The Trials and Tribulations of Hashmel Turner

Eventually, Turner climbed into his black Hummer (cars are a vanity, from the Hummer to his candy-apple red '64 Chevy Impala to the model-car collection Turner shares with his grandson) and drove to Charlottesville to meet with Whitehead. He doesn't remember what he thought about the "Speak Truth to Power" bumper sticker plastered on the door to Whitehead's office (and available for sale on Rutherford's Web site) or the plastic eyeballs and shrink-wrapped plastic Jesus on his desk. Turner remembers being struck by Whitehead's stories about his conversion and his decision to found Rutherford. This is a man of genuine faith who will help me, he concluded.

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Together, the unconventional lawyer and the reticent minister began edging toward a lawsuit that could help define one of the most disputed areas of American religious expression: legislative prayer.

AT RUTHERFORD, TURNER FOUND HIMSELF ENTERING A WORLD HE BARELY KNEW EXISTED, a world largely created in the last 20 years: the Christian legal movement. It is populated by endless litigants: a Virginia teacher barred from posting information about Christianity in class, a Nevada high school valedictorian prevented from speaking about Jesus in her graduation speech, a New York pastor forbidden to use a local public school building for Bible study. It is driven by a proliferation of law firms created to defend Christians, firms that pump out millions of e-mails, phone calls and direct-mail solicitations to raise money for the fight. It is bolstered by dozens of new books, scholarly articles and blogs about religion and the courts.

When Whitehead founded Rutherford 25 years ago, his idea that U.S. courts were a dangerously secularizing force didn't have much juice among evangelicals. Christian groups were more focused on changing the world through prayer than litigation.

"It was like walking through the desert," Whitehead says of his early efforts to get support and funding. "People thought I was a little nuts. They thought, 'Jesus wouldn't sue anyone.'" By today's standards, Rutherford, with an annual budget of $1.9 million, a staff of 15 and a stable of 250 attorneys -- many from high-status firms -- who work pro bono, is no longer a big player. The heavies include the Alliance Defense Fund (founded by James Dobson), with an annual budget of $29.5 million; the American Center for Law and Justice (founded by Pat Robertson), with at least 1 million members on its mailing list; and the Thomas More Law Center (started by Domino's founder and Catholic activist Tom Monaghan), whose Web site says, "We live in a culture increasingly hostile to Christians." None of these groups existed 18 years ago.

The movement's driving credo is that Christians, who, according to the American Religious Identification Survey, make up more than three-quarters of the U.S. population, are victims of discrimination by an omnipotent secular culture that wants to whitewash the Founding Fathers' Christianity and exclude God from the public square. Public displays of the Ten Commandments or the reference to God in the Pledge of Allegiance simply acknowledge the role Christianity played in this country's founding principles, these groups argue. It does not amount to an unconstitutional "establishment" of religion at the expense of religious minorities.

"It became evident very early that once you show up in court, and you make arguments, you can win. We just hadn't been showing up for decades," says Mathew Staver, an evangelical pastor and lawyer who founded the litigation and advocacy group Liberty Counsel in 1989. The group is about to open its fourth office and has 700 volunteer attorneys to handle the 50 to 60 cases in active litigation and the 200 others that are being pursued out of court at any one time. It also uses students at the three-year-old law school at evangelical Liberty University that Staver helped found with the late Jerry Falwell.

Of the cases that Liberty Counsel handles, 95 percent are resolved out of court. Of the cases that have gone to court in the past five years, Staver says, the firm has won 92 percent. Christian legal groups now file about 20 percent of all friend-of-the-court briefs entered in Supreme Court religious freedom cases, up from almost zero in 1980, according to Kevin den Dulk, a political science professor at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Mich., who researches the rise of such firms.

Christian firms claim credit for several key Supreme Court rulings. In 1995, the high court ruled that it was unconstitutional to ban a student-run Christian newspaper at the University of Virginia from using student activity fund money. The court said the mandatory fees are akin to a public forum and that religious speech is protected like other speech. In 2001, it ruled that schools may not bar a Bible group called the Good News Club and other religious groups from meeting on public school campuses. Again, the decision focused on free speech. Liberty Counsel filed amicus briefs in both cases.

Despite these successes, members of the Christian legal movement say they are just beginning to level the playing field and that their gains could disappear if they don't remain on the offense.

There are fewer national groups advocating for a separation of church and state, but they have been pursuing their cause decades longer. The ACLU, founded in 1920, and Americans United for Separation of Church and State, founded in 1947, tangle regularly with the Christian legal movement, though it can be difficult to compare each side's resources and impact. With 550,000 members and an annual budget of $100 million, the ACLU is big, but religious freedom cases are only a fraction of what it does. Americans United is far smaller -- with 75,000 members and an annual budget of $5.8 million -- but focuses solely on defending the separation of church and state.

Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United, says he thinks the Christian legal groups have lurched ahead in funding in the last five years. He also believes their impact is growing. "These firms are becoming more successful with the infusion of ultra-conservative judges into federal courts," says Lynn, a lawyer and a minister within the United Church of Christ, a liberal denomination that has voiced support for gay marriage. "They have an endless supply of huge givers who believe that we're on the cusp of fundamentally changing the idea of church and state. So they go and fundraise, and say they're one or two Supreme Court justices or one federal circuit away from transforming the landscape."