Just abroad? Just human rights issues?
Evangelicals Sway White House on Human Rights Issues Abroad
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
WASHINGTON, Oct. 25 ? Shortly after George W. Bush took office, an odd coalition came to the White House to see Karl Rove, the president's powerful political adviser, to ask that the United States intercede in the civil war in Sudan. The group included Charles W. Colson, the born-again Christian who spent seven months in jail for his role in Watergate, and David Saperstein, a Reform rabbi and a longtime lobbyist for liberal causes in Washington.
The two-decades-long war in Sudan was not a front-burner problem for the new administration, and Mr. Rove was not a foreign policy adviser. But the religious strife between Christians and Muslims in a conflict that had killed two million people was of enormous concern to American religious groups, particularly the evangelicals who make up a major portion of President Bush's electoral base.
Mr. Rove, the participants in the meeting recalled, was unusually receptive during a nearly hourlong conversation. "He made it clear how seriously the administration was going to engage on this," said Rabbi Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism.
Close to three years later, the White House has lived up to Mr. Rove's promise to engage not only in peace talks in Sudan, but on other human rights issues of critical importance to American religious groups, most notably sex trafficking and AIDS.
Administration officials and members of Congress say the religious coalition has had an unusual influence on one of the most religious White Houses in American history. The groups have driven aspects of foreign policy and won major appointments, and they were instrumental in making sure that the president included extensive remarks on sex trafficking in his speech to the United Nations General Assembly in September.
