Two evangelical political action groups merge in hopes of reaching 1 million voters – Baptist News Global

Family Policy Alliance Foundation and Christians involvedTwo conservative Christian groups focused on political activism have joined forces to “enlist one million Christians to participate in the upcoming U.S. presidential election and in local elections across the country in the coming years.”

The July 1 announcement said the two nonprofit groups hoped to “help shape America’s future landscape” through “an expanded network capable of driving cultural and legislative change to promote biblical values.”

The Colorado Springs-based Family Policy Alliance Foundation is a sister organization to the Family Policy Alliance, the least known of the three activist organizations that James Dobson founded at Focus on the Family in his “fight for justice” through politics and law, not through his church office. The others are the Washington-based Family Research Council and the influential legal group Alliance Defending Freedom, which Dobson founded with others.

The alliance that was founded within Focus in the 1980s and based on the Focus campus, oversees a network of nearly 40 allied state groups that have taken the initiative to pass laws in nearly two dozen states restricting the activities of transgender athletes and limiting medical care for gender reassignment surgery. The alliance also says it fights Satan through laws restricting drag shows, access to online porn, abortion and IVF.

Combined, the Family Policy Alliance and its foundation generate less than $4 million in income, but their national network generates more than $50 million in revenue, employs more than 350 people, and claims to reach a network of 50,000 churches.

The merger announcement comes weeks before the alliance hosts its second annual SoConCon gathering for social conservatives in Washington, which includes dozens of groups involved in the Heritage Foundation’s 2025 Project for the next Republican president.

Christians Engaged was founded in Texas in 2019 by Bunni Pounds, a former political consultant who raised more than $10 million for Republican congressional candidates and ran unsuccessfully for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives herself. Christians Engaged had revenue of $692,121 in 2022.

Pfund portrayed the merger as the fulfillment of Christ’s prayer that his disciples “may all be one.”

“I love getting together with leading conservative politicians and seeing Lutherans, Baptists, Pentecostals, Catholics, Reformed and all the others in one room together,” she said. “This is great news for the body of Christ, the social conservative movement and our nation,” she wrote in The Stream, a medium run by Texas televangelist James Robison.

Pounds said today’s conservative Christian activists share a cross-denominational unity similar to that once enjoyed by fans of Christian recording artists Steven Curtis Chapman, Margaret Becker, Steve Camp and Carman.

“Nobody cared about the denomination they came. The only questions were whether they knew him and whether they could convey his feelings about the people and the church. I believe that is how Bible-believing political activists today and the broader social conservative movement operate today. We understand each other – and we need each other. We are on the front lines of the battle for the soul of our nation, and we all know it.”

“As we join forces to fight back against bad policies, corrupt politicians and outright evil, we should not care where our comrades come from or the nuances of our beliefs. The only thing that matters is stopping the enemy’s advance.”

The work of Christians Engaged will be taken over by the Family Policy Alliance Foundation, and Pounds will serve as vice president of civic and church engagement for both the foundation and the Alliance.

By merging with Christians Engaged, the Family Policy Alliance now joins a growing number of faith-based groups targeting conservative, religious voters.

The merger with Committed Christians means that the Family Policy Alliance now joins a growing number of religious groups targeting conservative religious voters, including My Faith Votes (which claims it helped elect Governor Glenn Youngkin in Virginia), iVoterGuide (a division of the American Family Association’s AFA Action) and CatholicVote (which is not authorized by the Catholic bishops of America).

Jim Daly, president of Focus on the Family, said the merger will help believers “express their faith through voting and engagement in their communities. By joining forces, Family Policy Alliance Foundation and Christians Engaged will help make this daily task easier – and make faith-based cultural activism more effective. History is in the hands of believers and depends on seemingly small things, including our willingness to register and vote for our values.”

The Family Policy Alliance’s upcoming invitation-only meeting, SoConCon 2024, will be held July 23-26 in Washington, DC, and features a wide range of conservative speakers from Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council, the Alliance Defending Freedom, the Heritage Foundation, the Koch family’s Americans for Prosperity organization, and GOP officials.

At SoConCon 2023 there were sessions on “woke capitalism”, abortion after Roe v. Wade“the LGBT agenda,” “cancel culture,” sex education, transgender rights, parental rights in education, justice reform, Big Tech, and the restoration of faith in America. One lunchtime session featured a talk titled “We’re in a Religious War,” which claimed liberals are “just followers of another religion.”

DG Hart

DG Hart, a conservative Christian Author and associate professor of history at Hillsdale College in Michigan, says SoConCon is reminiscent of the social conservatism of the 1980s promoted by Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and Dobson.

“It’s a new social gospel,” says Hart, comparing today’s religious activists to those who led the social gospel movement of the early 20th century.

A century ago, it was progressive religious leaders who said liberal government policies would help establish God’s kingdom on earth. Today, conservative religious leaders say conservative government policies will help transform America into a Christian nation. Political values ​​may have changed, but belief in political salvation remains.

“Evangelical political engagement was a flop,” Hart wrote in his 2011 book. From Billy Graham to Sarah Palin: Evangelicals and the Betrayal of American Conservatism.

Part of the problem is that politically conservative evangelicals reject diversity, whereas traditional and libertarian conservatives welcome it.

As BNG reported in May, the Family Policy Alliance and its Virginia affiliate, The Family Foundation, helped elect a new conservative school board that restored the names of Confederate leaders at two schools in Shenandoah County. Neither the Alliance nor The Family Foundation responded to our questions about the restoration of the Confederate names.