The News & Observer staffer Yonat Shimron recently profiled a rising star of the Christian Right, Steve Noble (registration required). The profile gives us occasion to examine key players in the Christian Right, and to begin to observe Noble's ernest activism. (Neither links nor emphases below are in Shimron's article online.)
(Photo of Steve Noble by Sher Stoneman)
Shimron writes that Noble organized a fall 2004 "sold-out rally for evangelist James Dobson," in Noble's home state of North Carolina," at which he "was invited to attend the secretive Council for National Policy."
The Council for National Policy (CNP) has been referred to by journalist Marc J. Ambinder as "the most powerful conservative group you've never heard of," and a "sausage factory for conservative ideas" (source).
(Photo of Paul Weyrich)
At the meeting, "Noble dined with Paul Weyrich," who co-founded the Heritage Foundation in 1973,"and introduced himself to former Attorney General Edwin Meese and anti-feminist crusader Phyllis Schlafly." Weyrich is often referred to as the father of the Christian Right. As Michelle Goldberg summarized for Salon.com, Weyrich, along with Howard Phillips and direct mail titan Richard Viguerie "recruited a little-known Baptist preacher named Jerry Falwell to start the Moral Majority."
Shimron:
[Noble has] "made a quick ascent into the conservative elite. In little more than a year, he has built an effective grass-roots organization that can mobilize Wake County's largest evangelical churches. Now he wants to replicate his group -- Called2Action -- in cities across the nation."
.....
Noble says local organizations, are the key to changing the culture. Called2Action persuaded a newsstand owner at Cary Towne Center to take down some racy calendars. It led a two-month boycott of The News & Observer for running a photo of two gay men. More recently, it lobbied for a bill in the state Senate requiring public schools to offer the Pledge of Allegiance five days a week....
Called2Action was recently invited to join the Arlington Group, a national coalition of 26 conservative organizations working to pass a U.S. Constitutional amendment defining marriage as a heterosexual union. Last week, the coalition filed papers for a political action group, Called2Elect, that will endorse candidates for office.
(Here is Weyrich himself on the topic of the Arlington Group.)
Shimron writes that when Noble:
gets up in front of a crowd of conservatives, he tells them that until recently he was just like them. He had disengaged from society and shut out popular culture....
"I built my castle," he typically says. "I dug my moat. I pulled in my gate."
But...last year, he heard a preacher talk about a Christian's responsibility to get involved, and in the words of the prophet Nehemiah, "rebuild the wall of Jerusalem." He scribbled a commitment to himself: "To be more outspoken for God's truth in the public arena." After the sermon, he placed the note on the altar.
A week later, a friend, Raleigh City Council member Mike Regan, told him the city's Human Relations Commission was amending its policy to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation.
Regan, Noble and Pastor Patrick Wooden of the Upper Room Church of God in Christ got to work. They packed city hall with 400 protesters and shouted down anyone who spoke in favor of the revision, saying the policy would sanction immorality.
They lost. But Called2Action was born.
According to the article, Called2Action has 49 church partners in Wake County now, and 2,200 people signed up to get electronic "ActionGrams," and "Noble is working to recreate Called2Action in other cities. Already, there's a Durham/Orange Called2Action and a Wilmington "Act Now" group. Noble is talking to people in Winston-Salem about organizing a chapter there."
Shimron spoke to critics, too, for the article. "Rev. Doug Gamble, missions pastor at Raleigh's Crossroads Fellowship...said Called2Action is too closely associated with Republican Party issues." Shimron summarizes:
But Noble, like many evangelicals, is not too worried about causes such as poverty. He thinks the problem can be addressed if the two parties, Republican and Democratic, become better stewards of national resources. Like many evangelicals, he says traditional family values take precedence over everything else.
"Society won't crumble based on tax policy or housing policy or even welfare policy," he said. "These aren't foundational issues. It's what you do with life, what you do with your family. You destroy those, and you destroy society."
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