Category Archive

Introduction
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

Political Mobilization and Disparate Religious Groups

The Religious Right has struggled with the inclusion of non-Protestant groups. A
pamphlet distributed in 1982 states:

“America was founded by men of faith on Biblical principles! Virtually all of our founding fathers recognized the crucial importance of religious morality as the foundation for our liberty and social well-being. [It is] our Biblical imperative to be God’s standard bearer in the affairs of our nation. We cannot, in other words, rely on the unrighteous to safeguard morality in our government”³⁶

Based on this pamphlet, it seems that the Religious Right might have easily included conservative Catholics and Jews into their midst. To some extent, there were non-Evangelical Christians involved in the formation of the Religious Right, but they have never taken on prominent roles. There are several major inconsistencies in the rhetoric of the Religious Right that would exclude other groups.

The Catholic Church, as a whole, opposes abortion. This conviction, however, is part of a “constant life ethic,” which requires believers to oppose the death penalty and other actions, such as torture, that demean human life³⁷. As a whole, evangelical Christians do not oppose either the death penalty or torture under specific circumstances. The inconsistencies in their calls for respect for human life have alienated many Catholics who might otherwise join with the Religious Right to oppose abortion.

On the most conservative end of the spectrum of Jewish beliefs regarding abortion, some Orthodox Jews believe that abortions must be limited to cases in which the mother’s life is in direct and physical danger. Many rabbis, however, agree that a threat to a woman’s well being may not solely be physical. Because Jewish law is vague on the issue of abortion, and Judaism has a tradition of intricate scriptural analysis, Jewish laws on abortion are vague and extremely subjective. For this reason, many, if not most, Jews feel that the government should generally protect a woman’s right to abortion. The final decision is between a woman and her rabbi (and, perhaps, husband); the government has no business interfering with such a personal decision³⁸.

There are a number of obstacles for engaging non-Protestants in the Religious right. A number of anti-abortion activists, including John Burt of Rescue America, have ties to the Ku Klux Klan and other racist organizations that have previously targeted Catholics, Jews, and non-whites³⁹. There are additional problems for conservative Jews. Members of the Religious Right generally support Israel, but not out of any measure of sympathy for Jewish history. Instead, their support derives from Christian eschatology and a believe that a specific number of Jews must be in Israel (and then convert to Christianity) before the second coming⁴⁰.

Non-Christian involvement in the Religious Right is minimal at best, but “[f]undamentalists need to recruit Catholics, Mormons, Jews, and secular conservatives because, without such support, they are powerless beyond the boundaries of their own regions”⁴¹. In order to make their arguments palatable to non-Protestants, the Religious Right must sometimes secularize their own tradition, making it appear to be far more universal than it genuinely is. Appealing to non-Protestants, whether they be other Christians, Jews, or even Muslims or secular conservatives, gives the Religious Right more political power while appealing to a broader base.

Conclusion

36. Bruce p. 83.
37. Balmer p. 70.
38. Rabbi Raymond A. Zwerin & Rabbi Richard J. Shapiro, “Jewish Perspectives on Abortion.” (Retrieved 4 May 2010).
39. Larry Rohter, “Towering Over the Abortion Foe’s Trial: His Leader,” The New York Times, 5 March 1994.
40. Bruce p. 87

Introduction
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

Why Choose Abortion?

In a circa 1983 brochure published by the Moral Majority, a conservative, anti-abortion organization founded in 1979, Rev. Jerry Falwell describes his base as “made up of millions of Americans […] who are deeply concerned about the moral decline of our nation, and who are sick and tired of the way many amoral and secular humanists and other liberals are destroying the traditional family and moral values on which our nation was built”²⁶. This descriptive statement very clearly pits Falwell and his followers against a society they see as overwhelmingly secular. Falwell blames cultural secularization for the “moral decline” of the United States, maintaining that the only valid moral code is one based on Christian doctrine. Because they see the United States as a Christian Nation, conservative Christians “refuse to face the fact that the ancient moral ethos reflected in scripture is not always noble by our [modern] moral standards and has been superseded by a more adequate morality” that is more appropriately dispatched in a multireligious society²⁷. By attempting to force scriptural moral
codes onto a nation that is not Christian, organizations such as the Moral Majority, which dissolved in the late 1980s, fail to acknowledge either modernization or individual choice as valid philosophies.

