WASHINGTON (ABP) — An organization once synonymous with the Religious Right in the United States has named as president a pastor who is becoming known as a critic of the Religious Right.
The Christian Coalition announced Oct. 1 it had named Joel Hunter, pastor of the Orlando, Fla.-based Northland Church, as president.
Hunter replaced Roberta Combs, who presided over the organization that has, in recent years, declined precipitously in influence, size and prestige among conservative groups.
Hunter will work on a part-time basis and remain pastor at Northland, which is one church distributed throughout several different campuses. He has reportedly said he will move the coalition's headquarters from Washington to the Orlando area. Combs will have the title of “chairman” of the group.
According to the Orlando Sentinel, Hunter's position is an unpaid one.
“I look forward to building upon the successes under Roberta's leadership and expanding our mission to concern itself with the care of creation, helping society's marginalized, human rights/religious issues and compassion issues,” Hunter said, in a press release announcing his appointment.
Hunter is familiar to many evangelicals and others as the face of a campaign by several evangelical groups to combat global warming. Earlier this year, Hunter appeared in commercials for the campaign, in which he appealed to fellow evangelicals to combat climate change as part of the scriptural command to care for creation.
In the late 1990s, the Christian Coalition claimed to have millions of members and was a formidable political force, distributing hundreds of thousands of voter guides in churches prior to elections.
But the group's annual budget has declined from $26 million at its peak to around $1 million this year. In recent months, four state Christian Coalition chapters have decided to part ways with the mother organization, their leaders claiming the national group had lost its focus and was too ready to partner with more liberal organizations on common public-policy goals.
Hunter's appointment may exacerbate such criticism. Recently, he self-published a book called Right Wing, Wrong Bird: Why the Tactics of the Religious Right Won't Fly With Most Conservative Christians.
In it, he laments conservative Christianity's overt identification with the Republican Party in recent years, and says, among other things, “There ought to be more than just gay marriage and pro-life issues because the Bible is concerned with all of life…. We need to do everything we can to relieve poverty, to heal the sick, and to protect the earth.”
According to the Sentinel, several established conservative Christian leaders are questioning Hunter's strategy. Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, told the paper Hunter's bridge-building approach to public policy won't work.
“When people try to pretend there is consensus where there is no consensus, they lose their credibility with their constituency, and eventually, they lose their credibility with Washington,” Land said.
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