Bruce
& Ellen Craswell
Christianity & Politics
4/18/06 - Updated 4/7/08
Bill Gothard & R.J. Rushdoony & David Barton
American Heritage Party to Ron Boehme
Beloved sister-in-the-Lord, Ellen Craswell, was taken home by her Lord April 5th, 2008. See front page local Kitsap article.
Two of the most loving and genuine people we have known are Bruce and Ellen Craswell. We greatly respect this precious couple. My wife and I had the privilege to know them in the late 1980’s for a time, when we were prolife and political activists. We were among the grass roots while they played county and statewide roles that periodically reached to national influence. After 16 years as a state representative and state senator in Olympia, Washington State, Ellen was the Republican candidate for Governor in 1996 but lost to the Democrat, Gary Locke.
Bruce, a dentist, had been the politician early on. And yet, Bruce once told about how it was his unwillingness to run for the Washington state legislature that started his wife’s long career. Ellen served as a state representative from 1977 to 1980 and in the state senate from 1981 to 1992. She was the first woman to serve as President Pro Tem of the state senate in 1991.
The Craswells were part of the “Reagan Revolution” in 1980. Bruce served as chief of staff of the King County executive in the early 1980s. Bruce and Ellen were already part of the Reaganite conservative wing of the Republican establishment by the time the “religious right” began to come to power.
Many of us Christians became political activists through participation
in the “prolife movement” in the mid to late 1980s. Some of us were
from the local Christian Action Council; some from the Crisis
Pregnancy Centers; some from Women Exploited by Abortion (WEBA). I had
been inspired by a Melody Green article in the “Last Days Newsletter”
of the late Keith Green to become a prolife activist. Judge Steve
Alexander encouraged me through my mother-in-law to become involved in
a prolife initiative campaign in 1984. Statewide, we prolifers were
being organized and mobilized by various initiative campaigns and by
leaders such as Michael Undseth and Dottie Roberts. A number of us in
Kitsap County who began to participate in county and state politics
were encouraged by the Craswells. The Craswells were in a position to
try to bridge the gap between the Reaganite right wing and the new
Christian Right.
Bruce and Ellen had been participating for years in a conservative
gathering every two years called, the “Sun Mountain Conference” named
because of the lodge that was the location of the first meeting. The
Washington State conservative elite would meet to plan strategy. There
were mostly old guard Republican conservatives, but there were a few
conservative Democrats. The Craswells invited some of us Christian
activists to attend in the late 80s when a Silverdale hotel hosted the
event. Former governor Dixie Lee Ray was one of the speakers. John
Carlson and his fellow University of Washington classmate Brett Bader
were there. Carlson, who like Ellen lost a governor’s race to Gary
Locke (2000), was another one of the speakers.
For many years Ellen Craswell published a “Family in Touch” newsletter
which was a vehicle for informing and mobilizing to action her
constituents and supporters. Bruce and Ellen were the lightning rods
for controversy as the Kitsap County Republicans were taken over by
the Religious Right. Adele Ferguson, then a columnist for the
Bremerton Sun newspaper, had a “love – hate” campaign going as she
often wrote about the Craswells. Adele had been longtime close friends
with Bruce and Ellen but could never get use to their increasing
testimony for Jesus Christ. And she found it unforgivable that they
would use their religious following to ruin the Republican party and
county and state politics.
My wife, Kim, and a number of our friends were elected precinct
committeemen in the elections of 1986 and 1988. We all went to the
Kitsap County Republican conventions and to the State Conventions. So
many of us were new to politics. We really only knew the dogma of the
prolife movement. At the 1986 state convention, every time a
resolution was up for a vote, Bruce Craswell and prolife leader,
Dottie Roberts, took turns holding up “yes” or “no” signs so that all
of us prolife newbies knew how to vote! It looked ridiculous, of
course, to the establishment Republicans. But it was all the more
galling to them because we usually won each vote.
