Interfaith Alliance targets Ashcroft
The Layman Online, January 16, 2001
The Interfaith Alliance, which bitterly denounces evangelical Christianity and consistently supports the left-flank of the Democratic Party, on Monday attacked U.S. attorney general-nominee John Ashcroft.
Initially bankrolled by a $25,000 grant from the Democratic Party Campaign Committee, the Alliance identifies the Christian right as “religious political extremism.” One of the founding members of the Alliance is the Rev. Herbert Valentine, a former moderator of the Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly. Valentine recently retired as the executive presbyter of the Baltimore Presbytery.
The Alliance contends that Ashcroft is entitled to privately held religious beliefs, but that he should not be guided by those beliefs in the public arena.
The nonprofit interfaith organization professes to be nonpartisan and pledged to civility in the public forum.
At a press conference Monday, Alliance speakers said that they neither opposed nor favored Ashcroft’s nomination. But there was little evidence that the Alliance would deem Ashcroft acceptable, no matter how he answers questions during his confirmation hearing. The Alliance’s web site includes a number of articles opposing Ashcroft.
“I have grave concerns about Senator Ashcroft’s ability to serve as attorney general of the United States, a position in which he would be charged with upholding and fully enforcing the constitutional rights and liberties to faith groups that he clearly judges to be wrong and in need of correction,” said Welton Gaddy, executive director of the Alliance.
The Alliance presented a team of speakers – Gaddy, a Baptist, along with a Sikh, a Muslim, a Hindu and a Jewish rabbi. All insisted that they were not opposed to Ashcroft, but they challenged his statements about faith and questioned his commitment to enforce some of the nation’s laws.
Ashcroft, a former attorney general of Missouri, two-term governor and member of the U.S. Senate, has openly stated his religious views – including his opposition to abortion – but has insisted that he would uphold all the laws of the nation.
The Alliance has worked closely with the National Council of Churches, also a tax-exempt organization, in opposition to the agenda of Christian conservatives and evangelicals. In November, Gaddy spoke during a breakfast sponsored by the council’s gay caucus.
At that time, Gaddy expressed dismay that Robert Edgar, the council’s general secretary, had signed an ecumenical “Declaration on Marriage.” Gaddy was opposed to the declaration because it did not recognize marriages of homosexual couples. Two days after Gaddy’s comments, Edgar withdrew his signature from the declaration, which had also been signed by representatives of the Southern Baptist Convention, the National Conference of Bishops of the Roman Catholic Church and the National Association of Evangelicals.
During the 1999 50th anniversary meeting of the General Assembly of the National Council of Churches, Gaddy was one of four speakers at “Campaign 2000,” a political forum. A recurring theme of that forum was the need to defeat Republicans. One speaker described in detail how a charitable organization, such as the Alliance, can be politically involved and maintain tax exempt status without violating federal tax laws.
Coincidentally, on the same day that the Alliance held its press conference, a former Alliance target, Judge Roy Moore, was sworn in as chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. Moore became known in the 1990s as the “Ten Commandments judge” because he displayed the Old Testament laws in his Etowah County Courthouse.