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For example, Nevada Senator Paul Laxalt, Reagan's best friend on Capitol Hill and chairman of his re-election committee, signed a campaign letter sent in July to 80,000 Fundamentalist Christian ministers, encouraging them to register congregants and endorse Reagan. The overtly religious language and pitch have become controversial. "Dear Christian Leader," the letter began. "President Reagan, as you know, has made an unwavering commitment to the traditional values which I know you share. In addition, he has, on several occasions, articulated his own spiritual convictions. As leaders under God's authority, we cannot afford to resign ourselves to idle [political] neutrality . . ." The letter enraged conservative Columnist William Safire. "That political proselytizing is surely so unethical as to be un-American," he wrote last week. Safire also fumed about the "Fundamentalist intolerance" he found at the Dallas convention, and declared that "no President . . .has done more to marshal the political clout of these evangelicals than Ronald Reagan—to his historic discredit." William F. Buckley Jr., however, in a column last week, defended the President. Wrote Buckley: "Reagan is certainly attempting to attract the vote of those who believe they are being unfairly persecuted by the secularists, and why shouldn't he?"
That "persecuted" wing of the Republican Party is ascendant. Falwell's Moral Majority, now almost uniformly pro-Reagan in its politics, claims 6.5 million members (up from 1 million in 1980) and plans to register 2 million new voters this year. The New Right's stark political fervor makes it powerful beyond its numbers alone. "They may not be a majority of the electorate," says Falwell, "but they are major enough to determine who gets elected."
Maybe, maybe not. Governor Charles Robb of Virginia, a moderate conservative, recently urged Mondale to raise the issue of Reagan's affinities for the Religious Right. To make his point, Robb said that Falwell, a constituent, is "the most unpopular person in the state." In addition, there may be strains between the President and his strict Fundamentalist friends. Cal Thomas, vice president of Moral Majority and a syndicated columnist, has expressed a few qualms about Reagan's private life. Thomas wrote last week that the President should spend more time with his family ("He never sees his grandchildren"), give more money to charity ("He gives less than Mondale"), and go to church more often than every few months.
As a great campaign debate looms, the risks are substantial for the two candidates and for the country. Reagan may have misread a national hunger for moral and spiritual uplift as a desire for a specific religious regimen. Mondale could be hurt if he is perceived as insensitive to religious yearnings. In either case, new religious tensions could be stirred.