Full Text (12005 words)
Copyright American Society of Church History Sep 2009
During his 1 976 presidential campaign, Jimmy Carter promised social conservatives that, if elected, he would convene a conference examining how the federal government could support American families. That promise - alongside Carter's description of being "bom again" and his well-documented Christian devotion - thrilled American evangelicals. They provided him with a crucial bloc of support in the 1976 election. Four years later, Carter finally made good on his campaign pledge when he convened the White House Conference on Families. Carter declared that the conference would "examine the strengths of American families, the difficulties they face, and the ways in which family life is affected by public policies."1 He recruited a panel of organizers and asked them to focus on how government policy might better support family life.
If Carter was hoping to placate evangelicals who had soured on him since the 1976 election, he failed. The diverse group of conference organizers Carter assembled insisted that a conference on families must examine the pressures facing homosexual and single-parent families, and they refused to define a family as a heterosexual, two-parent household. These decisions led conservative Christian political leaders to repudiate the meeting. Jerry Falwell's political action group, the Moral Majority, dubbed it "the AntiFamily Conference," and Alabama governor Fob James announced that his state would not send any delegates "because the conference appears to oppose Judeo-Christian values." Conference speakers, declared the Moral Majority Report, were "activists who hold the traditional family and its morals in contempt." As a result, according to religious conservatives, the White House Council on Families would "heap scorn and ridicule on the American family."2
For three decades, leaders of the Christian right have deployed rhetoric such as this in order to promote "family values." They contended that abortion, feminism, and homosexuality represented a multifaceted "attack" on the family, which they defined as "the fundamental institution of society, an immutable structure established by our Creator."3 Christian right leaders envisioned the family as the central unit of American society, and they framed their political activities throughout the 1980s and 1990s as a defense of the "traditional" family. The central ity of the family to the Christian right's sense of its mission extended even to the names of its institutions: two of the most important institutions in the contemporary Christian right are Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council.
Yet the rise of "family values" as the rallying cry of the Christian right was neither inevitable nor predictable. The triumvirate of political positions that came to constitute the core of "family values" - opposition to abortion, feminism, and gay rights - did not command much attention from evangelicals before 1975.4 In fact, most evangelicals who spoke publicly about these issues in the early 1970s supported the Equal Rights Amendment and equivocated on abortion. Gay rights, to be sure, never found favor among conservative Christians, yet it seemed a marginal issue until the end of the decade. In short, on these three issues, evangelicals in the early 1 970s seemed ambivalent.
Over the course of the 1 970s, however, a small cadre of evangelical ministers developed a political philosophy that connected defense of the "traditional family" with opposition to abortion, feminism, and gay rights. Christian right leaders defined traditional families as those with two heterosexual parents, with the husband as the head and, preferably, the primary breadwinner. Though some scholars have argued that this type of nuclear family was never typical among Americans,5 the image of a working father, a stay-athome mother, and well-scrubbed children carried significant appeal among conservatives in the wake of the 1960s. And Christian right leaders developed a political rhetoric that connected the demise of these "traditional" families with feminism and gay rights. For instance, Jerry Falwell said that ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment (a key initiative among 1970s feminists) "could sanction homosexual marriage, send mothers and young girls into combat, and generally injure the dignity of the traditional family."6 Likewise, early campaigns against abortion connected that practice to prochoice advocates' devaluation of motherhood and, by extension, the family.
Critics of the Christian right called its agenda narrow-minded and divisive, but the genius of the movement was to frame opposition to abortion, feminism, and gay rights as "defense of the family." After all, who was going to argue against families? By the end of the 1 970s, the Christian right had devised rhetoric that made liberal reformers enemies of the family and positioned "family values" as mainstream fare. Opposing abortion, feminism, and gay rights, in the view of the Christian right, would benefit all Americans. Some traditional political conservatives dissented, wondering why they ought to care about these issues. For instance, a letter writer to the politically conservative periodical Human Events declared, "Whether or not we agree with the lifestyle of the homosexual, we, as conservatives, cannot deny his right to Uve according to his own conscience without the interference of the government."7 This statement confirmed sociologist Ted Jelen's observation that the Christian right faced a formidable barrier in legislating morality in a society that considered the primary role of government to be the defense of individual rights.8 Americans viewed with suspicion any political movement that encroached on individual liberties. Yet the Christian right worked around this problem by establishing the family as an institution instrumental to America's success. "If America is to return to original greatness," wrote Falwell, "we must . . . support the traditional monogamous family as the only acceptable form."9 Falwell and others suggested that America became great because it nurtured "traditional" families. Thus, according to the rhetoric of the Christian right, opposition to abortion, feminism, and gay rights became markers of mainstream identity.
The family values agenda enabled the Christian right to bridge some longstanding boundaries, even as it reinforced or redefined others. For instance, evangelicals' embrace of political activism encouraged them to unite with pro-life Catholics, an alliance that horrified some fundamentalists. Likewise, the Christian right's conflation of church and state offended some Baptists who considered that principle sacrosanct. Grassroots activists, many of them stay-at-home mothers, joined with lawmakers to defeat the Equal Rights Amendment and to protest Roe v. Wade. The rhetoric of family values facilitated these unusual alliances. It was capacious enough to accommodate Americans of differing theological orientations and political commitments yet specific enough to provide a common vision for leaders, activists, and fellow travelers.
In fact, the triumph of the Christian right in defining "family values" as a capacious yet specific policy agenda has created a situation that encourages both shrill and triumphalist narratives about the movement. Critics have published a raft of titles recently that accuse the Christian right of wanting to establish a theocracy, of kowtowing to the most craven corporate interests, and of fomenting bigotry throughout the heartland. I0 These studies, written mainly by journalists, vary in the quality of their research, but they share a fixation on the more extreme claims of Christian right leaders. Conversely, evangelical leaders have written narratives of the Christian right that emphasize the guiding hand of providence and the sinister machinations of liberals - narratives that fail to treat the movement with careful historical scrutiny.11 "Neither of these approaches satisfactorily explains how the Christian right won significant influence. This article aspires to join the growing body of studies that treat the Christian right with sympathy, probe its leaders' claims with scrutiny, and explain how the movement's political agenda captured widespread support. To date, sociologists have provided some of the best studies of the movement.1" This article adds a historical dimension to the story of the Christian right, showing that Christian right leaders developed the family values agenda through a series of contingencies that was hardly predictable, much less inevitable.
I. THE IMPORTANCE OF ABORTION
In January 1973, the Supreme Court voted 7-2 in Roe v. Wade Xp protect women's right to an abortion during the first six months of pregnancy. Overturning that decision became (and remains) the preeminent political task of social conservatives. Many of these social conservatives hailed from evangelical churches, and they identified the Roe decision as the critical issue that awakened them from long political slumber. "The abortion issue," recalled Southern Baptist leader Al Mohler, "is the stick of dynamite that exploded the issue."'3 Likewise, Jerry Falwell said that on "the morning of January 23, 1973" - the day after the Roe decision - "I felt a growing conviction that I would have to take my stand."14 Though it took several years for Falwell to follow through on his conviction, abortion clearly occupied a central role among the constellation of issues Christian right leaders spotlighted in their mobilization of conservative Christians.
Yet evangelicals' initial response to Roe v. Wade hardly matched their recollections of immediate indignation. Falwell issued no statements on the decision until 1975, a silence he attributed to preoccupation with a government investigation of his organization's finances in 1973. Polls of Southern Baptists in the half-decade before Roe showed an overwhelming majority in favor of "therapeutic abortion," albeit not abortion on demand. Though some conservatives in the SBC agitated for a stronger stand against abortion after Roe, moderates blocked the discussion of an anti-abortion resolution at the 1974 convention.16 Christianity Today, the flagship evangelical journal launched by Billy Graham in the 1950s, took a strong stand against abortion under the direction of editor (and Southern Baptist minister) Harold Lindsell, but few magazines followed its lead. While grassroots pro-life activists expressed indignation about the Roe decision, most evangelical Protestant leaders and institutions responded tepidly at first.
