Barry Goldwater's losing campaign for president in 1964 is credited with galvanizing the modern conservative movement. And Pat Robertson's earlier organization, the Freedom Council provided a base for his unsuccessful effort to get the 1988 GOP nomination for president, which in turn, provided the foundation for what became the Christian Coalition. In order to be viable, a movement's fortunes must not depend on the fortunes of one candidate for office. But there is a strong relationship between movements and electoral politics, and whether or not Blackwell wins,the religious right in Ohio will be stronger in the wake of the 2006 elections

It's time to get to know the leaders of the religious right in Ohio.

This week, writer Frances Fitzgerald has a long and thoughtful article in The New Yorker magazine -- titled "Holy Toledo" -- discussing politics and the religious right in Ohio. It is a timely primer on the unusual dynamics of politics in the state -- especially the roles of Parsley and Johnson. The article, which understates the characteristically shrill rhetoric of these leaders, zeros in on evaluating the relative strength of their efforts.

Here are a few excerpts:

Ohio has long had chapters of national religious-right organizations, such as the Christian Coalition, as well as homegrown right-to-life and family-values groups. As in other states, these groups have mobilized voters and gained considerable influence in Republican county organizations. In recent years, the state legislature has passed a series of bills on the religious-right agenda, among them an experimental school-voucher program, a ban on late-term abortions, and a Defense of Marriage Act. Meanwhile, the state school board has been fighting over a proposed science standard that calls for "a critical analysis of evolution." But Parsley's and Johnson's leadership in the Issue One campaign brought religious-right activism to a new level.

The article describes Parsley as relatively new to political activism, while Johnson is a veteran.

Johnson has been involved in local politics for twenty years. Church members have been elected to county and municipal offices, and one, a volunteer pastor, serves as vice-chair of the Fairfield Republican Party. The church has invited local Republican politicians to speak, and, over the years, Johnson has got to know many social-issue activists and politicians around the state. But it was Issue One that propelled him into state politics and into an alliance with Parsley and Blackwell...

Johnson created the Ohio Restoration Project with the goal of enlisting two thousand pastors to commit themselves to registering three hundred new voters each by the end of 2006. He planned to raise a million dollars and to hold meetings across the state to find these "Patriot Pastors." On his church's Web site he wrote, "This is a battle between the forces of righteousness and the hordes of hell." To me, he said, "This is to elect values candidates."

By March, some of the pastors' goals had proved too ambitious. Johnson had to cancel a planned Ohio for Jesus rally for lack of funds, and Parsley has held only three Reformation Ohio events this year. The pastors had, in any case, no hope of registering hundreds of thousands of new voters: after the 2004 campaign, there weren't that many unregistered Ohioans left. They could, however, mobilize values voters for an off-year election, and effectively that's what they have done. Since the fall of 2004, Parsley, through his Center for Moral Clarity, has hosted breakfast meetings every three months, for a thousand to two thousand Ohio pastors, to discuss legislation... Johnson has held eight O.R.P. meetings and rallies across the state-seven of them featuring Blackwell-and he plans four more before November. He told me he had four hundred thousand people on his e-mail lists, organized by county and congressional district, and hundreds of prospective volunteers.

Parsley has a national broadcast called "Breakthrough," that airs

on fourteen hundred stations and cable affiliates. The church has a staff of three hundred and an annual budget of forty million dollars. Parsley frequently presents himself as a political centrist. However, in his book, "Silent No More," published last spring, his solution to poverty is for the government to "get out of the way," remove all constraints on the free-enterprise system, and let the churches assume their traditional role in helping the poor. He fulminates about homosexuality, and writes of Islam, "I do not believe that our country can truly fulfill its divine purpose until we understand America was founded, in part, with the intention of seeing this false religion destroyed." On the book's jacket is a blurb from Ken Blackwell, whom Parsley has known for years, though they were only slightly acquainted before 2004. "This book should inspire men and women of faith," Blackwell wrote, "and make `values voters' a force that politicians can no longer ignore."

...Parsley told me that his call to activism had come when he attended the signing of the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act, at the White House, in 2003. Parsley had spoken on occasion about social issues in his television ministry, but, standing in the room with other Christian leaders and President Bush, he felt "the need to use the platform I was given." The following summer, he formed the Center for Moral Clarity, to educate citizens nationwide about legislation in statehouses and Congress. That fall, he traveled around Ohio, advocating the passage of Issue One. "I believe we had an impact," he said. "We have a multicultural church-and our urban ministries are largely black and Hispanic. The President won eleven per cent of the African-American vote nationally; he won sixteen per cent of it in Ohio."

Win or lose this fall, Parsley, Johnson and the religious right in Ohio -- plan on being around for a long time.