The organizers of Moral Majority and other organizations that made up the new Religious Right might have chosen any number of issues as their central concern. These groups argue that their positions are derived directly from the Christian scriptures. Yet they choose their issues quite carefully. In addition to opposing the legalization of abortion, the Religious Right supports the State of Israel because of Christian Millennialist teachings and opposes the Federal Department of Education because it provides secular education and curricula do not contain Christian doctrine. Later, opposition to homosexuality became a major issue. They do not, however, oppose liberalized divorce laws, even though the Christian Bible is far more critical of divorce than abortion or homosexuality²⁸. Perhaps the Religious Right refused to address divorce because their own divorce rates are indistinguishable from national divorce rates, which indicates that in this area conservative Christians have accepted some aspects of the secular marriage model²⁹.

Some Religious Right organizations have embraced opposition to divorce as one of their issues, though always as one of several areas of focus. James Dobson’s Focus on the Family states that its mission is to “cooperate with the Holy Spirit in sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ with as many people as possible by nurturing and defending the God-ordained institution of the family and promoting biblical truths worldwide”³⁰. The organization lists six guiding beliefs:

1. The Preeminence of Evangelism
2. The Permanence of Marriage
3. The Value of Children
4. The Sanctity of Human Life
5. The Importance of Social Responsibility
6. The Value of Male and Female

Issues relating to marriage, family, and children are prominent in Focus on the Family, which is in line with the name of the organization and the greater focus of the Religious Right as a whole. Procreation is considered a fundamental part of marriage and human purpose. Both men and women have God-given purpose, both within the family and in society at large. Responsibilities within the family are gender specific, as each gender has “unique and complementary qualities,” while “social responsibility” is both within the family and in society at large. Focus on the Family argues that their purpose is to “protect [family, church, and government] against destructive social influences” through active political involvement and Christian organizing³¹. The social responsibilities of men and women are similar, as they both relate to specific family values, but differ based on the belief that women are inherently more invested in children and home life³².

The focus of Christian opposition to reproductive choice centered on women. Men are rarely, if ever mentioned in their rhetoric. Although the Religious Right arose in the wake of the Sexual Revolution, which made sexual freedom accessible to both men and women, it had previously been women who suffered the most from sexual stigma. Both daughters and sons were, on the surface, supposed to be chaste until marriage, but women bore far harsher consequences if they were sexually active, and their sexual activity was likely to be more obvious if they accidentally became pregnant. The Religious Right inexorably ties female sexuality to moral decay; to whit, the Christian Voice argued that “the unmistakable signs of moral decay are all around us: Sexual promiscuity and perversion, […] legalized abortion, the disparaging of marriage, family, and the role of motherhood […] are rampant in our schools, our government, and even in many churches”³³. Note that the moral decay is tied specifically to the
declining role of motherhood, but not fatherhood. Thus, women are made responsible for moral uprightness, and it is their sexual freedom, and not men’s, that causes “America’s rapid decline”³⁴. The view that women are responsible for moral decline is complicated by the fact that no modern Christian can truly see changes in sexual moors from outside the his own context (I use his in this case because the majority of anti-abortion leaders are male).

Sexuality, specifically abortion was one of the last areas in which Christian influence exercised control over public morality:

“[S]ecular norms displaced earlier Christian influence on public morality in the political and economic spheres [throughout the 20th century], [but] biological fertility increasingly remained an unchallenged image for God’s direct action in human life. Because the birth process seemed so ‘natural’ and ‘mysterious,’ it remained sacralized long after most human activity had ceased to be understood as accessible to direct divine intervention”<sup35.

Modern medicine removed much of the mystery associated with the reproductive process. Although it was still clearly natural, the processes of fertilization, implantation, and fetal growth could be monitored visually as doctors began to use ultrasounds in the second half of the 20th century. These developments made pregnancy and birth more science than religion, and took away much of the sacralized mystery.

