Evangelicals feel maligned

To outsiders, conservative Christians seem at the peak of their influence.

Books by evangelical pastors Rick Warren and Joel Osteen are best sellers, megachurches are building satellite congregations to meet demand, conservatives control Congress and religious activists helped put a Bible-believer in the White House.

Yet, many evangelicals still consider themselves a persecuted majority, saying they continue to be maligned by some of the most influential institutions in the country — the media, public schools, universities and Hollywood. Societal demands for tolerance are extended to every group but theirs, they argue.

"There is an attempt by the secularists to take Jesus Christ and to take God out of every aspect of our society," the Rev. Franklin Graham, son of evangelist Billy Graham, said in a recent interview with The Associated Press.

That view was on display this month at the "Justice Sunday: II" event, which enlisted Christians in the fight for more sympathetic federal judges.

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, told the gathering in a Nashville church that limits the Supreme Court has placed on religion in public schools have meant "that our children don't have a right to pray."

William Donohue, head of the Catholic League, told the crowd that, as a person of faith, he was tired of being treated like "a second-class citizen."

In an interview, Donohue said conservative leaders are not paranoid, as critics contend, nor are they cynically attempting to mobilize their followers. He said his anti-defamation group logs dozens of cases each month in which Christians are compared to the Taliban or otherwise denigrated for their beliefs. Many of the slurs are in films and on TV, he said.

"We are basically in a reactive mode," Donohue said. "I don't create the offenses. I react to them and the offenses just seem not to stop coming."

Spikes can come when controversial leaders linked with the movement are in the news, such as Pat Robertson, who was widely condemned for suggesting Monday that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez should be assassinated. Robertson later apologized.

Opponents are baffled by the idea of a persecuted evangelical movement. Bill Leonard, dean of Wake Forest University Divinity School in North Carolina and a critic of the religious right, says these evangelicals think they are oppressed only because some Americans disagree with them.

"They want to be culture dominant," Leonard said.