Why did evangelicals remain a minority faction in the pro-life coalition through most of the 1 970s? In 1973 two factors mitigated against conservative Christians' opposition of Roe. First, the language the Court used to legitimate abortion drew on conservative rhetoric. The Fourteenth Amendment, said the Court, "protects against state action the right to privacy." In other words, the Supreme Court employed an individual rights rationale that favored women's prerogative in reproductive choices against the state's interference. Early abortion foes knew the consequences of Roe could be dire. By defining abortion as an issue "belonging to the private sphere, more like a religious preference than a deeply held social belief," the Court's decision appealed to those who rejected governmental interference into private decisions.18 Evangelicals, who had developed sensitivity to governmental intrusion on their beliefs in the decades after the 1925 Scopes trial, increasingly guarded against any attempts to infringe on their religious liberty. By framing abortion as an individual right, the Court predisposed some political conservatives to support Roe.19
Second, and more important, Catholics spearheaded the earliest campaigns against abortion.20 In the early 1970s, about 70 percent of the members of the National Right to Life Commission claimed membership in the Catholic Church.21 Catholics' leadership of the pro-life movement made it less likely that conservative Protestants would join it. A 1984 study of the pro-life movement found that few activists had expressed any public opposition to abortion before 1967 (when California legalized abortion), and almost all of the earliest activists were Catholic. Catholics' overwhelming majority in the nascent anti-abortion coalition persisted at least through 1978.22 Given the historic enmity between Catholics and conservative Protestants, it is hardly surprising that evangelicals felt some discomfort about joining the pro-life movement in the early 1970s. As the evangelical theologian Harold O. J. Brown put it, "At that point, a lot of Protestants reacted almost automatically - 'If the Catholics are for it, we should be against it.'"23 Rightto-life groups did receive a surge in Protestant membership after the Roe decision - especially from younger women with small children - but on the whole, evangelicals seemed hesitant to enter the pro-life coalition until the mid-1970s.24
Evangelical theologian Francis Schaeffer sought to change that. Bom and reared among conservative Presbyterians in Pennsylvania, Schaeffer established a Christian community called L'Abri ("the shelter") in Switzerland during the 1950s. From L'Abri, Schaeffer published his views on a variety of subjects. Schaeffer rejected fundamentalism's notion of "purity" as misguided and even heretical. Christians, he contended, needed to engage secular culture as part of a holistic presentation of the gospel. "The Lordship of Christ," argued Schaeffer, "covers all of life and all of life equally." He presented conservative Christian views on a host of subjects, from the environment to the arts. Schaeffer contended that "secular humanists" had embedded an anti-Christian philosophy in American laws and government. Now, Schaeffer argued, Christians had to fight back. "Our loyalty to the God who gave the law," wrote Schaeffer, "requires that we make the appropriate response ... to such a tyrannical usurping of power."25
By the end of the 1970s, Schaeffer had emerged as the foremost evangelical opponent of abortion, which he portrayed as the primary issue demanding Christian response. In Whatever Happened to the Human Race, which Schaeffer co-wrote with the future surgeon general, C. Everett Koop, he argued, 'Of all the subjects relating to the erosion of the sanctity of human life, abortion is the keystone." Schaeffer contended that the permissibility of abortion meant America had abandoned respect for human life. The book connected abortion to a host of dehumanizing practices, including euthanasia, torture, and suicide. The final pages of Whatever Happened to the Human Race featured various figures pictured in cages: AfricanAmerican slaves, Jewish immigrants, a handicapped girl, and a premature infant. Schaeffer concluded that "we must stand against the loss of humanness in all its forms." He saw abortion as murder of innocents, and his book popularized that interpretation among conservative Protestants.26
Perhaps more important, Schaeffer disseminated a view of political involvement that encouraged - even demanded - that evangelicals cooperate with non-evangelicals in order to achieve political success. Schaeffer advanced the notion of a culture war, and he suggested that political quiescence was untenable in the face of practices like abortion. He argued that evangelicals needed to adopt "co-belligerence," or cooperation with nonevangelicals, as a political tactic. In A Christian Manifesto, he wrote, "It is time for Christians and others who do not accept the narrow and bigoted humanist views rightfully to use the appropriate forms of protest."27 Schaeffer believed that the dire straits in which Christians found themselves in the late 1970s demanded cooperation with all who would join the fight against abortion. Evangelicals responded. A comment by Jimmy Draper, president of the Southern Baptist Convention from 1982-1984, typified Christian right leaders' view of Schaeffer's influence. Draper said, "Francis Schaeffer was the first one to say, hey, listen, there's a war going on with our culture, and our worldview's in danger, and we need to stand for the things that God has revealed to us.""8 Evangelicals' embrace of Schaeffer's culture war ideal represented the critical first step in mobilizing conservative Christians.
Among evangelicals, Jerry Falwell emerged as the foremost proponent of Schaeffer's doctrine of "co-belligerency." Falwell's leadership of the movement was surprising. In the 1960s he had advocated political quiescence and fundamentalist "separation" from doctrinal rivals. But he changed in the late 1970s. In his political newsletter Moral Majority Report, Falwell wrote, "In itself, the political process is not 'dirty.' It has been corrupted by wicked, sinful men and by the neglect of God's people to be the moral conscience of our leaders." Christians, said Falwell, must fight "the spiritual war where Satan is active - in the political arena."29 And in order for conservative Protestants to fight successfully in the political arena, they would have to cooperate with those whose theology differed from theirs. Falwell contended that "those of us in the leadership of Moral Majority are aware of the vast theological issues that separate Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Mormons, etc. We are not fighting to unite any of these factions. We are fighting to maintain [the] religious freedom of this nation so that we can maintain our religious practices regardless of how different they may be."30 These words reflected Schaeffer's influence on Falwell. In fact, Schaeffer called Falwell in 1978 to encourage Falwell in his efforts against moral decay in America.31 Falwell subsequently popularized many of Schaeffer's views through his books, periodicals, and public appearances.
In May 1 979, Falwell inaugurated the political action group Moral Majority. That month, a handful of conservative Republicans, including a Catholic (Paul Weyrich) and a Jew (Howard Phillips), met with Falwell at the Holiday Inn in Lynchburg to discuss forming a political action committee. Weyrich reportedly coined the new group's name, Moral Majority, and Falwell emerged as the leader." In an early promotional brochure, the Moral Majority described its philosophy as "pro-life, pro-family, pro-moral, and pro-America." The brochure also suggested that a coalition of at least 170 million "moral" Americans existed: 50 million to 60 million "idealistic moralists," more than 60 million "religious moralists," and 60 million born-again Christians.33 The organization clearly intended to reach each of these groups, crossing once unbridgeable divides.
Most notably, the Moral Majority targeted Catholics for cooperation. Falwell claimed that thirty percent of Moral Majority's budget came from Catholic contributions, and Moral Majority Report regularly published letters and articles from Catholic supporters.34 "I do hope others will join me in giving you our prayerful support (which 1 have already given you)," wrote one Catholic nun. "1 think Dr. Jerry Falwell is brave, devoted to Christian living and unafraid to speak out."35 Falwell 's advertisement of Catholics' support displayed his commitment to political alliances with non-fundamentalists. Moreover, Catholics' strong and consistent stance against abortion endeared them to evangelicals who had grown increasingly strident in their pro-life position by the end of the 1970s. In his 1987 autobiography, Falwell celebrated Catholics' early opposition to Roe and lamented that "the voices of my Protestant Christian brothers and sisters, especially the voices of evangelical and fundamentalist leaders, remained silent" in the first few years after the decision.36 Aligning himself with abortion's earliest opponents reflected FaI well's wholesale adoption of Schaeffer's doctrine of co-belligerency.37
Cooperating with Catholics was not a trivial step for Falwell to take. In fact, this new alliance triggered the breakup of some older ones. Fundamentalist stalwart Bob Jones, Jr., issued a denunciation of Falwell and the Moral Majority. In a letter to alumni of Bob Jones University dated June 10, 1980, Jones censured FaI well's alliance with anti-feminist activist Phyllis Schlafly ("a devout Roman Catholic") and called Falwell "the most dangerous man in America as far as Biblical Christianity is concerned." Jones viewed cooperation with Catholics as an unpardonable breach of fundamentalist "separation." As a leader of southern fundamentalists, Jones's condemnation of the Moral Majority effectively excommunicated Falwell from the right-most flank of conservative Christianity. Stung by the criticism, Falwell replied, "I am indeed considered to be 'dangerous' to liberals, feminists, abortionists, and homosexuals, but certainly not to Bible-believing Christians. . . . God has called me to do what I am doing today."38 Falwell rejected the proposition that his political activities compromised his faith, yet he understood that building alliances with Catholics had occasioned turmoil among his spiritual compatriots.