At the 1988 state convention, the Craswells were among our leaders
again and we heard speeches by presidential candidates,
including Pat Robertson. Some of
our crowd were Robertson delegates and some were delegates for Donald
Rumsfeld’s bid for president, or Bob Dole, or Jack Kemp, or Alexander
Haig, or the eventual winner, Vice President
George Bush. Bob Williams,
at the state convention, was the Republican candidate for governor and
he relied quite a bit on us in the Christian Right. Lynn Harsh was his
campaign manager. He ended up losing to the Democrat, Booth Gardner.
Future U.S. Senate candidate, Linda Smith, was at the convention.
During this period of our political activism was also when fellow
Christians, Bob Oke and Lois McMahon, began their careers as state
legislators.
Bruce and Ellen Craswell were not always “Right Wing Christians”. They started out just as “Right Wing”. It always blesses me to hear about how people came to put their trust in the Lord Jesus, whether I end up agreeing with their politics or not. Consider the following account of Bruce’s conversion to Christ by political writer, Mark Matassa, in a 1995 article called, “Craswell’s Crusade”:
So it happened that
anti-tax crusader [Ellen] Craswell fell into a quick kinship with Rep.
Ron Dunlap, a tightfisted Bellevue Republican, and in 1979 they
sponsored Initiative 62, a tax-limitation plan.
While Craswell and Dunlap
campaigned around the state for their initiative, Bruce and Dunlap's
wife, Allison, traveling with them, killed time discussing the Bible.
Bruce loves a good-natured argument - "If it's Advil vs. Anacin,"
Allison Dunlap says, "he'll take you to the mat" - and he was sure he
could prove the Bible was not absolute divine truth, as Allison had
accepted it to be. But after several weeks of debate, Allison recalls,
Bruce was astonished to see he hadn't shaken her faith. Intrigued, the
Craswells agreed to join the Dunlaps and several other couples in a
more thorough Bible study.
All of this was floating
through Bruce's mind that Wednesday evening as he drove south after
work. He was thinking about the Rev. Billy Graham's remark that it is
harder for a rich man to get to heaven than for a camel to pass
through the eye of a needle. Suddenly, he says, he realized what the
passage meant: It wasn't his money God wanted, but his life. He had to
surrender his life to God.
And with that, he was so
overcome with emotion that he had to pull the Mercedes over to the
side of the freeway, somewhere around Fort Lewis. When he got out of
the car he saw a vision, he says, that is still "just as clear and
just as real as sitting here looking out the window."
There before him was Christ, nailed to the cross.
And for five minutes Bruce
Craswell, who had been so proud of his skepticism and his logic and
his impeccable debating skill, knelt, crying, traffic whizzing past,
staring up at Him.
Mark Matassa goes on to write about Ellen’s conversion:
ELLEN CRASWELL'S acceptance
of Christ was not nearly so dramatic as her husband's. He told her
what happened that day on the freeway; she watched him, liked the new
sense of peace she saw, and six weeks later, April 15, 1980, decided
she, too, would surrender her life to God.
"I remember feeling
suddenly it was like the weight of the world was off my shoulders,"
Craswell says. "I think that's part of what gives you strength. You
don't have to do it alone. You have this inner strength. Somebody else
is there to hold you up."
In that sense, politics got
easier for Craswell when she became a Christian. She could look to the
Bible for guidance, and she felt God supporting her efforts, no matter
what the earthly outcome.
At the same time, though,
her devotion weakened her effectiveness in Olympia. Compromise is
everything in a legislative body. But if every position you take is a
matter of religious faith rather than mere political ideology,
compromise becomes nearly impossible.
[I don’t know anything about Mark Matassa so I can’t endorse him in
general, but look at his article about the Craswell’s for more good
info about them: 1995 article called, “Craswell’s Crusade”
(http://www.seanet.com/~matassa/craswell.htm)
This article is gone now, I'm sorry to say, Jim B. 4/7/08]
Though not mentioned in the above article, Ellen use to often testify
how she was miraculously healed of cancer in a charismatic ministry at
Silverdale United Methodist church in the early 1980s. Since that time
she has had to face at least one other bout with cancer, but the Lord
has used each circumstance in both her life and in the lives of many
who have come in contact with her.
