http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/ns/news/story....0701WAS07D_WAS7

Bush Seeks to Mobilize Religious Conservatives
By David Morgan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush, seeking to mobilize religious conservatives for his reelection campaign, has asked church-going volunteers to turn over church membership directories, campaign officials said on Thursday.

In a move sharply criticized both by religious leaders and civil libertarians, the Bush-Cheney campaign has issued a guide listing about two-dozen "duties" and a series of deadlines for organizing support among conservative church congregations.

A copy of the guide obtained by Reuters directs religious volunteers to send church directories to state campaign committees, identify new churches that can be organized by the Bush campaign and talk to clergy about holding voter registration drives.

The document, distributed to campaign coordinators across the country earlier this year, also recommends that volunteers distribute voter guides in church and use Sunday service programs for get-out-the-vote drives.

"We expect this election to be potentially as close as 2000, so every vote counts and it's important to reach out to every single supporter of President Bush," campaign spokesman Scott Stanzel said.

But the Rev. Richard Land, who deals with ethics and religious liberty issues for the Southern Baptist Convention, a key Bush constituency, said he was "appalled."

"First of all, I would not want my church directories being used that way," he told Reuters in an interview, predicting failure for the Bush plan.

The conservative Protestant denomination, whose 16 million members strongly backed Bush in 2000, held regular drives that encouraged church-goers to "vote their values," said Land.

"But it's one thing for us to do that. It's a totally different thing for a partisan campaign to come in and try to organize a church. A lot of pastors are going to say: 'Wait a minute, bub'," he added.

The guide surfaced as a spate of opinion polls showed Bush's reelection campaign facing a tough battle.

A Wall Street Journal/NBC poll showed Bush running neck-and-neck with Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry among registered voters, 47 percent of whom said they now believed the president had misled Americans about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

The Bush campaign has also been spending heavily on television ads, only to see the president's approval ratings slump to new lows.

Stanzel said the campaign ended the month of June with $64 million on hand. He had no figures on how much Bush has raised in June. At the end of May, Bush had raised $213.4 million and spent all but $63 million.

The latest effort to marshal religious support also drew fire from civil liberties activists concerned about the constitutional separation of church and state.

"Any coordination between the Bush campaign and church leaders would clearly be illegal," said a statement from the activist group Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

This will be about as successful as the Pentagon's idea to sell bets on when a terrorist attack will happen.

Even the Southern Baptists are going nuts over it!

Where is all the hubaloo about the Left and its incessant use of churches, particularly African American ones, for political purposes? Kerry, just like Clinton before him, constantly went to such black churches, even "preaching" from the pulpit, yet no one says a word about this. The IRS won't go after these churches for their blatant politicizing because they fear the wrath of America's #1 race-baiter, the unReverend Jesse. However, Bush does something I believe is stupid like this thread specifies, and folks are screaming about it.

Oh! The hypocrisy!

MIB, don't confuse Jesse Jackson with organized churches. He does his crazy stuff all on his own, and through his Rainbow Coalition. He just happens to be a reverend. The Christian Coalition here in Georgia has tried to take the government hostage, and they seem to be doing a fine job considering the legislation that is passed in this state.
In the day, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would stand on the pulpit and preach to the masses about equal rights. He reached many minorities that would otherwise not get the message, and he always wanted and stressed the importance of a non-violent movement. I guess the difference between then and now is that in the old days, the message was love, and equal rights for all. Todays message the church wants to spread is Love and rights for only some people, screw the rest of you!
MIB, are you in favor of what the conservatives are doing and opposed to what happened during the civil rights movement?

What the Bush folk are trying to do isn't merely going into churches and preaching (what Clinton, Kerry, et al have done) but acquiring the membership lists of the churches. If Bush wants to stand up in some bimah and give a speech, more power to him; just don't ask my synagogue's president for the names of our members.

~Adam

wade, I'm all for leaving politicians out of church pulpits altogether. I'm not an absolutist on all this, for churches/religions have every right to speak out, but when any politican, left OR right, uses a church to further his political message, and that includes acquiring membership lists, the line has been crossed.

[ July 03, 2004, 09:31 AM: Message edited by: MIB ]