The legalization of abortion, in Falwell's estimation, had made that turmoil unavoidable. Roe, said Falwell, showed him "that this time preaching would not be enough." He decided that "it was my duty as a Christian to apply the truths of Scripture to every act of government." 9 This decision marked a break with both previous generations of fundamentalists and FaI well's own statements. In a 1964 sermon called "Advancing through Prayer," Falwell had chided ministers who used their pulpits to call for civil rights legislation. "God never called the church to be a social reformer," Falwell said. "The church has not been called to a political ministry of lobbying in Washington for any kind of legislation."40 This stance emanated from southern fundamentalists' belief that the separation of church and state meant that Christians were to abstain from political activity.41 He also might have added that, for fiie first half of the twentieth century, southern society's racial and gender hierarchies, which most white Christians endorsed, faced few real threats. The civil rights movement changed that. By the early 1970s, white conservative Christians understood that standing on the political sidelines would not ensure the perpetuation of "traditional" values. Some of these Christians had mobilized in the fight against civil rights, though countless more resisted the movement through declarations like Falwell 's, decrying the defilement of the church with secular politics. But abortion, said Falwell, caused him and others to turn the comer. Political action was no longer taboo - it was essential.
Even so, many conservative Protestants in the late 1 970s still conceived of abortion as a "Catholic issue," which necessitated a new approach to the issue. Catholic leaders defined abortion as a "life issue," and Falwell gradually adopted that rhetoric. But he also connected opposition to abortion with defense of the family. The Family Manifesto, a lengthy policy statement released by several Christian right organizations in the mid-1980s, declared, "We proclaim that parental responsibility for reproductive decisions is joint. Hence we deny that reproduction is solely a 'woman's choice.'"42 The document's authors used the language of pro-choice advocates to show how Roe threatened the family structure authorized by the Bible. By relegating the family's primary function - reproduction and rearing of children - to "private" decisions that women could undertake apart from their husbands, Roe posed a threat. Conservative Christians perceived the language of Roe, which described abortion as a "woman's choice," as a direct assault on the gendered family order instituted by the Bible.
Portraying abortion as an assault on motherhood was crucial. Sociologist Kristin Luker discovered a high degree of correlation between the primary occupations of women and their position in the abortion debate. Women who worked outside the home were more likely to support abortion rights. Homemakers, Luker reported, felt that abortion devalued motherhood, which had once represented women's social and biological destiny. After Roe, motherhood became simply one of several choices available to women. 3 This choice, in the eyes of abortion foes, demeaned the mothering roles that most of them cherished. They believed abortion fostered "a world view that deemphasizes (and therefore downgrades) the traditional roles of men and women." Female abortion foes' experience as mothers and homemakers predisposed them to reject Roe's disregard for their "family values."44
Of course, the rhetoric Christian right leaders deployed in opposition to abortion did not portray Roe solely as an assault on motherhood. Moral Majority flyers talked about a "holocaust" and compared abortion advocates to defenders of slavery. "In 1857 the U.S. Supreme Court voted 7 to 2 that a slave was not a person but the property of his owners," read one such flyer, invoking the Dred Scott decision. Likewise, said the Moral Majority, "In 1973 the U.S. Supreme Court voted 7 to 2 that an unborn human being was not a person but the private property of his mother. . . . Again, the self evident truth of the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness was denied."45 Spurred on by Schaeffer's vision, evangelical leaders in the early 1980s had characterized abortion as an unmitigated evil. Their ability to do so depended on a host of factors, including the far-reaching nature of the Roe decision and the subsequent spike in abortions performed in the United States.46
Yet the escalation in the Christian right's anti-abortion rhetoric in the early 1980s obscured both an early hesitancy to engage the issue and the connection of pro-life positions to a program of "family values" that coincided with conservative Christians' worldview. "Pro-life activists believe that men and women are intrinsically different," Luker wrote. "They subscribe quite strongly to the traditional belief that women should be wives and mothers first.**1 The correlation of "traditional" understandings of gender roles and opposition to abortion reflected the efforts of Schaeffer, Falwell, and other Christian right leaders to connect Roe with a widespread assault on "family values." It also helps explain why the Christian right demonized the women's movement in the years after Roe, just as feminism appeared poised to win wide acceptance among evangelicals.
II. FIGHTING FEMINISM
Many abortion rights advocates hailed from the ranks of the women's movement, which won notable gains during the 1970s. The United Nations designated 1975 as the International Women's Year, sanctioning the movement's goal of making women full and equal participants in civil societies. During that year, the UN convened a summer conference in Mexico, which produced a report emphasizing women's contributions to peacemaking and tying their full participation in governments to the promotion of disarmament.48 Some U.S. feminists derided the IWY as a token gesture, but mainstream media endorsed the achievements and mission of feminism. For instance, Time said that "feminism has transcended the feminist movement. In 1975 the women's drive penetrated every layer of society, matured beyond ideology to a new status of general - and sometimes unconscious - acceptance."49 The women's movement, like the civil rights movement before it, had won popular support, albeit conditional and fleeting. Feminists seemed poised to accelerate their drive for full equality.
Evangelicals initially appeared excited about the advances of feminism. A 1974 editorial in Christianity! Today endorsed the Equal Rights Amendment, and a survey in the same issue reported that Christians favored it by a 3-to-l margin.50 Evangelicals in 1974 also witnessed the publication of Letha Scanzoni and Nancy Hardesty's Ail We 're Meant to Be: A Biblical Approach to Women's Liberation, which became the most important text in the nascent evangelical feminist movement. Scanzoni and Hardesty's book deployed some familiar feminist arguments, such as the contention that cultural conditioning, not biology, played the largest role in creating notions of "masculine" and "feminine." But unlike most feminists. Scanzoni and Hardesty enlisted the support of the Bible. They wrote that "from the beginning" of the church, "women participated fully and equally with men." The church must therefore "face up to the concrete implications of a gospel which liberates women as well as men."51 Although many of Scanzoni and Hardesty's conclusions parroted the claims feminists had been making for years, their use of biblical arguments in support of "women's lib" awakened Christians to the possibility that scripture might support feminism. Feminist Alice Mathews called All We're Meant to Be "a shot heard round the evangelical world." She recalled that "once books and journal articles appeared by reputable evangelical feminist scholars writing and speaking within the limits of accepted evangelical interpretive guidelines, shock waves coursed through the evangelical scholarly community."52 Scanzoni and Hardesty enabled conservative Christians to claim biblical support for feminist positions.
While not all evangelicals agreed with Scanzoni and Hardesty, some of the most prominent ones conceded the fundamental worthiness of the women's movement. Christianity Today editor Harold Lindsell, whose 1976 book The Battle for the Bible condemned evangelicals who did not subscribe to biblical inerrancy, admitted that "women, evangelical or not, have legitimate grievances." He believed that women "should have the same rights as men; equal pay for the same jobs; [and] the right and freedom to pursue any career.'03 Likewise, former Christianity Today editor Carl F. H. Henry declared that "this is a moment in history . . . when able evangelical women are needed in all the professions and vocations now opening to both sexes medicine, law, the mass media, politics, and much else."54 Neither of these conservative stalwarts agreed with Scanzoni and Hardesty's contention that the Bible sanctioned the ordination of women. Indeed, the debate over women's ordination divided - and continues to separate - evangelical churches. Yet Lindsell and Henry's measured outlook on the broader women's movement reflected little of the Christian right's subsequent hostility toward feminism.
Conservative Christians' openness to feminist advances in the early 1970s depended in part on the seemingly benign wording of the Equal Rights Amendment, feminism's most notable policy goal. The ERA, which passed Congress in 1972, read ike a simple guarantee of women's full and equal participation in modern society:
Section 1 . Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.
Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.
Most evangelicals felt the ERA represented the fulfillment of women's push for equal rights, and they raised hardly a peep when thirty states ratified the constitutional amendment in the first year after it passed Congress. The ERA appeared destined to garner the thirty-eight states needed for ratification.
