ing, fund-raising, and spreading its message, and
pursued a similar agenda.
Influence in the 1990’s Ralph Reed became execu-
tive director of the Christian Coalition in 1989 and
proved highly effective in getting media exposure
for the organization and in getting conservative pol-
iticians to pay attention to the group’s agenda. The
Coalition was established as a tax-exempt organiza-
tion and as such was barred from direct involvement
in partisan politics. A common tactic the Coalition
used to influence elections was to distribute voting
profiles, recording the voting pattern of candidates
on the issues of concern to the Coalition and its con-
stituents. These voting profiles and related literature
were often distributed in evangelical and fundamen-
talist churches shortly before an election. During
some of the election cycles of the mid-1990’s, the or-
ganization distributed up to thirty million pieces of
literature, including these voting profiles. The liter-
ature did not specifically endorse any party or candi-
date, but those who agreed with the Coalition’s
agenda could easily discern which candidates voted
in line with that agenda and which did not.
The Christian Coalition promoted voter registra-
tion and get-out-the-vote campaigns among conser-
vative Christians, as well as sponsored conferences to
teach political strategies for conservative Christian
politicians and activists. While the organization has
made some effort to reach out to Roman Catholics,
black evangelicals, and Jewish Americans, the over-
whelming majority of the Coalition’s supporters are
white evangelical Protestants.
In the mid-1990’s, the Coalition claimed a mem-
bership of 1.7 million (although critics have dis-
puted these numbers) and had an annual budget of
over $25 million. The Coalition’s support is often
cited as a significant factor in the success of the “Re-
publican Revolution” of 1994, in which the Republi-
cans gained control of both houses of Congress. In
1996, the organization announced its Contract with
the American Family. The name was intended to
connect with the Contract with America, which Re-
publican leaders had proposed. The Contract with
the American Family clearly illustrated many of the
key concerns of the Coalition. It promoted pro-life,
antiabortion policies, opposed the Equal Rights
Amendment, supported school voucher programs
to help parents pay tuition for private religious
schools, and called for passage of a Religious Equal-
ity Amendment to the Constitution. While nearly ev-
ery conservative member of Congress attended the
press conference announcing the Contract with the
American Family, little progress was made in getting
this agenda enacted into law.Current Status Ralph Reed left the Christian Coali-
tion in 1997 to start his own political consulting firm.
Without his leadership, the status and influence of
the Coalition declined. In recent years, the Coali-
tion’s budget, number of staff, and apparent politi-
cal clout has never equaled the levels of the mid-
1990’s.
In later years, the Coalition encountered troubles
with both the Federal Election Commission and the
Internal Revenue Service (IRS) concerning allega-
tions that its campaign literature was partisan. At
one point, the IRS revoked the organization’s tax-180 Christian Coalition The Nineties in America
Ralph Reed, executive director of the Christian Coalition, speaks
at a Republican convention in Atlanta in 1995.(AP/Wide
World Photos)