Coalition leaders announced recently that the group wants to recruit 100,000 "church liaisons" by November 2000 as part of an effort to bring conservative churches into the political arena.

"TV preacher Pat Robertson is clearly desperate to get his Christian Coalition political machine back on track and he's turning to churches to do it," said Americans United Executive Director Barry W. Lynn. "This is a deplorable misuse of houses of worship for partisan political ends."

Lynn noted that the Coalition currently faces many problems. It is being sued for partisan politicking by the Federal Election Commission, and its tax-exempt status is under review by the Internal Revenue Service.

Contributions are down, and some Coalition activists are moving to Gary Bauer's Family Research Council and other more radical Religious Right organizations. Former Christian Coalition Executive Director Ralph Reed tried to make the group a "mainstream" part of the Republican Party apparatus, thus alienating some of its hardline grassroots base.

AU's Lynn said churches should reject the Coalition initiative on both ethical and legal grounds. Part of the Coalition's "Families 2000" strategy calls for using the churches to distribute voter guides.

"The Coalition's voter guides are slanted in favor of certain candidates," said Lynn. "As such, they are partisan material that should not be distributed in churches. Under Internal Revenue Service regulations, churches and other ministries are flatly barred from intervening in partisan political campaigns."

Lynn noted that even some conservative evangelicals have issued warnings about church distribution of voter guides. At a February 3 workshop on non-profit law held during the National Religious Broadcasters' convention in Washington, David C. Gibbs Jr. of the Christian Law Association advised churches that they can lose their tax-exempt status if they fail to adhere to IRS regulations governing voter guides. Voter guides, Gibbs said, must be accurate, broadly based and cannot be distributed only at election time.

AU's Lynn said Coalition voter guides fail on all three counts. They are stacked to distort the views of certain candidates, they deal with only a narrow range of issues and they are distributed only on the Sunday before an election.

Lynn noted that Robertson himself compared the Coalition to Tammany Hall and other notorious political machines from American history in a speech to the group's state leaders last September in Atlanta.

"I don't know why any church would want to be associated with a Tammany Hall-style political machine," observed AU's Lynn. "The Christian Coalition voter guides are legal, political and ethical poison. Simple decency and respect for the law dictate that no house of worship in America handle them."

Lynn noted that last year the New Jersey Catholic Conference warned Catholic churches in the state not to distribute the guides, holding that they are not objective.

"Pat Robertson wants to turn America's churches into cogs for his Christian Coalition political machine," concluded Lynn. "We urge religious leaders to throw a monkey wrench into the works by firmly saying no."

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