A Life of Transformation - World Evangelical Alliance

A Festschrift for Colonel Doner
During his tenure at Voice of Americanism, he first became interested
in social justice causes in Africa, particularly after watching
the terrible debacle of genocide, which all too often was the normal
aftermath of political unrest in so many African states.
His first role in Africa was as a volunteer mediator between
the Christian nation of Rhodesia and its various adversaries in the
U.S. Congress and State Department. Doner attempted to have
Jimmy Carter’s embargo against Rhodesia (the same sort of embargo
we now have against Cuba) lifted. In this role he won
accolades from both the white establishment of Rhodesia (including
the Foreign Minister and various Cabinet members) as well as
leaders of the Black business community.
At age 25, he founded Keystone Management Corporation and
served as a strategist for the conservative political movement, including
the American Conservative Union, headed by
Congressman Philip Crane and Ronald Reagan, who was gearing
up for his first serious presidential run in 1975.
At age 30, in 1978, he co-founded Christian Voice in Washington,
D.C., which was to become the first organization of what was to be
known as the Christian Right. By 1980, Christian Voice and its political
twin, Moral Majority, enjoyed success beyond their wildest
imagination, electing Ronald Reagan to the Presidency (Doner also
founded Christians for Reagan in 1980, the nation’s first and largest
Christian political action committee) and electing for the first time in
20 years a conservative Republican majority to the U.S. Senate. Due
to the unexpected victory of Ronald Reagan over a professed evangelical
President, and the shock wave of a half dozen of the Senate’s
most established liberal leaders going down in flames, the Christian
Right was voted by the nation’s news media as the top story of the
year. Consequently, Doner found himself featured on every conceivable
news program, from Dan Rather and “60 Minutes,” to Phil
Donahue, to all network news programs, including those in Japan,
Germany, and Sweden. The news media seemed particularly fascinated
(and horrified) by the introduction of a “report card” by Christian
Voice showing how congressmen voted on moral issues. It was this
report card that the media credited with defeating over three dozen
members of the House and Senate in 1980. It was also this concept
and the “Presidential Biblical Scoreboard,” which he introduced in
1984, that added new phraseology to the American political lexicon,
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