Religious group closes Fort Lauderdale center for conservative activism

Fort Lauderdale · The Center for Reclaiming America has closed, halting its conservative activism and throwing the future of its signature annual conference in doubt.
An undisclosed number of employees were laid off on Thursday at the center's headquarters in Fort Lauderdale and its congressional chaplaincy office in Washington, D.C., in what its parent organization, Coral Ridge Ministries, called a "streamlining."
The closures put a stop to day-to-day actions such as e-mail and petition drives against abortion, pornography and same-sex marriage.

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Observers differed on the implications of the center's demise. Historian Randall Balmer of Barnard College, New York, said the religious right may be retrenching.
"There is some evidence of a shifting of priorities by society," said Balmer, author of Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America.
He noted that most conservative Christian leaders -- like Kennedy, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and James Dobson -- are in their 70s. "I've found issues like sexual identity are not that important to younger evangelicals."


Gay leaders, who have occasionally picketed the Reclaiming America conference, cheered the closure news.
"It's a terrific thing," said Michael Albetta, president of the Florida Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Democratic Caucus. "I think people are just tired of the rhetoric and nonsense against human rights."


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Fisher said the actions were unrelated to the long convalescence of Kennedy, who had a cardiac arrest in December. Fisher also denied money problems forced the layoffs, saying revenues have changed little for at least eight years.

But he said Coral Ridge Ministries is changing its conservative activism, not deserting it.


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Christian conservatives have often clashed with politicians who stress economic policies over moral legislation. As a result, Republicans lost heavily in the 2006 congressional elections.
"Something's unsettled in the whole movement," said Mark Silk, of the Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life in Hartford, Conn. "Its leaders show an inclination to hide their light under a bushel after shining brightly for the Bush administration."

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