Bill Gothard & R.J. Rushdoony & David Barton
By the time my wife and I met the Craswells in 1985 or 86, they were a
part of a small Baptist congregation. The two greatest influences on
their lives seemed to be
Bill Gothard’s “Institute in Basic Life Principles” and the
Reconstructionism of R.J.
Rushdoony. These two personalities and their doctrines and their
systems had become the basis for the Craswells’ world view about
everything from diet and nutrition to their politics and vision for
mobilizing Christians for political action.
During this period of our political activism the Lord had also been
breaking me and remaking me and teaching me in many ways. I had become
a Christian in 1976. In 1978, in my little Assembly of God church in
Hawaii, I had heard a Human Potential seminar about visualizing your
goals and creating your own reality. I completely bought into the
views and techniques taught at that motivational seminar. I moved to
Kitsap County, Washington state, in 1979.
Pat Robertson’s 700 Club was a huge influence on me at the time.
Kim and I were married in 1981. I went with Kim to a Bill Gothard,
Basic Youth Seminar which was required by my wife’s employer,
Bremerton Christian Schools.
By 1984 we were prolifers and getting into
politics. While watching a Christian talk show one day, I heard the
guest speaking about truth from the Bible that totally demolished, in
my understanding, the deception of the Human
Potential movement. The guest’s name was Dave Hunt. The “New Age”
media hype was just beginning. In November, 1986, I was required to
take a course where I worked, Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, that
included guided visualization techniques and promoted the Human
Potential movement philosophies. My
confronting
of this improper use of taxpayers’ money was to have a huge impact on
my life.
And yet, overlapping this period, I continued my social and political
activism and became involved in the “Coalition On Revival” or COR, led
by Jay Grimstead, which sought to unify and mobilize Christians to
take dominion over all aspects of civilization, including politics and
government. Eventually, through the ministry of Dave Hunt (Christian
Information Bureau which turned into the
Berean Call) and Al Dager (Media
Spotlight) I realized the corrupt nature of the “Coalition On
Revival” and how professing Christians were being manipulated and used
and the Gospel was being perverted and idolatry was being promoted by
unholy alliances in the name of “traditional family values” and
conservative political agendas. I was also learning to what degree the
occult and Freemasonry
and other unbiblical traditions had had on the founding of America;
the many threads of deception within Evangelical Christianity; and the
trends toward a false religious and political unity, preparing the
world for a counterfeit Christ and global deception.
The Lord continued to transition my wife, Kim, and me out of social
and political activism. We had our last get together with Bruce and
Ellen Craswell when we had them over to dinner. I gave them what was
developing into my presentation, “The World System and Rebellion
Against God” which later was titled, “Counterfeit
Christianity, The World Religion, and the New World Order”. As
always our evening with them was precious fellowship because they are
such gracious people. We spent time discussing our different views on
what the Bible teaches about diet and whether the Old Testament
dietary laws apply to Christians today and what the significance
was of Peter’s vision in Acts 10. Bruce and Ellen encouraged us to
look at some videos by David Barton of WallBuilders, an “organization
dedicated to presenting America's forgotten history and heroes, with
an emphasis on the moral, religious, and
constitutional foundation on which America was built”.
The Baumgaertels and Craswells agreed to disagree. We parted ways.
They were so kind to spend time with “grass roots” people like us.
They are as sweet and unpretentious as anyone you will meet.
American Heritage Party to Ron Boehme
Eventually, after Ellen was unseated from the state senate in 1992 and
then lost the governors race in 1996, the Craswells gave up on the
Republican party. They helped to found the
American Heritage Party, which was associated with the national
American Taxpayers Party. One of the things I have always respected
about the Craswells was their consistency in what they saw as their
Christian convictions. While many Evangelicals have been willing to
compromise with and yoke with conservative Catholics and Mormons; and
compromise with various pro-abortion conservatives, the Craswells have
stood their ground even when it cost them politically. From their
point of view, it became impossible to be a Republican and still stand
for Biblical values. They simply could not support some of the
Republican candidates as they were expected to do as good Republicans.
