A former Anti-Defamation League official joined thousands of Christian Coalition activists at a rally here to celebrate the religious right’s “triumphs” at the Republican National Convention.
“Jews have more to fear from the collapse of Christianity than its resurgence,” Gary Polland, a former chairman of the ADL’s Houston chapter, told a cheering crowd.
As they marched into the Christian Coalition Faith and Freedom celebration Wednesday, some 100 coalition activists from southern California sang, “We take a stand and we declare that America belongs to Jesus.”
In addition to the strong pro-life GOP platform, the nearly 4,000 coalition activists gathered at the sprawling Balboa Park Organ Pavilion had a new victory to celebrate. Twenty percent of the delegates to the GOP convention say they are members of the coalition.
Ralph Reed, the grass-roots organization’s executive director, announced a new pledge from House Speaker Newt Gingrich to bring a constitutional amendment sanctioning prayer in America’s public school classrooms to the House floor for a vote this fall.
The measure is universally opposed in the Jewish community.
Declaring that the activists are not radicals, former Vice President Dan Quayle said that it is “mainstream to stand for voluntary prayer in public schools.”
Reed announced the legislative promise when introducing Gingrich.
The speaker did not discuss the measure in his address to the rally. Gingrich was scheduled to address the National Jewish Coalition on Thursday.
The thousands gathered hailed Reed when he returned to the podium to praise the GOP platform’s strong support of Israel.
Polland, who resigned as chairman of the ADL’s Houston chapter after the Jewish defense organization issued a scathing 1994 report attacking the Christian Coalition and other religious right groups as “intolerant,” called at Wednesday’s rally for Jews and Christians to unite in a coalition to defeat liberalism in America.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