Yet conservative Christian activists led by Phyllis Schlafly blunted and eventually halted the ERA's momentum. Schlafly, a Catholic from Alton, Illinois, won the hearts of conservative Republicans in the 1950s and 1960s by opposing communism and nuclear disarmament. A Choice Not An Echo, her 1964 book endorsing conservative senator Barry Goldwater for the GOP presidential nomination, sold more than three million copies and solidified Schlafly 's place as the "sweetheart of the silent majority."55 Ln 1972, Schlafly turned her attention to the ERA, organizing a network of grassroots activists - mostly women - opposed to the amendment. They agreed with Schlafly that the amendment was "anti-family, anti-children, and proabortion."56
How did Schlafly arrive at such a drastic interpretation of the ERA? Schlafly contended that the ERA's benign appearance masked its sinister potential. She claimed to support "any necessary legislation" needed to redress inequalities between women and men in employment opportunities or income, but Schlafly thought all the necessary legislation had already passed Congress.57 "There is no way," she wrote in the politically conservative magazine Human Events, that the ERA "can extend the effect of the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972 ... the Education Amendment of 1972 . . . [or] the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974." Rather, "the Equal Rights Amendment is a big takeaway of the rights that women now have. It will take away the right of a young woman to be exempt from the draft . . . invalidate the state laws that make it the obligation of the husband to support his wife financially . . . [and] wipe out the right [for a wife] to receive Social Security benefits based on heT husband's earnings."58 Writing for the Moral Majority Report a few years later, Schlafly described the ERA to evangelicals in more dire terms. The ERA, she wrote, would eliminate "the traditional family concept of husband as breadwinner and wife as homemaker," restrict motherhood to "the very few months in which a woman is pregnant and nursing her baby," and embed "the first anti-family amendment in the Constitution." She also argued that the amendment would protect bigamists, legalize prostitution, and defang rape laws. In short, "the social and political goals of the ERAers are radical, irrational, and unacceptable to Americans."59
Most of Schlafly's charges depended on tenuous and unlikely legal developments. She arrived at her conclusions based on a reading of the law that emphasized the most extreme possible eventualities of ERA ratification. In the article for Moral Majority Report, Schlafly used the book Sex Bias in the U.S. Code, authored by future Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Brenda Feigen-Fasteau, as "a good index to what the ERA would do." While Schlafly rightly highlighted that the federal government funded Sex Bias, concluding that Ginsburg and Feigen-Fasteau 's book would provide the blueprint for post-ERA legislation required a leap of logic. Schlafly based her assertion on Ginsburg's status as one of the nation's "most widely-quoted pro-ERA lawyers" and Feigen-Fasteau 's role as "director of the Women's Right's Project for die ACLTJ." The federal government funded their study, but Sex- Bias was an advocacy document. In fact, the preface of Sex Bias admitted that an ongoing Department of Justice study of gender discrimination in U.S. laws would ultimately decide which of the book's recommendations to follow. Schlafly's usage of Ginsburg and Feigen-Fasteau 's study allowed her to exaggerate the potential effects of the ERA.60
This sleight of hand helped Schlafly to convince a large subset of evangelicals that feminists misrepresented their hopes and desires. Women, argued Schlafly, wanted to tend their homes and care for their families. The acronym Of her antifeminist coalition, STOP ERA (Stop Taking Our Privileges), revealed the organization's philosophy. Convinced that the ERA would make it impossible for women to assume the roles of wife and homemaker - the privileges most STOP ERA members desired to protect activists mounted a massive campaign aimed at state legislators. A typical anti-ERA letter sent to Ohio legislators read, "Those women lawyers, women legislators, and women executives promoting ERA have plenty of education and talent to get whatever they want in the business, political, and academic world. We, the wives and working women, need you, dear Senators and Representatives [sic] to protect us." And then, tellingly: "We think this is the man's responsibility."61 STOP ERA materials reflected a gender essentialism that placed men in the role of providers and protectors while women appeared as domestically inclined nurturers. Some STOP ERA campaigns featured well-coiffed conservative women bringing freshly baked sweets to legislators' offices. The contrast between conservative women's femininity and feminists' aggressiveness was not lost on lawmakers. According to historians Donald Mathews and Jane Sherron DeHart, "the perceived lack of civility of 'women's libbers' seemed to offend" U.S. Senator Sam Ervin, "possibly because it indicated disrespect for themselves as well as other women." Ervin, the Senate's chief opponent of the ERA, felt that the '"physiological and functional differences' between the sexes [were] so natural and sacred as to have had a moral economy based upon them."62 STOP ERA members agreed with Ervin 's assessment and, taking their cue from Schlafly, took pains in both word and deed to highlight their femininity.
Yet these domestic desires did not prevent them from entering public life especially when feminists were threatening the sanctity of home and family. It is instructive that the most famous picture from her 1952 campaign for Congress featured Schlafly in an apron cooking breakfast. Yet she ran this picture in a bid for legislative office - not exactly a "domestic" responsibility. Schlafly deftly constructed a public persona that emphasized the primacy she gave her family, even as she undertook larger and larger political initiatives. Indeed, Schlafly 's contention that women wanted most to tend their homes and care for their families demanded that she give primacy to her role as wife and mother. It was jarring for feminists to encounter a woman who held degrees from Washington University and Harvard (as Schlafly did) positing that men are inclined to pursue "higher intellectual activities," whereas women "tend more toward conformity than men - which is why they often excel in such disciplines as spelling and punctuation."63 Declarations such as this caused an exasperated Betty Friedan to tell Schlafly, 'Td like to bum you at the stake!"64 But the conservative Christian women who flocked to Schlafiy's banner understood her point. Women could engage in public affairs and intellectual activities, but their primary desire was to care for home and family. They perceived feminism as a denigration of women's noblest calling. Schlafiy's political activities seemed legitimate to ami feminist women because she framed them as a defense of her right to be a wife and mother.
As in the abortion debate, women who opposed the ERA possessed a worldview fundamentally different from the feminists who supported the amendment. Specifically, conservative Christians rejected feminists' claim that physiological traits represented the only meaningful differences between the sexes, because they believed the Bible delineated clear distinctions between men and women. "We proclaim that male and female were established in their diversity by the Creator," said the authors of the "Family Manifesto." This created diversity, the authors contended, "extends to psychological traits which set natural constraints on gender roles ___ The role of the male is most effectively that of provider, and the role of the female one of nurturer."65 In conservatives' minds, feminists' rejection of gender essentialism challenged the created order. God had ordained certain roles for men and women, and the ERA threatened them. For instance, conservatives worried that the ERA would mandate government-funded daycare and paternity leave, measures they believed would denigrate women's primary responsibility for rearing children. (One Moral Majority radio commentator referred to the possibility as "Big Mother" government.66) Convinced that "women's lib ... flies in the face of the Scriptures,"67 conservative Christians increasingly viewed the ERA as a frontal assault on faith and family.
Not all evangelicals endorsed the Christian right's antifeminism, but the STOP ERA forces mustered enough support to defeat the amendment. Only one state (Indiana) ratified the ERA after 1975, and four state legislatures (Nebraska, Tennessee, Idaho, and Kentucky) voted to rescind their initial ratification of the amendment. Fifteen states never ratified the ERA. A 1978 effort by feminists to extend the deadline for ratification won them extra time but alienated some state legislators who felt the deadline extension unfair. Subsequent widely publicized campaigns in Illinois, North Carolina, and Florida resulted in defeat for ERA supporters, and the deadline for ratification finally arrived on June 30, 1982. Schlafly marked the occasion with a celebratory dinner.68
III. GAY RIGHTS
At the 1977 National Women's Conference in Houston, feminists ratified an alliance with homosexual rights groups. Feminist organizers thought that the prominence of lesbians within the women's movement, along with the intolerance that homosexuals faced in American society, demanded that they support gay rights. As such, delegates to the 1977 National Women's Conference approved a National Plan of Action that called for the end of discrimination according to sexual preference. Betty Friedan, who had long argued that associating feminism with gay rights would hurt the women's movement, said, "As someone who has grown up in Middle America and has loved men - perhaps too well - I've had trouble with this issue. But we must help women who are lesbians in their own civil rights." The delegates agreed, overwhelmingly passing a plank supporting gay rights. When the vote tally was announced, lesbians roared their approval, releasing yellow and green balloons throughout the convention hall that said, "WE ARE EVERYWHERE."69
Conservatives hoping to rally evangelicals against feminism could hardly have scripted a better scenario. Feminism had linked itself with gay rights, creating a bond between the two movements that persisted for years. In the early 1990s, Concerned Women for America founder Beverly LaHaye remembered, "The lesbians flooded into that conference and attached themselves to the feminist movement, and never again were the feminists able to shake the lesbians from their agenda."70 Perhaps more tellingly, in 1 988 a Moral Majority radio broadcaster described the ERA as "essentially a gay rights bill."71 In the early 1970s, conservative Christians displayed tolerance and even support for feminism. Yet by making gay rights an integral part of the feminist agenda, women's rights advocates associated their movement with one that conservative Christians unequivocally repudiated.
