c. 2000 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ Just days after the Christian Coalition began a massive mailing of 70 million of its controversial voter guides, two leading church-state watchdog groups have announced their own counter-offensive aimed at key battleground states in the Nov. 7 election.

The Interfaith Alliance, a broad-based coalition of moderate and liberal religious groups, will release a letter from clergy to fellow clergy in seven battleground states and nine others on Wednesday (Oct. 25) urging them not to distribute the voter guides.

At the same time, Americans United for Separation of Church and State has finished mailing 285,000 letters to clergy across the country, advising that the voter guides could jeopardize churches’ tax-exempt status.

Amber Khan, an Interfaith Alliance spokeswoman, said the 65,000 letters from local clergy hope to counter the voter guides, which she said “undermine the ability of people of good faith to cast informed ballots.”

“These voter guides are attempts to deceive and manipulate voters,” she said. “They turn our houses of worship into political rally halls.”

While Christian Coalition officials maintain the voter guides are strictly nonpartisan and do not favor candidates of any party, critics, led by Americans United executive director Rev. Barry Lynn, say the guides “reek of dishonest, and frankly, biased politics.”

The Interfaith Alliance called the voter guides “blatantly partisan” and will announce a “non-partisan, faith-based” get-out-the-vote campaign urging civic participation.

Khan said her organization’s voter drive hopes to spur “meaningful, thoughtful, informed political participation” on the local level without bombarding local pastors with boxes of unsolicited voter guides.

“You’d be hard pressed to find a church in this country that doesn’t get a box of voter guides dropped on their doorstep without invitation,” she said.

Also on Tuesday (Oct. 24), Call to Renewal, a anti-poverty network of religious groups, released its own voter guides, rating candidates on affordable housing, access to health care and safe neighborhoods.

Religion has taken center stage in the 2000 campaign, with both Texas Gov. George W. Bush and Vice President Al Gore positioning themselves to appeal to large segments of U.S. faith groups _ Catholics, conservative evangelicals, Jews and Muslims, among others.

With polls showing Bush and Gore in a dead heat, both candidates are looking to lure any population they can. Conservatives are also trying to rally their core support in battleground states, with Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson holding a series of “God and Country” rallies in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Missouri.

Lynn said his letter-writing campaign will serve as an effective counter-balance to Robertson’s voter guides.

“We believe our letters to churches will throw a monkey wrench into Pat Robertson’s political machines,” Lynn said in a statement.

DEA END ECKSTROM