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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2015
We at the Christian Coalition are raising an army who cares. … By the end of this decade, if we work and give and organize and train, THE CHRISTIAN COALITION WILL BE THE MOST POWERFUL POLITICAL ORGANIZATION IN AMERICA.
– Pat Buchanan in a fund-raising letter, quoted in the New York Times, Robert Sullivan, April 24, 1993, emphasis in originalThe future of America is not [shaped] by who sits in the Oval Office but by who sits in the principal's office. … If the Coalition grows large enough then everyone running for President will be pro-family; they'll have to come to us.
– Ralph Reed of the Christian Coalition, quoted in Time, Jeffrey H. Birnbaum, May 15, 1995If pundits and scholars exaggerate how “captured” the parties are, some of the blame lies with vocal leaders of the Christian Right movement. Clearly Buchanan and Reed, and the Christian Right by extension, project grand political ambitions. Undoubtedly their political hubris is partly spin for the benefit of the media. Saying the Christian Coalition will be the most powerful political organization in the country – so powerful that presidents will cower before it like pimple-faced students called into the principal's office – does not make it so. Nevertheless, several studies of influence suggest that the Christian Right (including the Christian Coalition and many other politically conservative Christian organizations) has realized some of its ambition – at least within the Republican Party. In a report published in Campaigns and Elections in 1994, Persinos noted that the Christian Right completely dominated the state Republican parties in eighteen states and exercised considerable control in thirteen others. Conger (2009; 2010) reports expanded control in 2000 and 2004. And Layman (2001; 2010) reports that conservative Christians are reshaping the National Republican Party as well.
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