The gay rights movement emerged as an important player in national politics during the late 1 970s. Previous generations had considered homosexuality an aberration. Major medical associations listed homosexuality as an abnormality, and mainstream media rarely acknowledged gays. While many Americans viewed homosexuals as relatively harmless "queers," that attitude depended on the vast majority of homosexuals remaining in the closet, concealed from public view. "We make a distinction," wrote one conservative, "between the gay who is quiet and keeps his lifestyle to himself, and the exhibitionist."72 Sentiments like that persisted long after the early 1970s, but as gays began to demand rights and recognition, society began to display more openness toward homosexuals. In 1973 the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses, and sixteen states repealed sodomy statutes between 1971 and 1976. A 1975 Time magazine cover featured an Air Force officer declaring, "I am a homosexual."73
These developments frightened Christian right leaders, who talked about homosexuals as a sort of fifth column that had infiltrated the highest reaches of American government. In 1980, for instance, Falwell recounted a conversation with President Carter. "I asked the president," Falwell said, '"why do you have known practicing homosexuals on your staff in the White House?' Carter replied, 'Well, I'm president of all the American people; I believe I should represent everyone."' To that Falwell answered, "Why don't you have some murderers and bank robbers and so forth?" The Carter campaign subsequently released tapes that proved this exchange never occurred. When reporters challenged him, Falwell described his fabrication of the exchange with Carter as an "anecdote which we use not to specifically refer to what was actually said," a comment that created a firestorm about Falwell's credibility. Yet Falwell's supporters questioned the media's "attack" on their leader rather than Falwell's flimsy justification. The willingness of some evangelicals to grant Falwell latitude in this incident depended in part on their views of homosexuality. They saw gays as a threat to America.
In fact, Falwell cited the prevalence and permissibility of homosexuality as a sign of America's downfall. "History proves that homosexuality reaches a pandemic level in societies in crisis or in a state of collapse," Falwell wrote. "If homosexuality is deemed normal, how long will it be before rape, adultery, alcoholism, drug addiction, and incest are labeled as normal?"75 One of FaI well's colleagues agreed. "There are absolutes in this world," said Moral Majority radio commentator Charlie Judd. "Just as jumping off a building will kill a person, so will the spread of homosexuality bring about the demise of American culture as we know it."76 Conservative Christians thought American culture's increasing openness toward "alternative lifestyles" was a major problem. That homosexuals could win positions of power in American society signaled impending doom to evangelicals.
Christian right leaders foretold this doom by portraying homosexuals as threats to the family. "Most of us, while feeling sorry for the homos," said one, "believe they should not be given posts of importance, lest our children come to regard the gay life as 'normal.'"77 Conservative Christians opposed assigning homosexuals any positions of authority over children because many of them believed that homosexuality fostered child abuse. In 1977, Dade County, Florida, passed a measure prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual preference. Anita Bryant, a Southern Baptist and former singer, led a campaign against the measure. She described the county ordinance as an "attempt to legitimize homosexuals and their recruitment plan for children." Bryant called her campaign "Save Our Children," and she distributed leaflets that tied homosexuals to several recent child abuse cases. The media aided Bryant's campaign by disseminating statistics exaggerating homosexuals' propensity for pedophilia. For example, reports in 1977 suggested that more than one million boy prostitutes were working in the United States. Bryant leveraged these reports to argue that the nondiscrimination law would abet homosexuals' activities rather than protect their human rights. "THERE IS NO HUMAN RIGHT TO CORRUPT OUR CHILDREN," declared a Save Our Children campaign flyer. Voters agreed. In June 1977, just five months after Dade County had passed the nondiscrimination law, voters rejected the measure in a referendum by a 2-to-l margin.78
Tellingly, the Bryant campaign chose to focus on how the gay rights movement was anti-children rather than on biblical injunctions against homosexuality. To be sure, scriptural passages prohibiting homosexuality had provided Bryant initial motivation. Yet she framed her activities in terms designed to appeal to a broad cross-section of potential voters. Hitman Events noted that blacks and Latinos overwhelmingly supported the Bryant campaign, suggesting that a campaign to "save" the children held wide appeal.79 The success of the Save Our Children campaign displayed conservative Christian activists' growing political dexterity. They had learned how to transform "biblical" issues into "pro-moral" or "pro-family" issues that attracted people from a variety of theological perspectives. Social conservatives - many religious, some not - flooded the precincts in Florida to reject the Dade County ordinance. The political success of this "silent majority" depended on Christian right leaders lessening the emphasis they gave to an explicitly Christian rationale for fighting gay rights and spotlighting reasons that right-thinking citizens ought to fight against homosexuals' political advances.80
The portrayal of homosexuals as pedophiles allowed the Christian right to link gay rights with abortion and feminism as yet another example of the government's attack on the family. In his 1980 polemic Listen, America!, Falwell unpacked the logic of this characterization. "Homosexuals cannot reproduce themselves, so they must recruit," he wrote. "Why must they prey upon our young?" Falwell drew on the words of Dr. Harold Voth, a leader of the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality, in order to answer his question. Homosexuals, explained Dr. Voth, were not fully mature. Being fully mature "includefs] the capacity to mate and live in harmony with a member of the opposite sex and to carry out the responsibilities of parenthood. Mature people are competent and masterful . . . they can replace themselves with healthy children who become healthy men and women." Falwell used this diagnosis to illustrate the threat homosexuals posed to American families. Because homosexuals "preyfed] on" the nation's children, the gay rights movement represented a brazen attempt by the government to justify child abuse.81 And the support of feminists for gay rights further discredited the women's movement in the eyes of the Christian right. Falwell linked support for abortion, feminism, and gay rights in an unholy trinity that provided the Christian right with its foremost foils. "Family values" became the rallying cry of the movement.
IV. CONCLUSION: THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT AND POLITICAL CONSERVATIVES
Falwell represented an extreme wing of evangelicalism; not all evangelicals followed his lead. Almost as soon as the Moral Majority formed, evangelical detractors emerged to warn the faithful against identifying the "family values" agenda with the gospel. Critics included not only leftist evangelicals like Jim Wallis and Ronald Sider, but also moderate academics like Mark Noll, George Marsden, and Nathan Hatch. Evangelist Billy Graham, chastened by his overly close relationship with disgraced President Richard Nixon, warned Christian right leaders "to be wary of exercising political influence."82 And leaders to the right of Falwell, like Bob Jones, considered his political activities to be a breach of fundamentalist separation.
Yet pollsters and sociologists have demonstrated the influence of the Christian right.83 This influence stemmed from its ability to frame family values as a matter crucial to the survival of the country. By the end of the 1970s, Christian right leaders had connected governmental attempts to protect abortion, advance feminism, and defend gay rights with conservatives' sense of national decline. They saw opposition to these movements as essential to restoring America's strength. Falwell wrote, "The family is the fundamental building block and the basic unit of our society, and its continued health is a prerequisite for a healthy and prosperous nation. No nation has ever been stronger than the families within her."84 By portraying abortion, feminism, and gay rights as a tripartite assault on the family, the Christian right connected a pervasive sense of America's decay to issues that resonated with evangelicals.85
I have argued that opposition to abortion, feminism, and gay rights constituted the heart of family values, but other issues certainly occupied much of the Christian right's attention. Jerry Falwell, for instance, spotlighted the growing drug problem and the ubiquity of "smut" as further evidence of American decline. His book Listen, America! decried secularist advances in television, music, and education.86 Similarly, Tim LaHaye charted no fewer than 25 entities contributing to the decline of Family values in 1979, including the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Education Association, the National Organization for Women, Hollywood movies, government bureaucrats, and public education.87 Other members of the Christian right created their own lists of grievances and bogeymen. Nobody in the movement limited family values quite as sharply as I have here.
