Patriot pastors, Blackwell, and Ohio politics

[MelissaB]

'Patriot pastors' recruited
Churchgoers will be urged to vote

By Howard Wilkinson
Enquirer staff writer


KINGS MILLS - The luncheon Thursday at the Kings Island Conference Center could easily have been mistaken for a political party affair, with politicians, speaking over the clank of forks and knives, exhorting the guests to go out and register new voters and make sure they get to the polls.

But the hundreds of people dining at the ballroom tables Thursday were not ward-heelers and precinct captains.

They were, for the most part, men and women of the clergy - evangelicals, Pentecostals, Baptists and a smattering of Catholic clerics and laymen.

They were being recruited for the Ohio Restoration Project, the brainchild of the Rev. Russell Johnson, pastor of a 2,500-member evangelical church in the southeastern Ohio town of Lancaster. He wants to build a force of Christian conservatives - the "values voters'' who oppose abortion, want to protect traditional marriage and oppose higher taxes - to dominate Ohio politics, starting with the 2006 gubernatorial election.


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