Carolina, where they waited with unbridled anticipation for the bus carrying Pat Robertson to arrive. They wore Robertson buttons and hats, brandished flashy "Robertson for President" signs, and flew red, white, and blue balloons. They chanted "We Want Pat" with a fervor and determination that seemed to indicate they would keep it up until the Second Coming if they had to.

But, as is often the case, the most eloquent statement was being made in silence. Far behind the cheering throng, 60-year-old Roy Perry stood alone, holding a long wooden peg onto which he had attached the 3-foot-by-4-foot side of a cardboard box. And on the cardboard Perry had scrawled in huge black letters, "PAT ROBERTSON OUR ONLY HOPE."

And when Pat Robertson stepped off the bus in Anderson and 37 other South Carolina towns, hope was what he offered. First, however, he would acknowledge the concerns and fears of his listeners. With his authoritative speaking style, Robertson would assure his listeners they were right to be afraid.

Then, with sensationalist stories and alarming statistics, Robertson would massage, manipulate, and even increase their fears. And finally, with all the skill of the master orator that he is, Robertson would offer his listeners hope, encouraging them with tough talk, simplistic solutions, and his reassuring, trademark chuckle.

Robertson was at his best when he talked about "making America No. 1 again," "bringing God back into the classrooms of America," "rocking the Soviets back on their heels," giving tax deductions to "wives and mothers who want to stay home and look after their children," and telling the Ayatollah and Gadhafi that if they "lay one finger on an American citizen anyplace in the world there will be no place for [them] to hide."

He worked crowd after crowd into a frenzy with his tent-meeting style. His supporters loved it when he told them he would have no liberals in his government, that he would balance the federal budget, that he would decolonize the Soviet empire, get humanism out of the schools, be tough on drug dealers, strengthen the family, and take care of the elderly and the homeless.

BUT BEHIND THE SCENES, ROBERTSON and his aides shielded him from tough questions whenever they could, saying they reflected the media's anti-Christian bias. And when media reports played tapes of Robertson on "The 700 Club" saying only Jews and Christians were fit for government service, predicting the imminent end of the world, or praying to divert a hurricane, Robertson staffers called them unfair, bigoted, and unrepresentative of the matured Robertson. Campaign workers also kept interviews and press conferences to an embarrassingly low number, hoping to minimize their candidate's opportunities to commit political suicide with "off-the-cuff' remarks.

In fact, it was three such statements that effectively killed Robertson's chances in the South. Just before coming south, he had charged that Soviet missiles were based in Cuba. Then at a February 23 press conference in Columbia, he accused George Bush's staff of orchestrating revelations of evangelist Jimmy Swaggart's consorting with a prostitute. Finally, just a few days later, Robertson implied that employees at his Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) had known the location of U.S. hostages in Lebanon.

"Those comments cost me about 9 percent in South Carolina the day after they were made," Robertson told NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw on the night of Super Tuesday. "I spoke too much, and I should have kept my mouth shut, but I've been misinterpreted," he added.

But the problem was neither Robertson's mouth nor the interpretation of his words. The reality was that Robertson really thought and believed such things. And despite the machinations of his campaign staff, Robertson the extreme, intolerant ideologue never lurked far from the carefully packaged Robertson the candidate. Robertson's reactionary ideas, his drastic approaches to problem solving, and his sometimes harsh value judgments could not be kept secret.

At South Carolina State College in Orangeburg, Robertson displayed his unique ability to offend people with a performance that shocked even his staunchest supporters. Accustomed to orchestrated campaign events with supportive crowds, Robertson was unprepared for the sight of 200 black students holding up Jesse Jackson signs at the almost all-black college.

Robertson delivered a speech markedly different from the one he had been repeating all across South Carolina. He began by quoting Martin Luther King Jr. and then proceeded, almost as if lecturing the students. When Robertson launched into the standard call to "assist indigenous freedom fighters to decolonize the Soviet empire" part of his speech, he got into real trouble.

"How about South Africa?" shouted Rev. Graham Matthews from the crowd. Robertson responded that he deplored apartheid, but that he also opposed the African National Congress, which he said would impose one-party Marxist rule.

The crowd alternately cheered and booed as Matthews persisted with his questions and Robertson responded. A clearly annoyed Robertson finally snapped at Matthews, "I believe in freedom, and you want communism, ace, and I'm not going to support you." When a reporter later asked Robertson what he thought of the exchange, Robertson replied, "They're a bunch of nuts; I'm sorry."

The Fall

PAT ROBERTSON TRIED TO BE a populist, and his emphasis on morality did appeal to many people of different religious, political, class, and ethnic backgrounds. But in the end Robertson's brand of morality was too narrow to satisfy more than the faithful -- that is, right-wing Christian -- few. To the millions of Americans who also viewed economic justice, foreign policy, civil rights, and defense spending in terms of morality, Robertson had nothing to offer.

In fact, Robertson scared more people than he inspired, something even he realized and tried to downplay. "The liberals believe in using government as an agent to impose their views on other people through the force of law, by compulsion and coercion," he said in Spartanburg, South Carolina. "And they think I'm going to do to them what they've been doing to me the last 20 to 30 years. And if a liberal thought that Pat Robertson would do to them what they've done to me, they ought to get scared.