And yet, I want to suggest that opposition to abortion, feminism, and gay rights stood at the center of the family values agenda, for a couple of reasons. First, these three issues posed existential threats to the gendered order evangelicals championed. The "gendered order" I refer to here indicates a worldview - often unspoken - that regarded differences between men and women as the fundamental markers of human identity. In 1 988 several leading Christian right organizations, including the Moral Majority, the Eagle Forum, the Family Research Council, Concerned Women for America, and the American Family Association, issued the "Family Manifesto," which spelled out this belief. "We deny that sexual difference is solely a matter of reproductive biology," declared the manifesto's authors. "Sexual differentiation extends to psychological traits which set natural constraints on gender roles." Situating a discussion of gender in a document on the family underlined the Christian right's belief in the family as "the fundamental institution of society, an immutable structure established by our Creator." By attempting to redefine Americans' conception of families, feminism and gay rights directly threatened conservative Christians' belief in a gendered order. Abortion, according to the Christian right, represented not only the murder of innocents but also an assault on motherhood. The Christian right's political agenda responded primarily to these threats. Conservatives labeled their opposition to abortion, feminism, and gay rights as the defense of "family values," and they were not shy about its importance: "government must support family parenting as the first premise of its social, economic, and fiscal policy."88 The emphasis conservative Christians placed on "family values" grew out of their understanding of gendered order.89
Second, Francis Sehaeffer's cultural critique, which motivated many Christian right leaders to action, asked evangelicals to abandon their fixation with relatively inconsequential "bits" and focus on "totals," or those key issues that threatened the survival of humanity. In fact, Schaeffer thought Christians could disagree on a host of issues. He articulated progressive views on race and economics in the 1960s and embraced high art and culture that American evangelicals had previously deemed too risqué. To be sure, Schaeffer muted his progressive stances by the mid-1970s, as his politics fell more and more in line with the Christian right. And he never publicly denounced the movement. Quite the contrary: Schaeffer spent his last years writing books and filming movies that advanced the cause of the Christian right. Yet Schaeffer did caution Jerry Falwell in private about both his approach (too dogmatic) and his unwillingness to tolerate dissent on issues such as arms control and taxes.90 He urged leaders of the Christian right to focus on issues related to life and family, and those issues stood at the center of the movement's agenda.91
Moreover, focusing on abortion, feminism, and gay rights-issues that commanded almost universal opposition among evangelicals and Christian right sympathizers-allowed the movement to portray a partisan agenda as a commonsensical program that most Americans agreed with implicitly. In so doing they aligned themselves with the New Right, which latched onto Richard Nixon's declaration that a "silent majority" of Americans were fed up with noisy liberals and their assault on traditional values.92 Far from thinking of themselves as trying to impose morality on an unwilling populace, Christian right leaders framed the movement as a long-overdue return to widely held values. Hence the name of Falwell's political action group: Moral Majority.
Yet the Christian right's usage of the silent majority trope differed somewhat from Nixon's original formulation. Rather than promising to end government's intrusion on the lives of hard-working Americans, the Christian right intended to legislate standards that would prohibit amoral behavior. The family values agenda bore only a marginal relationship to traditional political conservatism. Defense of individual rights had gone too far. Abortion, the ERA, and gay rights proved to Christian right leaders that they could not expect a laissez-faire approach to government to guarantee the perpetuation of traditional values. In pursuing the family rights agenda, then. Christian right leaders did not fit neatly into the realm of political conservatives. Yet they believed the turmoil of the times demanded a new approach to politics. By convincing themselves that they represented a majority of Americans-and by convincing enough Americans that a liberal minority had launched a covert war on the family-Christian right leaders made "family values" an essential element in the Republican agenda. Many longtime party members chafed at the emergence of the Christian right in the early 1980s, but the movement has demonstrated remarkable staying power. This staying power depended in part on the Christian right's ability to frame defense of the family as essential to protecting the common good. Where critics see them as intrusive moralists. Christian right leaders portrayed the defense of family values as the necessary antidote to almost all of America's ills.93
As Carter found out in his ill-fated White House Conference on Families, by 1980 "the family" was no longer a neutral term. That reality represented perhaps the greatest triumph of the Christian right. By painting their opponents as enemies of the family, movement leaders gave their sectarian agenda the potential for wide appeal. Longstanding divides-between Catholics and evangelicals, or between political activists and conservative Christians-broke down as the Christian right rallied supporters of the "traditional family." Believers who had once defined their vision according to biblical terms recognized the political power of recasting then agenda as a matter of family values. This transition took shape rapidly in the late 1970s, but it was hardly predictable. The emergence of family values as the centerpiece of the Christian right agenda occurred as movement leaders defined a particular vision of America in a capacious rhetoric of public interest and common good. In so doing, they set terms for political debate that continue to resonate.
[Footnote]
1 Jimmy Carter, "White House Conference on Families Appointment of Wilbur J. Cohen as Chairman," 14 Aprì) 1978, in John T. Woolley and Gerhard Peters, The American Presidency Project (Santa Barbara: University of California), available at: http://www.presidency.ucsb,edu/ ws/?pid=30666; accessed 23 January 2009. I would like to thank Steve Berry, Elesha Coffman, Brantley Gasaway, Matt Harper, Sarah Johnson, Grant Wacker, Jackie Whitt, and two anonymous readers for their helpful critiques of this article. J would also like to thank session participants and authence members from the 2007 American Academy of Religion meeting panel "Religion and the Politics of the Common Good," where G initially presented a version of this paper and received thought-provoking feedback.
[Footnote]
2 "The Anti-Family Conference." Moral Majority Report. 14 March 1980, 2.
3 Moral Majority: Policy Documents. Family Manifesto folder, Archives, Pierre Guillermin Library, Liberty University, Lynchburg, Va.
4 I focus here on abortion, feminism, and gay rights because opposition to these issues was universal within die Christian right. Cuher issues, of course, factored into the family-values agenda, and I will discuss those issues at the end of the article.
5 See, for instance, Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Never Were: American Families and (he Nostalgia Trap (New York: Basic Books. 1992). 8-22 and passim.
[Footnote]
6 'Jerry Falwell, "America Was Built on Seven Great Principles," Mora! Majori!}' Report, 1 8 May 1981.3.
7 "Conservative Forum," Human Events. 9 July 1977, 14.
8 Ted G. Jelen, "Political Esperanto: Rhetorical Resources and Limitations of the Christian Right in the United States," Sociology of Religion 66:3 (Autumn 2005): 303-321.
9 Falwell, "America Was Built on Seven Great Principles," 3.
[Footnote]
10 See, for instance, Joe Bageant, Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America s Class War (New York: Crown, 2007"); Thomas Frank, What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America (New York: Metropolitan, 2004); Michelle Goldberg. Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006); Chris Hedges, American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America (New York: Free Press, 2006); Kevin Phillips, American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion. Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century (New York: Viking. 2006); Jeff Sharlet, Vie Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power (New York: HarperCollins, 2008).
11 See, for instance, Charles W. Colson, "The Lures and Limits of Political Power," in Piety & Politics: Evangelicals and Fundamentalists Confront the World, ed. Richard John Neuhaus and Michael Cromatile (Washington: Etiiics & Public Policy Center, 1987), 171-185; Jerry Falweli, Listen. America! (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1980), 21-70; Tim F. LaHaye, The Battle for the Mind (Old Tappan. N.J.: Revell, 1980), 181-195; Richard A. Viguerie, The New Right: We're Ready to Lead (Falls Church, Va.: Viguerie, 1981), 123-136.
