Christian Coalition of America

The Christian Coalition of America (CC) was founded in 1989 and makes claim to being one of the largest conservative grassroots political organisations in America. By being a member of CC, Americans of faith can become actively involved in impacting the issues they care about and thus help to shape the laws that could be passed in Congress.

CC states itself as being made up of 'pro-family Americans' who are concerned with traditional values and how the government upholds them. Their main goal is to preserve family values and protect them from potential 'threats'. Effectively, they make a call to all Christians in order to educate and mobilise themselves for political actions.

Their website states their mission as:

Represent the pro-family point of view before local councils, school boards, state legislatures and Congress

Speak out in the public arena and in the media

Train leaders for effective social and political action

Inform pro-family voters about timely issues and legislation

Protest anti-Christian bigotry and defend the rights of people of faith

Given the fact that it is election year, CC has increased its political rallies fighting for rights that they believe in. Their homepage even asks readers to 'pray and vote', thus further increasing the influence of the Christian faith on politics. Being 'pro-family', the CC is obviously concerned with issues that would affect the nuclear family, and the key issues they are fighting against in 2012 include subjects such as Stem Cell Research, Don't Ask, Don't Tell and the Defence of Marriage Act.

In order to further educate Christians, CC has a 'spread the word' section on their website, encouraging readers to email links, friend them on Facebook, follow them on Twitter and many more, thus utilising modern technology in order to reach a wider range of audiences. As it is usually the younger generation who use such social networking sites, it's clear to see their aim is to educate those who may become interested in politics, and to instil their ideologies in the youth of America.

Furthermore, CC has a link to church liaisons and prayer partners, reinforcing the Christian ideals that they represent. Interestingly, CC refers to its members as 'Americans of faith' and by doing so, they ignore other religions within America and although the country is notoriously seeped in the Judaic Christian ideals (In God We Trust, One Nation Under God etc.), it effectively labels Christianity as synonymous with faith. By doing so, it appears that freedom of religion isn't the same for all faiths.

CC states that it is a political organisation, but by so blatantly advertising themselves as both Christian and political, they effectively merge church and state. By doing so, they effectively suggest that Christian ideals should be enforced by law and thus are biased towards preaching the word of God instead of taking an objective view of social issues that affect all Americans, and not just Christians.