Active Faith: How Christians are Changing the Soul of American Politics.

One wants to believe Ralph Reed. In Active Faith, the executive director of the Christian Coalition endeavors to polish the image of the Religious Right (or, as he prefers, the "profamily movement"). Thus he eschews the vitriolic and triumphalist rhetoric, the demonizing of enemies, the uncompromising moral fervor, the unreatistic political expectations, the appearance of callousness toward underprivileged minorities, the hint of racism, and, most of all, the unprofessional approach and flawed political strategy that, he says, characterized the first wave of the movement in the 1980s. Instead, Reed offers compelling statements of compassion for the poor and oppressed, declarations of respect for political opponents, homilies on the virtues of gradualism and the limited capacity of politics to achieve true social reform, and promises of "a higher standard in truth and civility."

During the heyday of the Moral Majority and other fundamentalist/conservative evangelical lobbying groups, Protestant preachers ran the show - or thought they did. Flattered by the obsequies of Republican party strategists, who coveted the mailing lists and untapped grassroots power of the electronic church, the preachers relished their moment in the Washington spotlight but neglected the hard work of building a viable grassroots movement. They lacked their own savvy and seasoned political operatives capable of realizing the enormous potential represented by thousands of politically inexperienced religious conservatives willing for the first time to enter the fray.

If anyone ever qualified as a "savvy and seasoned political operative" at the tender age of twenty-nine, it was Ralph Reed. Pat Robertson, in the wake of his failed candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination in 1988, saw in the young Emory Ph.D. and former executive director of the national College Republicans, a kindred spirit capable of organizing the troops and training would-be candidates in the fine art of contesting elections for the local school board, state assembly, Congress, and state Republican party committee. Reed has proved Robertson a shrewd judge of talent: In less than six years Reed built the Christian Coalition from its initial base of 5,000 Robertson supporters to its present strength of 1.7 million members and 2,000 local chapters. In political terms, as Reed is fond of reminding readers, the profamily movement has arrived - and just in time to take advantage of a factionalized political environment characterized less by party loyalty than by special-interest advocacy. Christian Coalition members are "people of faith first, Americans second, and Republicans or Democrats third." They seek to limit government, reinvigorate the family, and restore the culture's Judeo-Christian principles - goals shared, Reed suggests, by 30 million conservative evangelical Christians.

Calming lingering fears of a hidden theocratic agenda is the first order of business. "Unlike fundamentalist political movements in the Middle East, religious conservatives in the United States are properly understood as an interest group within a democratic order. If they gained power, they would not repeal the Constitution or attempt to impose their religion on others through the state," Reed writes. Not to be indulged are Christian Reconstructionists (with whom Robertson has dallied in the past), or any other fringe groups that seek to impose biblical law through direct political action. At the same time, Reed avers, most religious conservatives labor under a tradition of sectarian withdrawal from the world and need desperately to develop "a theology of direct political action."

Reed says all the right things, at least to these Catholic ears. On Clinton-bashing: "Make no mistake about it: we do ourselves and our nation harm when we sacrifice the principle of respect for those in authority - a principle clearly laid out in Scripture and practiced by Christ - in the interest of short-term political gain." On race relations he acknowledges "the painful truth" that "liberals have been correct throughout history on issues of social justice while we have been neglectful or derelict in applying the principles of our faith to establishing justice in a fallen world. When it came to racism, where were conservative evangelicals? They were not only on the sidelines, but on the wrong side of the most central cause of social justice in this century."

On abortion, Reed's 180-word draft of a prolife plank for the GOP platform quotes Mother Teresa and Pope John Paul II and urges reform of foster care and adoption systems that would support compassionate and humane alternatives to abortion (for example, making transracial adoptions easier). With regard to the inchoate partnership between evangelicals and conservative Catholics, Reed reports that he has assured "sympathetic members of the American bishops, conference" that "we do not wish to speak for the Roman Catholic church or to usurp the authority of the bishops, which we respect." To the rejoinder of a Catholic activist, that Catholics already have a political home ("It's called the Catholic church") Reed answers that the social teaching of the church has encouraged Catholic laity to greater political involvement, but it lacks a vehicle like the Catholic Alliance, the new wing of the Christian Coalition, that Reed hopes will increase Catholic participation in the profamily movement by 250,000 this year and by more than 2 million by the year 2000.

Reed puts all this forward in a winning way, in a calm and assured authorial voice that is conversational and inviting, candid, and at times charming. He impresses with balance and common sense. Welcome doses of civility, political daring, and independent thinking are evident.

Also on display, alas, are facile analogies (for example, Clinton as the American Gorbachev), a superficial and ideologically driven reading of American religious history, and an occasional tone of condescension. More disturbing are the self-contradictions that erode confidence in the authors sincerity or self-knowledge. Religious conservatives, Reed insists repeatedly, are "reluctant political actors" for whom the most important issue is not "the economy, stupid" but rather"... the culture, the family, a loss of values, a decline in civility, and the destruction of our children." Thus it was Patrick Buchanan's moral stand, not his economic protectionism, that won the allegiance of Christian Coalition voters in the 1996 Iowa and New Hampshire primaries.

Elsewhere, however, Reed reports the results of a 1993 poll in which evangelical voters listed the economy and jobs as their top issue, followed by taxes and the deficit, with abortion and other social issues ranking low among the voters' priorities. Reed cites this "startling revelation" as justification for his controversial decision to broaden the coalition's agenda to include economic proposals not overtly related to thorny "culture wars" issues less amenable to political solutions. It was hardly coincidental, however, that Reed formulated this mainstreaming strategy after the media blamed the profamily movement for the divisive 1992 Republican convention in Houston.

In the struggle to play big-time politics without losing their religious moorings, conservative evangelicals face a dilemma. If they form their political judgments consistently on the basis of their literalist biblical heritage, they can expect continued misunderstandings, suspicions, and even charges of anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry (as Robertson discovered). If, on the other hand, they downplay arcane theology and apocalyptic religious imagination, as Reed does throughout Active Faith, critics inside and outside the fold may accuse them of abandoning the true faith and selling out to the political establishment.

Such attacks on Reed's integrity and faith are patently unfair, but he doesn't help matters with statements like the following: "In 1983 I made a faith commitment and began to attend an evangelical church in Washington. My religious beliefs never changed my views on the issues to any great degree, because my political philosophy was already well developed."

Such candid comments are the great strength of Active Faith. But they also suggest that Reed the political operative may sometimes, for tactical reasons, prefer to emphasize style over substance, process over outcome, the carrot of compromise over the stick of conviction. One wonders about the book itself in this regard. Is one gullible to interpret in the best possible light the occasional passages that might otherwise raise doubts about the sincerity, or self-knowledge, of this gifted public Christian? Can Reed hold an increasingly diverse coalition of profamily, antiliberal activists to high standards of civility and Christian love? If so, "people of faith" Everywhere will applaud his success.

I believe, Mr. Reed. Help my unbelief.