12 Sociologist William Martin's 1996 volume on the Christian right, developed in conjunction with a PBS series and recently updated, is the most thorough treatment of the movement: William C. Martin, With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America (New York: Broadway, 2005). Martin's colleague D. Michael Lindsay recently published a study of evangelical powerbrokers that provides a helpful distinction between "cosmopolitan" and "populist" evangelicals. This distinction - alongside Lindsay's chapter on evangelicals in politics - further clarifies die story Martin lays out. 1 should note, too, that most of the figures in this article are populist evangelicals, whose efforts, according to Lindsay, are more visible but may ultimately prove less permanent: D. Michael Lindsay, Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 15-37, 218-223. One of the best historical studies of the Christian right is Daniel Kenneth Williams, "From the Pews to the Polls: The Formation of a Southern Christian Right" (Ph.D. diss.. Brown University, 2005). Other helpful studies include Sara Diamond, Spiritual Warfare: The Politics of the Christian Right (Boston. Mass.: South End, 1989); Darren Dochuk, "From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Southemizatìon of Southern California, 1939-1969" (Ph.D. diss.. University of Notre Dame, 2005); Robert C. Liebman, Robert Wuthnow, and James L- Guth, The New Christian Right: Mobilization and Legitimation (Hawthorne, N.Y.: Aldine, 1983); Michael Lienesch, Redeeming America: Piety and Politics in the New Christian Right (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993); Christian Smith, Christian America?: What Evangelicals Really Want (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000); Clyde Wilcox, Onward Christian Soldiers'.': The Religious Right in American Politics (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1996).
[Footnote]
13 Oral Memoirs of R. Albert Mohler, Jr., The Texas Collection, Baylor University, Waco. Texas.
14 Jerry Falwell, lfl Should Die before I Wake (Nashville, Tenn.: T. Nelson, 1986), 3 1 -32.
15 Jerry Falwell. Strength for the Journey: An Autobiography (New York: Simon and Schuster. 1987), 336.
[Footnote]
16 Edward E. Plowman, "Southern Baptists: Unity the Priority," Christianity Today. 5 July 1974, 41-42. Before Roe. some Protestant denominations even argued for the expansion of abortion rights. Southern Baptists, for instance, resolved in 1971 "to work for legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion under such conditions as rape, incest, clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother": "Resolution on Abortion." Southern Baptist Convention http://www.sbc.net/resolutions/amResolution.asp?ID=13 (accessed 23 January 2009). That said, the SBC was not nearly as conservative in 1971 as it would become in the 1980s, so this resolution hardly represented a consensus view in the denomination.
17 The clearest statement by Christianity Today on the Roe decision is "Abortion and the Court," Christianity Today. 16 February 1973, 32-33. On the relative silence of other conservative Protestants in the first years after Roe, see Williams, "From me Pew to the Polls," 285-300.
18 Kristin Luker, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 141.
19 In fact, throughout the 1970s, it was unclear that Republicans would champion the pro-life cause. Catholics, who constituted a majority of the pro-life coalition for most of the 1970s, tended to vote Democratic, and some prominent Democrats opposed Roe. The pro-life coalition remained almost equally split between Senate Republicans and Democrats until 1979, and a majority of pro-life supporters voted for Jimmy Carter over Ronald Reagan in 1 980. See Greg D. Adams, "Abortion: Evidence of an Issue Evolution," American Journal of Political Science 41:3 (July 1997): 723-730.
20 Luker, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood, 126-137.
[Footnote]
21 Donald T. Criichlow, Tlie Conservative Ascendancy: How the GOP Right Made Political History (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007), 135.
22 Luker, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood, 127-128.
23 QuOtCd in Martin, With God on Our Side, 193. Martin also discusses the discomfort with which Protestants received Billy Graham's affirmations of John Kennedy, and Brown claims that a "lingering anti-Catiiolic bias" led Protestants to take up the anti-abortion fight surprisingly late.
24 Luker, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood, 144 - 157.
25 Franeis A. Schaeffer, A Christian Manifesto (Westchester, IH.: Crossway, 1981), 19. 17, 131-132.
[Footnote]
26 Francis A. Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop, Whatever Happened to the Human Race? (Old Tappan, N.J.: Fleming H. Revell, 1979), 31, 198, pictures following p. 198.
27 Schaeffer, A Christian Manifesto, 110. Schaeffer's comment revealed the ways that conservative Christians drew on the rhetoric of me civil rights movement. On mis point, see David John Marley, "Riding in the Back of the Bus: The Christian Right's Adoption of Civil Rights Movement Rhetoric," in The Civil Rights Movement in American Memory, ed. Renée Christine Romano and Leigh Ford (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2006), 346-362. Jon Shields 's recently published book offers an expanded treatment of the ways the Christian right revived the democratic impulses of 1960s liberal activism: Jon A. Shields, 7"Ai- Democratic Virtues of the Christian Right (Princeton, N.J,: Princeton University Press, 2009). Cf. Richard John Neuhaus, "The Pro-Life Movement as the Politics of the 1960s," Wall Street Journal, 8 January 2009; John G. Turner. "Civility and Boldness," Books & Culture (May/June 2009): 18-19.
28 Oral Memoirs of James T. Draper, Jr., The Texas Collection, Baylor University, Waco, Texas.
[Footnote]
29 Questions Asked Most of Christians in Politics." Moral Majority Report, 15 May 198.0.
30 Jerry Falwell, "Falwell Defends Assault by Bob Jones: Morally Concerned Must Unite Clout," Moral Majority Report. 14 July 1980. 4.
31 FaI well's associate Norman Keener recounted this phone call in a tener to Edith Schaeffer dated 24 May 1984, shortly after Francis Schaeffer's death. Francis Schaeffer: letters folder. Archives, Pierre Guillermin Library, Liberty University, Lynchburg, Va.
32 For a description of the Holiday inn meeting, see Martin, With God on Our Side, 199-200.
33 Your Invitation to Join the Moral Majority," Moral Majority: Informational Booklets folder. Archives, Pierre Guillermin Library, Liberty University, Lynchburg, Va.
34 The claim that 30 percent of the Moral Majority's budget came from Catholic contributions appeared in ICennedi Baker, "Catholics and Moral Majority." Moral Majority Report. 20 April 1981. 14.
[Footnote]
35 "Letters from America," Moral Majority Report, I May 1980. Ii.
36 Falwell, Strength for the Journey. 335.
37 Catholics' finn opposition to abortion made some of them heroes among evangelicals. Most notably, the late Richard John Neuhaus and his periodical First Things won widespread acclaim among evangelicals, notably George W. Bush. 77m* even named Neuhaus one of the country's 25 most influential evangelicals in 2004.
38 Falwell. "Falwell Defends Assault by Bob Jones," 4-5. Jones's June 10 letter to alumni "preacher boys" was reprinted in its entirety in the same issue of Moral Majority Report (14 July 1980).
39 'Falwell, Strength for the Journey. 337.
[Footnote]
40 Jerry Falwell, "Advancing through Prayer [unpublished sermon]," 1964. Archives, Pierre Guillefmin Library, Liberty University. Lynchburg, Va. Falwell made a simitar remark in his more widely cited 1965 sermon, "Ministers and Marches."
41 The historian Leo P. Ribuffo, among others, has shown that fundamentalists did not hold that stance throughout American history. An "old Christian Right" existed well before men and women like Falwell came on the scene. But political quiescence, at least on the national stage, had been the rule among conservative Christians for at least a generation: Leo P. Ribuffo, The Old Christian Right: The Protestant Far Right from the Great Depression to the Cold War (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1983). Also see Joel A. Carpenter, Revive Us Again: The Reawakening of American Fundamentalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006): and James A. Morone, Hetlfire Nation: The Politics of Sin in American History (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003).
42 "Family Manifesto," Moral Majority: Policy Documents, Family Manifesto folder. Archives, Pierre Guillermin Library, Liberty University. Lynchburg, Va.
[Footnote]
43 The advent of birth control presented this question to an earlier generation of mothers, and those who entered the pro-life movement before the late 1970s largely rejected artificial methods of contraception (including condoms, the pill, and intrauterine devices). As the anti-abortion movement grew in the early 1980s, a greater diversity of opinion on the legitimacy of artificial contraception emerged: Luker, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood, 165-168.
44 Ibid., 159- 175, quote on 162.
45 "Judgment Without Justice," The Old-Time Gospel Hour News, n.d.. Archives, Pierre Guillermin Library. Liberty University. Lynchburg. Va.