Part 6
Conclusion

26. Steve Bruce, The Rise and Fall of the New Christian Right: Conservative Protestant Politics in America 1978-1988 (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1988) p. 81.
27. Beverly Wildung Harrison, Our Right to Choose: Toward a New Ethic of Abortion (Boston: Beacon Press 1983) p. 71.
28. Balmer p. 69.
29. The Barna Group, “New Marriage and Divorce Statistics Released,” 31 March 2008. (Retrieved 2 May 2010).
30. Focus on the Family, “Focus on the Family’s Foundational Values.” (Retrieved 3 May 2010).
31. Ibid.
32. Focus on the Family, “How do Men and Women Differ Emotionally?” . (Retrieved 3 May
2010).
33. Harrison p. 59.
34. Harrison p. 59.
35. Harrison p. 66.

Introduction
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

What Are “Family Values”?

The anti-abortion movement and Religious Right have a number of similarities, notably their opposition of abortion rights, but they define themselves differently. While the anti-abortion movement “describes itself as the pro-life movement, […] the [Religious Right] defines itself as pro-family” and takes on issues more far reaching than abortion alone²⁰. The 1970s gave rise to more liberal divorce laws, which affected conservative Christian families in almost equal number as the rest of the American population. Feminism took the blame for many of these changes that were seen as antithetical to the biblical family. No-fault divorce made it easier for marriages to dissolve, creating “broken” families. Birth control and access to safe, legal abortions allowed women sexual freedom with less worry about becoming pregnant or having to carry an unwanted pregnancy. The ill-fated Equal Rights Amendment would have protected women in the public sphere from discrimination because of gender.

In addition to opposing abortion, the Religious Right contends that “skyrocketing ‘out of wedlock births’ [are] ‘ripping apart our nations social fabric’”²¹. They seem to have created a catch-22 for themselves; by opposing abortion (and often contraception, as well), they give women little recourse should they accidentally become pregnant outside the context of marriage. Their solution to this problem is to promote abstinence only sex education for middle and high school aged children.

A number of abstinence only sex education programs include “virginity pledges,” in which students sign a document, or in some cases wear a ring, in order to pledge that they will not have sex until marriage. These pledges are distinctly religious in nature, despite being incorporated into federally funded sex education programs. In fact, the two most prolific organizations promoting virginity pledges are overtly Christian. True Love Waits is run by Lifeway Student Ministry, and has students sign a pledge stating:

“Believing that true love waits, I make a commitment to God, myself, my family, my friends, my future mate, and my future children to a lifetime of purity including sexual abstinence from this day until the day I enter a biblical marriage relationship”²².

The Silver Ring Thing calls itself a “para-church youth ministry” and states that itsmission is “to motivate, educate, support and transform generations of young people to embrace a lifestyle of Christ-centered sexual abstinence until marriage” in order “to create a culture shift in America where abstinence becomes the norm again rather than the exception.”²³ The assertion that abstinence was the norm, rather than the exception, in previous generations is, in reality, a nostalgic idealization of the past, rather than a reflection of the truth²⁴. The Sexual Revolution may have made non-marital sex more acceptable, but young women had been having sex outside of marriage long before the 1960s. Instead of reflecting American cultural norms, Silver Ring Thing and like-minded organizations seek to recreate an history of sexual purity that never truly existed. Their efforts to bring conservative Christian morals into the public sphere have been problematic. In 2005, the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts brought suit against the United States Department of Health and Human Services for providing federal funds to the Silver Ring Thing, alleging that the virginity pledge presented to students in a three hour multi- media presentation is “permeated with religion” and “is a highly religious program that promotes Christianity”²⁵.

The prevalence of these Christian-based programs touting the virtues of abstinence speaks to the conservative Christian concern regarding sexual immorality. Even though the Sexual Revolution may not have directly caused more women to have non-marital sex, it did create an environment in which they could be more open about sexuality and sexual pleasure. By defying the traditional mandates to be obedient and sexually demure, women of the Sexual Revolution spurred conservative Christians to embrace sexuality as a primary political issue. Abortion, generally framed as murder by conservative Christian groups, is not considered by them to be a valid option for women who become pregnant outside of marriage. Before the advent of reasonably reliable birth control, single women who became pregnant either quickly married, found someone to perform an abortion illegally, or were sent away until they gave birth and the child had been adopted. Both the pill and legalized abortion changed that. Women could have sex without facing the physical consequences. The threat to Christian morality was even more ominous than before, because women could act “immorally” and their family members and religious leaders might never know. They had lost control over the sexual purity of women.

