Contract with the American Family

July-August 1995

WASHINGTON, DC—On May 17, the Christian Coalition, led by Ralph Reed, released its 10-point "Contract with the American Family." The contract is a collection of proposals not unlike the earlier Republican "Contract with America." The new contract met immediately with harsh criticism and the promise of opposition not only from many Democratic political leaders but also from a variety of religious lobby groups.

The Christian Coalition sees its contract simply as a way to help bring national legislation back in line with "common sense." Some opponents argue, as did a New York Times editorial the same day, that the contract "embodies a radical vision for regulating the private behavior of law-abiding citizens to accord with the preferences of fundamentalist and evangelical Christians."

What shall we make of all this? Both the Christian Coalition and its opponents believe that they represent the majority of Americans. Both assume that the other side is a threat to the American Constitution. Neither is fully persuasive as to why its own "common sense" appears so uncommon and despicable to the other side. Their contention flourishes as a civil-religious competition for broad public support in order for each to prove that it speaks from and for the authentic "soul" of America. The moralistic rhetoric on both sides is shaped for a political system that typically lets the winner take all, leaving the loser stranded on the sidelines.

On careful examination, the Christian Coalition's contract is neither as self-evidently good as its proponents believe nor as treacherously evil as its opponents contend. In no sense, for example, would passage of the contract's proposed Religious Equality Amendment "amend beyond recognition the First Amendment," as the same outlandish editorial in The New York Times claims. But neither would passage of such an amendment bring about the "balanced approach" that Ralph Reed thinks will prove satisfactory to all common-sense Americans.

The Christian Coalition's contract is a hodgepodge of proposed privatizations, modest tax reforms, inconsistent federalist experimentations, and symbolic moralisms. As political rhetoric it may help mobilize a sufficiently large constituency to push congressional Republicans to enact some of the contract's proposals. As an agenda for comprehensive legislation and long-term political reform, however, it is less than adequate, though opponents of the contract have not offered anything new to counter it. And many of the most outrageous objections to the contract will do nothing but confirm the opinion of those who follow Ralph Reed that the old guard is (was) as bad as they thought.

The Christian Coalition and the public at large deserve a thorough and considered response to the "Contract with the American Family," and that is what we try to offer in a paper released in June titled "Civil Religion or Christian Principle: What Drives the 'Contract with the American Family.'" We invite you to read it and will welcome your response.

—The Editor