46 Almost 1.3 million American women received abortions in 1977, up from 193,000 in 1970: Susan B. Hansen, "State Implementation of Supreme Court Decisions: Abortion Rates since Roe V. Wade," The Journal of Politics 42:2 (May 1980): 375.
[Footnote]
47 Luker, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood, 159, 161.
48 The text of the resolution can be found at "1st World Conference on Women, Mexico," http:// www.choike.org/nuevo_eng/informes/1453.html (accessed 28 April 2009).
49 "Great Changes, New Chances, Tough Choices," Time, 5 January 1976.
50 CT conducted a survey of 250 "conservative and liberal" Christians on issues related to women's rights, including ordination, submission, and thè ERA. The 87 respondents included 23 women. Though such a small sample is far from representative - and CT offered no description of its survey methodology - these articles, in the flagship magazine of evangelicalism, indicated that in 1974, the "party line" of conservative Christianity did not necessarily include opposition to ERA. "Editorial: Some Thoughts for the ERA Era." Christianity Today, 27 September 1974, 36-38; Cheryl Forbes, "Survey Results: Changing Church Roles for Women?" Christianity Today. 27 September 1 974. 42 - 44.
[Footnote]
51 Letha Scanzoni and Nancy Hardesty, AU We're Meant to Be: A Biblical Approach to Women's Liberation (Waco, Texas: Word Books. 1974), 60. 205.
52 Alice Mathews, "The Struggle for the Moral High Ground: Christians for Biblical Equality vs. The Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood," Journal of Biblical Equality 4 (July 1992): 98,95.
53 Harold Lindsell, "Egalitarianism and Scriptural Infallibility." Christianity Today, 26 March 1976, 45.
54 Carl F. H. Henry, "Reflections on Women's Lib," Christianity Today, 3 January 1975. 26.
[Footnote]
55I borrow this phrase from Carol Felsenthal, The Sweetheart of the Silent Majority: The Biograph- of Phyllis Schlafly (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday. 1981 ).
56 Donald T. Critchlow, Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conserwtism: A Woman ? Crusade (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. 2005), 218.
57lbid.
[Footnote]
58Phyltis Schlafly, "Can Federal Bureaucrats Buy Passage of Equal Rights Amendment?" Human Events. 15 May 1976, 10.
59Phyllis Schlafly. "How ERA Would Change Federal Laws," Moral Majority Report, January 1982, 9; Sex Bias in the U.S. Code: A Report of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. 1977, iii.
60Schlafly, "How ERA Would Change Federal Laws," 9.
[Footnote]
61Quoted in Critchlow, Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism, 224.
62Donald G. Mathews and Jane Sherron De Hart, Sex, Gender, and the Politics of ERA: A State and the Nation (New York: Oxford University Press. 1990). 43. 36.
[Footnote]
63Phyllis Schlafly. The Power of the Christian Woman (Cincinnati. Ohio: Standard. 198 1 ), 27, 26.
64Critchlow, Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism, 12.
65Family Manifesto." Moral Majority: Policy Documents* Family Manifesto folder. Archives, Pierre Guillermin Library, Liberty University. Lynchburg, Va.
66Charlie Judd, "Listen America Radio Broadcast," 12 April 1988. Transcript available in Listen America Radio folder. Archives, Pierre Guillermin Library, Liberty University, Lynchburg, Va.
67Rus WaJton, "Will Baptists Ever See through Carter?" Human Events, 25 September 1976, 14.
[Footnote]
68Critchlow, Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism. 276-281.
68"What Next for U.S. Women," Time, 5 December 1977.
70Quoted in Martin. With God on Our Side, 164.
71 Judd, "Listen America Radio Broadcast," 12 April 1988.
[Footnote]
72 Morrie Ryskind. "What in the World Are We Coming To?." Human Events, 3 November 1979, II.
73 See Philip Jenkins's chapter, "Mainstreaming the Sixties," ??t analysis of how elements of the 1960s counterculture won official endorsements in the 1970s: Philip Jenkins, Decade of Nightmares: The End of the Sixties and the Making of Eighties America (New York: Oxford University Press. 2006). 24-36.
74 "Falwell Lied About Carter. White House Aide Says." Lynchbutg News. 7 August 1980. A2.
[Footnote]
75 'Falwell. Listen. America!. 157. 159.
76 Charlie Judd, "Listen America Radio Broadcast." 28 December 1987. Transcript available in Listen America Radio folder. Archives, Pierre Guillermin Library, Liberty University, Lynchburg. Va.
77Rysk3nd, "What in the World Are We Coming To?," 1 1 .
78 Jenkins, Decade of Nightmares, 120-122.
[Footnote]
79 "Will White House Cool It on Counterculture?" Human Events, 18 June 1977, 3.
80 On die role of fear - specifically, rear of homosexuals - in late twentieüi-century evangelicalism and conservative politics, see Jason Bivins, Religion of Fear: The Politics of Horror in Conservative Evangelicalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). 76-78. 216 220: Jenkins, Decade of Nightmares, 119-125.
81 Quoted in Falwell. Listen. America!, 160.
[Footnote]
82 Billy Graham, "An Agenda," Christianity Today, 4 January 1980, 25.
83 On the political influence of the Christian right, see John C. Green, "The Christian Right and the 1994 Elections: A View from the States," PS: Political Science and Politics 28: 1 (March 1995): John C. Green and James L. GuUi. "The Christian Right in the Republican Party: The Case of Pat Robertson's Supporters." The Journal of Politics 50: 1 (February 1 988): John C. Green and James L. Guth. "Religion. Representatives, and Roll Calls," Legislative Studies Quarterly 16:4 (November 1991 ); John C. Green, James L. Guth. and Kevin Hill, "Faith and Election: The Christian Right in Congressional Campaigns 1978-1988," The Journal of Politics 55:1 (February 1993); John C. Green. Mark J. Rozell. and Clyde Wilcox, "Social Movements and Party Politics: The Case of the Christian Right," Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 40:3 (September 2001): James L. Guth, The Bully Pulpit: The Politics of Protestant Clergy (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1997); James L. Guth and John C. Green, "Politics in a New Key: Religiosity and Participation among Political Activists," The Western Political Quarterly AZA (March 1990).
84 Jelly Falwell, Listen. America! (New York: Bantam, 1980), 104.
85 Critchlow, The Conservative Ascendancy, 1 3 1 - 1 42; Jenkins, Decade of Nightmares, 1 09- 1 1 1 . 120-123.
[Footnote]
86 FalWell. Listen, America!, J 62 -209.
87 LaHaye. The Battle for the Mind, 141.
88 "The Family Manifesto." Moral Majority: Policy Documents, Family Manifesto folder. Archives. Pierre Guillermin Library, Liberty University. Lynchburg, Va.
89 For a sustained analysis of conservative Christians' understanding of "gendered order," see Sally K. Gallagher, Evangelical Identity and Gendered Family Life (New Brunswick. N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2003).
[Footnote]
90 Barry Hankins, Francis Schaeffer and the Shaping of Evangelical America (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2008), 109-135, 200-204.
91 Francis's son, Frank Schaeffer, has questioned his father's initial motivation for opposing abortion in a recent memoir: Frank Schaeffer, Crazy for God: How I Grew up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back (Cambridge, Mass.: Carroll & Graf. 2007). 265-267. Cf. Os Guinness, "Fathers and Sons: On Francis Schaeffer. Frank Schaeffer. and Crazy for God," Books & Culture, March/April 2008, 32-33.
92 See Matthew D. Lassiter, The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South (Princeton. N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2006), 5.
[Footnote]
93 The historian Grant Wacker has demonstrated the pervasiveness within evangelicalism of the "custodial ideal," which frames Christianity as the custodian of American culture and situates that ideal in the South, where a majority of Christian right leaders lived and worked: Grant Wacker, "Uneasy in Zion: Evangelicals in Postmodem Society," in Reckoning with the Past: Historical Essays on American Evangelicalism from the institute for the Study of American Evangelicals. ed. D. G. Hart (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1995). 376-393. Also see Grant Wacker, "Searching for Norman Rockwell: Popular Evangelicalism in Contemporary America," in The Evangelical Tradition in America, cd. Leonard I. Sweet (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1984), 289-315.
[Author Affiliation]
Seth Dowland is a lecturing fellow and associate director of the Thompson Writing Program at Duke University.