Part 5
Part 6
Conclusion

20. Durham p. 85.
21. Durham p. 94.
22. “Welcome to True Love Waits,” Lifeway Ministries. (Retrieved 2 May 2010).
23. “What is Silverringthing?” (Retrieved 2 My 2010).
24. Elizabeth Alice Clement, Love For Sale (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press 2006) p. 13.
25. ACLU of Massachusetts v. Secretary of U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (This case was never assigned a court case number as it was settled out of court.)

Introduction
Part 1
Part 2

What Really Spurred the Religious Right to Mobilize?

It was not the decision in Roe v. Wade that cemented the commitment of the
leader of the Religious Right. In fact, “the Christian Right did not emerge until several years after the anti-abortion movement”¹⁵. Instead, it was a lesser known Supreme Court case that first led them to become a political force. After the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, the United States government looked for ways to enforce the new legislation. In the early 1970s, the Internal Revenue Service gave notice that they would no longer extend tax-exempt nonprofit status to organizations that engaged in racial segregation. This decision led to a dispute between the IRS and Bob Jones University, a fundamentalist Christian university that, for its 45 years of existence, did not admit African American students. Although the university did start accepting African American students in 1971, interracial dating was still grounds for expulsion. The IRS found that this stipulation violated the spirit of the Civil Rights Act and revoked Bob Jones University’s tax-exempt status¹⁶.

Conservative Christian activists viewed the IRS’ decision to revoke the tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University as a direct consequence of government secularization. In a Christian nation, no organization would lose special status simply for enforcing their interpretation of scriptural authority. But in a secular nation religion would have no special status, and this is exactly what seemed to be happening. It was Bob Jones’ loss of tax exempt status that first rallied evangelical Christians to take a public stand, not because of any specific attachment to the racist policy, but because they were hostile to government interference in the “sanctity of the evangelical subculture”¹⁷. In fact, abortion was not mentioned at the first meeting of the people who would make up the new Religious Right. Abortion was suggested at a later meeting convened to discuss other issues that the new movement might want to tackle¹⁸. Although most people assume that the Religious Right’s fight against abortion came directly out of the Roe v. Wade decision, abortion was, in fact, originally a secondary issue, certainly influenced by the apparent trend towards secularization, but not a direct result.

Although “opposition to abortion is only one of a series of stances [the Religious Right] has taken up in defence of the family and Christian sexual morality,” it has become the most prominent of their political activities¹⁹. Anti-abortion arguments, as well as those against homosexuality, non-marital sex, comprehensive sex education, and even contraception are part of a larger campaign by the Religious Right against what they see as the degeneration of traditional (Christian) morality.

Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Conclusion

15. Martin Durham, The Christian Right, the far right and the boundaries of American conservatism (Manchester: Manchester University Press 2000) p. 85.
16. Balmer p. 62-3
17. Balmer p. 64.
18. Balmer p. 64.
19. Durham p. 85.

Introduction
Part 1

Changes in the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s

The cultural changes of the 1960s spurred new religious thought concerning sexuality and reproduction. Christian scholars, including Paul Tillich and Reinhold Niebuhr developed a more flexible Christian moral code that was capable of dealing with modern questions. Instead of looking to earlier Christian doctrine, theologians incorporated the ideas presented by secular philosophers like Kierkegaard and Sartre⁴. These theologians argued that their new moral philosophy was actually a return to the purer teachings of Jesus himself. Instead of dogmatic adherence to doctrinal church beliefs, the new modern Christian ethic relieved the church of “thousands of years of crusty superstition”⁵. To Tillich, Niebuhr, and their progressive contemporaries, they were both modernizing and purifying the church. To their detractors, however, these changes to “traditional” moral codes were signs that Christianity, particularly Protestant Christianity, was secularizing and taking on elements of the broader society. The Catholic Church also took on some elements of secular society during the 1960s. The Second Vatican Council, lasting from October 1962 through November 1965, made progressive changes to the Catholic Church. It was surprising, then, when, just under three years later, the Vatican released Humanae Vitae, an encyclical in that prohibited the use of any form of “artificial” contraception⁶. American Catholics rebelled. Within several months of being issued, over 600 American Catholic priests had signed a statement against the encyclical⁷. Their view reflected that of the Catholic lay community, among which nearly half supported the use of birth control and only slightly fewer felt that abortion was “morally neutral,” even though, at that point, it was still illegal in the United States⁸. The split between Rome and a large number of American Catholics, both priests and lay people, demonstrated the influence of secular influences on the Catholic community at large. This division has yet to be resolved, and many American Catholics simply choose to disregard the Vatican’s prohibition on birth control and abortion.