"But I'm not that kind of person. I'm a conservative, and conservatives believe that that government is best which governs least. We believe in individual freedom ... And I personally have an inviolate commitment to freedom. And whatever somebody believes in this country, whether they agree with me or not, I'm going to defend their right to disagree with me because I feel that in my heart. That's part of liberty."

But most people were not convinced. "I voted for Dole," one woman said outside a polling place in Columbia, "but I'm a Democrat. I just came out to the Republican primary to vote against Robertson ... It scares me the things he believes in."

Others who shared Robertson's political perspective, and who might have been considered part of his natural constituency, felt they couldn't trust Robertson as president. More than his political inexperience, they were put off by his charismatic theology. If Robertson believed God had told him to run for president, as he claimed, what would Robertson do if he thought God was telling him to "push the nuclear button"? When a reporter asked Robertson this question, Robertson simply walked away; no answer, end of interview.

But for many voters, including fundamentalist Christians, who were concerned that Robertson could not be depended upon to act rationally or objectively on political matters of global importance, it was a crucial question. Robertson's refusal to respond thoughtfully and honestly to such questions only exacerbated their concerns and, in the end, cost him precious votes.

DOUBTS ABOUT ROBERTSON'S PERSONAL integrity and morality, raised repeatedly by his own actions and statements, proved to be another crucial stumbling block for his campaign. Robertson said he dropped his libel suit against former U.S. Rep. Pete McCloskey and Rep. Andy Jacobs -- who had alleged that Robertson's late father, then a U.S. senator, had kept him out of combat while a soldier in the Korean War -- because the trial date, which fell on Super Tuesday, would disrupt his campaign schedule. But many wondered if Robertson had dropped the suit because the trial might prove him a coward or a dissembler -- or both.

Robertson had survived earlier campaign controversies concerning his exaggerations and "factual errors" involving his education, his profession, his finances, his membership on a bank's board of directors, his autobiography, his wedding date, and his family life. But when he continued to deny having made statements that were recorded on videotape and had been widely reported, he damaged not only his credibility, but his reliability as well.

Robertson's campaign finances have also been called into question. The IRS is investigating whether contributions of $8.5 million to Robertson's tax-exempt Christian Broadcasting Network were then given or loaned by CBN to the Freedom Council, a Robertson-created "political education" group that, in effect, served as Robertson's pre-campaign organizing vehicle. It has also been suggested that other CBN funds were used for political purposes. In 1986 CBN gave $213,000 to farmers in politically important Iowa, about 10 times more than it contributed to farmers in any other state. And in 1985 Sojourners reported on CBN's assistance to the Nicaraguan contras (see "In the Name of Relief," October 1985).

Robertson stumped on the campaign trail boasting that he was not a politician and, therefore, would not compromise or be a pawn of interest-group politics. But what Robertson had been was perhaps even more politically dangerous: a religious broadcaster with almost unlimited authority. The high-powered world of television evangelism was sorely lacking in the enforcement of personal and corporate accountability, and Robertson seemed to resent the institutional checks and balances of secular politics.

The Wilderness

IT IS CLEAR, EVEN TO PAT ROBERTSON himself, that the time was not right for his election as president of the United States. But, saying that he is running for "the future of America," Robertson has announced his intention to remain involved in Republican Party politics and his plans to seek the White House again in 1992.

Some will wonder, given that 1988 was not the right time for Robertson, whether Robertson will ever be the right candidate. But perhaps the more important question concerns what will come of the thousands of right-wing Christians Robertson has empowered.

Every indication is that Robertson's candidacy has ushered in a new era for the Religious Right, and the new Religious Right is sure to have a lasting impact on American politics. Conservative Christians will no longer merely hitch their wagons to the most acceptable candidates. They are ready to take political matters into their own hands now, and Robertson's organization has shown them how. They are in the process of taking over Republican Party structures, and soon they will be making their own rules and fielding their own candidates.

Both the appeal and the power of the new Religious Right will depend, in part, on its willingness to respect the pluralism of American society and its ability to broaden its definition of morality. Even the limited success of Robertson's campaign has shown that a deep moral hunger exists in the United States, a hunger that yearns for a politics that cares more about values and people than justifiable ends and profitable bottom lines. And in attempting to satisfy that hunger, there clearly is room for Christian involvement, in the most evangelical sense, in U.S. politics.

But behind the ultimate failure of Robertson's candidacy and the continued rejection of Jerry Falwell and his ilk by the majority of Americans, including many Christians, there is another message for the Religious Right. This hunger for meaning and morality will not be satisfied by moralism, the self-righteous belief system that accepts only one narrow position on any social question as the moral one. While the new Religious Right has dared to proclaim which side of an issue God is on, those who truly "hunger and thirst for righteousness" will study and work and pray to see that they are on God's side.

Pat Robertson hoped to be the "savior" of American politics, providing a message and an agenda that would bring the Religious Right to power and save the United States from its worst immoral impulses. But America was not ready to be saved, and Pat Robertson could not function even as a sacrificial messiah.

But time will tell the true role of Pat Robertson's 1988 presidential campaign. When all is said and done, perhaps Pat Robertson will have been a John-the-Baptist figure, preparing the way, making for the Religious Right a path in the wilderness.

Vicki Kemper was news editor of Sojourners when this article appeared.