c. 1996 Religion News Service

SAN DIEGO _ The surf and sun in this seaside city have not been enough to lift the spirits of the Rev. Joan Brown Campbell. For Campbell and other religious liberals, San Diego during the week of the Republican National Convention has been, she said, a “lonely place to be.”

The GOP gathering has been a tour de force for anti-abortion religious conservatives, who succeeded in getting the party to adopt a platform unequivocably in line with their views and have grabbed much of the media attention.

But religious liberals who support abortion rights _ many of whom say they vote Democratic _ are also in San Diego, although in much smaller numbers and with a much lower profile. Just as the religious conservatives have done, the liberals have also held rallies and news conferences.

“We’re hoping,” said Campbell, the general secretary of the National Council of Churches, “to make it clear that not all people of faith feel that there is only one way to think about the abortion issue.”

Next to their disagreement over abortion, the big difference between the two groups is tone. Religious conservatives in San Diego appear pumped up by their political success here. Religious liberals are keeping a stiff upper lip and saying their day will come later.

“I’m happy to be singled out for scorn by the religious right,” said Denise Davidoff, national moderator of the Unitarian Universalist Association, a 200,000-member, non-creedal denomination. “This is their convention, so we seem insignificant here. I hope and pray we’ll prevail in November.

Seeking to capitalize on the national attention focused on the convention and to voice the concerns of those Republicans who support abortion rights, religious liberals staged two major demonstrations in San Diego this week.

On Sunday (Aug. 11), the Interfaith Alliance, which comprises some 30 different religious groups, held a rally in Balboa Park. Monday (Aug. 12), the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Rights, which has 40 member organizations representing 15 denominations, staged a convocation at San Diego’s largest Episcopal church, followed by a three-mile march to the city’s convention center, site of the GOP convention.

Each day, only about 200 people participated, including some who showed up for both events. At least that many religious conservatives carrying anti-abortion posters, some with photos of aborted fetuses, can be found milling about outside the convention center at almost any hour from morning to night. That’s in addition to an estimated 60 percent of the nearly 2,000 delegates to the Republican convention that the Christian Coalition claims are staunch supporters of its anti-abortion position.

Davidoff noted it’s difficult for religious liberals to turn out in large numbers for events _ even when the odds are not stacked against them as they are this week in San Diego.

One reason is that many liberal faith groups have become preoccupied with mere survival, she said, referring to the substantial membership losses that many mainline Protestant churches have suffered in recent years.

Other liberal groups, Davidoff continued, are caught up in debates over whether to ordain homosexuals and the role of women in leadership positions. “Those things don’t leave a lot of time or energy to worry about what’s going on in the larger world over abortion,” she said.

Los Angeles Rabbi Richard Levy, vice president of Reform Judaism’s Central Conference of American Rabbis, said religious liberals also are reticent to speak in religious terms about political issues.

“We’re afraid of sounding too pushy with our beliefs,” he said. “That’s something we accuse the religious right of being, so we don’t want to come off the same way. Unfortunately, it also inhibits us.”

In addition, said Campbell, the National Council of Churches official, the diversity of faiths among religious liberals also works against their taking public action in support of abortion rights.

“Everything we know tells us that movements of like-minded people are always larger than ones that are made up of diverse people,” she said. “Like-minded people focused on one issue only are less distracted by internal differences.”

The situation faced in San Diego by the National Council of Churches, a coalition of 33 Protestant and Orthodox Christian churches, underscored the dilemma of religious liberals.

Sunday, Campbell spoke at the Interfaith Alliance rally, which was billed not so much as an abortion-rights rally as a statement against religious intolerance. She did not appear at Monday’s Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice event, which was overtly in support of abortion rights.

The National Council of Churches, she explained, has no position on abortion because of the differing viewpoints of its constituent denominations.

Bishop Melvin Talbert, the National Council of Churches’ president, did speak Monday, but, “with deep regret,” he emphasized that he was not there representing the council.

“The NCC is just as divided on abortion as the rest of the religious world is,” said Talbert, a United Methodist regional official from San Francisco.

The National Council of Churches may be conflicted over abortion policy, but the members of the First Unitarian Universalist Church of San Diego suffer no such division. Like Davidoff, its national moderator, the 960-member congregation, located in a neighborhood on the city’s north end where Clinton-Gore window signs predominate, is solidly in support of abortion rights.

However, that has not kept the congregation from opening its doors to a group of young Republicans in town for the convention who are camping out at the church.

“Unitarians are accustomed to tolerance, so we can welcome them,” said Joy Gorian, a 23-year member of the congregation. “For us, the most important thing is to be open to the dialogue.”

MJP END RIFKIN