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Moral Majority. Virginia's TV Preacher Jerry Falwell founded this organization to mobilize believers for political purposes. He had an hourlong dinner with Reagan in Louisiana last week but has not yet endorsed him. Most of the group's $1 million war chest is targeted for registration and voter education. Moral Majority claims friendly churches have registered more than 1.5 million voters and have increased Republican primary voting in the South. It will assign 70,000 clergy to an even bigger registration blitz in July. Affiliates are at work in 43 states. The Majority is so issues-oriented, Falwell insists that if he had to choose between a Christian politician who did not agree with his views and a nonbeliever who did, "I'd vote for the nonbeliever every time."
The Roundtable. Edward McAteer, 53, of Memphis, former Colgate-Palmolive sales executive, aims at using this group to train leaders. He focuses on what Conservative Digest calls "pro-God, profamily, pro-America causes." The Round-table is scheduling six seminars this year, including one for 11,000 this June in the Dallas Coliseum. Says McAteer: "If people know why they need to be involved, they will find out how to be." A favorite question in interviews with candidates during the primaries: "If you were President, what would you do to change the spiritual and moral direction of the country?"
National Christian Action Coalition. This behind-the-scenes brain trust researches the issues on behalf of the above groups and others that are emerging. Naturally many Evangelicals of a more liberal political bent are nervous about the new muscular Christianity. Candidate Anderson, who has always urged the devout to get involved in politics, says, "I never believed they would interpose specific doctrine to reward or punish candidates. That totally violates the role the church should play." Anderson has probably been hurt somewhat by religious right-to-lifers.
Evangelicals for Social Action, a low-key group headed by Ronald Sider of Eastern Baptist Seminary, sides with the conservatives on the need for family protection and the dangers of abortion. But criticizing the groups' other views, Sider says: "If human life is sacred then surely this means something about the nuclear arms race, too. In Scripture, the social question mentioned most often is the plight of the poor." Agrees Jim Wallis, editor of the radical Sojourners magazine: "In the activities of the Christian right, all that remains of Jesus is his name." But Christian Voice's Richard Zone is unabashed. Says he: "It's time for godly folk to have an input into government."
* Federal law prohibits any person from giving more than $1,000 and any group from giving more than $5,000 to a single candidate. But any person or group can independently raise and spend unlimited funds to help a candidate.