Before the Sexual Revolution, sex was connected to religious morality. Without safe, legal access to birth control and abortion, women were less likely to have premarital sex (though it did still happen), and most religious faiths harshly condemned non-marital sex. Calls for a return to “traditional values” came as a response to the liberalization of social mores. One of the loudest voices was James Dobson, child psychologist, Evangelical Christian, and founder of Focus on the Family, a “Christian media empire” and research center⁹. In 1970, Dobson published Dare to Discipline, a book blaming social and political turmoil on “immorality, […] illegitimate pregnancies, venereal diseases, […] and more”¹⁰. Among his suggestions for combating social decline, he urged parents to “teach abstinence-based sex education at home, and to curb exposure to the immorality promoted by Hollywood and network television;” he also advocated stay-at-home motherhood over the increasingly common two-working-parent household¹¹. Dobson’s framing of the ideal family was based on his Evangelical faith and intended to combat the social and moral decline he saw as a product of the American social shift away from traditional Christian doctrine. Without the secularizing effects of the social revolutionary movements of the 1960s, Dobson would have found little need to act.

The feminist movements of the 1960s and 70s also threatened the traditional gender dynamic that was prized and upheld through conservative Christian marriages. Women were expected to submit to men, physically and mentally. The Women’s Aglow Fellowship, founded around the same time as the progressive feminist movements, touted submission, obedience, and “God-ordained roles of wife and mother” as the ultimate sources of female liberation¹². In reaction to cultural shifts away from discrete gender roles, many Evangelical women took up the cause of maintaining their Biblically determined roles in the home. The founders of Aglow, as well as conservative anti-feminist organizer Phyllis Schlafly, and Beverly LaHaye (wife of Left Behind author Tim LaHaye) argued that feminism’s goal of eliminating gender discrepancies in both work and home was an affront to the scriptural origins of American culture. Cultural changes, particularly those attributed to feminist movements, were an affront to “conservative women [who] believe in a strict division of gender roles as decreed by the scriptures; [to them], gender is envisioned as a hierarchal ordering with God and Christ at the top, followed by men, and then women”¹³. The shift away from traditional roles, arguably a product of secularization, drove conservative Christian women to feel that they had been displaced.

Another shift that may have influenced the mobilization of the Christian Right was what Robert Bellah termed “civil religion.” Although the term “civil religion” was originally coined by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in The Social Contract (1762), Bellah’s conception proposed that Americans had created a national religion by sacralizing elements of our national heritage. First presented at a Daedalus Conference on American Religion in May of 1966, Bellah’s concept of Civil Religion argues that American society is inherently secular save for narrow religious references shared by most Americans, regardless of their specific faith. These references primarily refer to a generalized concept of “God” as well as symbols that are “Christian without having anything to do with the Christian church”¹⁴.

Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Conclusion

4. David Allyn, Make Love Not War (The Sexual Revolution: An Unfettered History, (Boston: Little, Brown and Co. 2000) p. 111.
5. Allyn p. 111.
6. Allyn p. 108.
7. Allyn p. 110.
8. Allyn p. 110.
9. Lassiter p. 20.
10. Lassiter p. 20.
11. Lassiter p. 20.
12. R. Marie Griffith, God’s Daughters: Evangelical Women and the Power of Submission (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press 1997) p. 45.
13. Klatch, Rebecca, Coalition and Conflict Among Women of the New Right (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1988) p. 676.
14. Robert N. Bellah, “Civil Religion in America,” Dædalus, Vol. 96, No. 1 (Winter 1967) p. 1-21.