"There is a concerted assault on everything that we consider sacred — and we pastors need to move to the forefront of the battle," said Demastus, wearing a T-shirt and shorts for the Saturday event.
Demastus is part of a growing movement of evangelical pastors who are jumping into the electoral fray as never before, preaching political engagement from the pulpit as they mobilize for the 2012 election.
This new activism has substantial muscle behind it: a cadre of experienced Christian organizers and some of the conservative movement's most generous donors, who are setting up technologically sophisticated operations to reach pastors and their congregations in battleground states.
The passion for politics stems from a collision of historic forces, including heightened local organizing around the issues of abortion and gay marriage and a view of the country's debt as a moral crisis that violates biblical instruction. Another major factor: Both Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Bachmann, contenders for the GOP nomination, are openly appealing to evangelical Christian voters as they blast President Obama's leadership.
Both Republican and Democratic strategists say that pastors have already helped unleash an army of voters to shape the GOP primary contests in Iowa and South Carolina, two states with large numbers of conservative Christians. They are making plans to do the same in states that are even more important to next year's general election. Those include Ohio, Florida, Iowa, Virginia and Colorado, where evangelical voters make up about a quarter of the electorate and their participation could greatly aid Republicans.
"The Christian activist right is the largest, best-organized and, I believe, the most powerful force in American politics today," said Rob Stein, a Democratic strategist who recently provided briefings on the constituency to wealthy donors on the left. "No other political group comes even close."
[...]
"This is the congregational version of the 'tea party,'" says Richard Land, president of the conservative Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. "Pastors who in the past would dodge my calls are calling me saying, 'How can we be involved?' "
The pastor movement is being guided and ministered to by a growing web of well-financed organizations that offer seminars, online tools and a battery of lawyers.
Tim Wildmon, who runs the American Family Assn., one of the most generous underwriters of Christian conservative activism, predicted that evangelicals in 2012 will match the fervency of theRonald Reagan era — in large part because so many pastors are prodding their flocks to the polls.
"They're going to be telling their parishioners to get registered and to make sure to go vote," he said. "I think it's huge."
Boosting the movement are veteran figures such as Ralph Reed, former head of the Christian Coalition. His new organization, Faith & Freedom Coalition, is developing a list of Christian voters in key states, a tool it used to reach thousands of voters in Wisconsin's recent recall elections.
New players are even more ambitious. United in Purpose, financed by an anonymous group of Silicon Valley venture capitalists, aims to register 5 million conservative Christians to vote. The organization boasts a sophisticated database that identifies millions of unregistered evangelical and born-again Christian voters around the country.
"There is a fire in my bones to do this," Demastus said, citing the passion of a Revolutionary War pastor who dropped his ministerial robes before his congregation to reveal the uniform of the Continental Army.
The story of the Rev. Peter Muhlenberg telling his flock "there is a time to pray and a time to fight" was repeated across Iowa this summer, as pastors signed up worshipers to become "prayer warriors" and, they said, help take the country back to its Christian roots.
The most prominent — the Alliance Defense Fund, a group based in Scottsdale, Ariz., that spent $32 million in fiscal year 2010 — is challenging a 1954 tax code amendment that prohibits pastors, as leaders of tax-exempt organizations, from supporting or opposing candidates from the pulpit. The group sponsors Pulpit Freedom Sunday, in which it offers free legal representation to churches whose pastors preach about political candidates and are then audited by the Internal Revenue Service. (So far, no IRS investigations have been triggered.)This truly is the great strength of the right. They are like sharks, whatever happens they just keep moving, relentless and single minded. They don't waste their time with self reflection or analysis --- they just keep building their movement institutions, preparing for the day when they will be able to use them. All that money helps, of course.
Last fall, 100 churches participated — up from 33 in 2008. This year's Pulpit Freedom Sunday, scheduled for Oct. 2, is expected to draw more than 500 churches.