In 1998, Bruce Craswell ran for U.S. Congress in the First
Congressional district as the American Heritage Party candidate. Bruce
was bitterly condemned by conservative Republicans for siphoning off
7% of the vote to cause Republican incumbent, Rick White, to lose to
Democrat Jay Inslee.
In 1999 the American Taxpayers Party changed its name to the
Constitution Party and has a Washington State affiliate by that name.
There is still an American Heritage Party that has tried to create
itself nationally.
Bruce and Ellen Craswell are listed (April 2006) as Campaign Advisors
for Republican candidate for state representative,
Ron Boehme on his campaign web site. Ron is a Youth With a Mission
(YWAM) leader who teaches
Moral Government theology and has promoted
Kingdom Now – Dominion philosophies for years.
In spite of our differences, we continue to love and respect Bruce and
Ellen Craswell. And even if I think that they have been misguided
through the years by Bill Gothard and R.J. Rushdoony and David Barton,
I know that our Lord Jesus has used them anyway. Our sovereign God
brings fruit in our lives and uses us for His purposes in spite of
ourselves! That doesn’t mean the Lord Jesus endorses our unbiblical
agendas. But we can rejoice that Bruce and Ellen have preached Jesus
Christ many times over many years. Those of us who homeschool in
Washington State should be grateful to the Lord for the freedom our
state’s excellent homeschool law affords. It is my understanding that
Ellen Craswell is largely responsible for that law. The Craswells have
been wonderful examples of loving parents and grandparents. We
remember the house they use to live in on Dyes Inlet near Silverdale
that had secret passage ways Bruce built for his children and a rope
ride in the side and back yard. We praise the Lord for their extended
family, including Jim and Denise. Bruce and Ellen live with some of
their children and grand children on a large family compound.
In a January 2nd, 2005 article in the Seattle Times’ Pacific Northwest Magazine, Lynda Mapes writes about Ellen:
At 72, Craswell still
radiates the gracious serenity that charmed voters who wrote to say
thank you for her campaign, even though they wouldn't vote for her in
a million years.
Now retired from politics, Craswell and her husband, Bruce — a former
candidate for Congress — are enjoying 14 grandkids and their Poulsbo
home, reached through a sign over the driveway that commands "Thou
shalt love the Lord thy God" on the way in, "Thou shalt love thy
neighbor as thyself" on the way out.
See this article with a great photo of Ellen and the sign over their
driveway at
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/pacificnw/2005/0102/portraits.html
I do pray that followers of Jesus would no longer be drawn away to
worldly agendas in the name of American Heritage, in the name of
Traditional Family Values or unbiblical concepts of unity, or taking
dominion or reconstructionism.
And yet, we will always love and appreciate Bruce and Ellen Craswell.
Intro - Us Prolifers - Their Conversion - Bill Gothard & R.J. Rushdoony & David Barton - American Heritage Party to Ron Boehme - Grateful Anyway
VENGEANCE IS OURS
THE CHURCH IN DOMINION
Albert James Dager - 283Pages
A new militancy is stirring in the breasts of Christians in response to the evils that beset society. Tens of thousands attend spiritual warfare seminars hoping to learn how to “take back from Satan what he has stolen.” A call for vengeance on God’s enemies and a restructuring of society under God’s Law is being heard in ever-widening circles.
But is it the Christian’s responsibility to take control of society and to reconstruct it in accordance with God’s Law?
Vengeance Is Ours presents some startling revelations in this analysis of various forms of dominion theology from Manifested Sons of God to Christian Reconstructionism. Media Spotlight
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Lucifer, the Garden of Eden, & the Tower of Babel
KINGDOM NOW OR NEW WORLD ORDER?
Crusades for "Morality", Political Action, Social Activism