Abstract
When leaders of an emerging Christian Right began campaigning for Republican presidential candidate Ronald Reagan in 1980, some evangelicals expressed dismay at this seemingly incongruous alliance. Reagan, after all, was a divorced Hollywood actor who, as governor of California, had signed into law one of the nation’s most liberal abortion bills only thirteen years earlier. Why would evangelicals who wanted to bring America back to “traditional values” campaign for a candidate whose cultural and political background reflected the influence of the secular forces that they denounced? “It would disturb me if there was a wedding between the religious fundamentalists and the political right,” evangelist Billy Graham told Parade magazine in February 1981. “The hard right has no interest in religion except to manipulate it.”1
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Notes
Marguerite Michaels, “America is not God’s Only Kingdom,” Parade, February 1, 1981, 6.
Several historians and biographers, including James Patterson, John Ehrman, and Lou Cannon, have correctly pointed out Reagan’s lack of attention to the Christian Right’s legislative program. See James T. Patterson, Restless Giant: The United States from Watergate to Bush v. Gore (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 177.
John Ehrman, The Eighties: America in the Age of Reagan (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), 178.
and Lou Cannon, President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991), 812–813.
Donald H. Gill, “Will the Bible Get Back into School?” Eternity, May 1964, 10.
Bill Rose, “Reagan Charts Course,” Oakland (CA) Tribune, March 25, 1967.
Tim Miller and Tonda Rush, “God and the GOP in Kansas City,” Christianity Today, September 10, 1976, 59.
Lisa Myers, “The Christian Right: New Wave in Politics,” Washington Star, July 7, 1980.
Bruce Nesmith, The New Republican Coalition: The Reagan Campaigns and White Evangelicals (New York: Peter Lang, 1994), 40.
James Mann, “Preachers in Politics: Decisive Force in ’80? ” U.S. News and World Report, September 15, 1980, 24.
Rosemary Thomson, “Jerry Falwell: ‘Let’s Love America,’” Christian Life, September 1980, 37.
Billy James Hargis, “A Communist World: Must it Be?” Christian Crusade, October 1964, 34.
Ronald Reagan, “A Time for Choosing,” October 27, 1964 http://www.reaganlegacy.org/speeches/).
Ronald Reagan, “Intent to Run for President,” New York, November 13, 1979 (http://www.reaganfoundation.org/reagan/speeches/speech.asp?spid=4).
David Finkel, “Hundreds Praise Preacher’s Prayer,” Tallahassee Democrat, March 4, 1980.
Steven V. Roberts, “Reagan, in Chicago Speech, Urges Big Increases in Military Spending,” New York Times, March 18, 1980.
Sally Saunders, “Reagan Agrees to Debate in State,” Greenville News, January 31, 1980.
William Martin, With God on our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America (New York: Broadway Books, 1996), 168–199.
David E. Rosenbaum, “Conservatives Embrace Reagan on Social Issues,” New York Times, April 21, 1980.
Howell Raines, “Reagan Backs Evangelicals in their Political Activities,” New York Times, August 23, 1980.
Helen Parmley, “Religious Conservatives Launch Bid to Influence Presidential Politics,” Religious News Service, August 25, 1980, “Moral Majority” folder, Weniger Files, BJU.
Rosemary Thomson, Withstanding Humanism’s Challenge to Families: Anatomy of a White House Conference (Morton, IL: Traditional Publications, 1981), 139, 141; Rosenbaum, “Conservatives Embrace Reagan.”
Bruce Buursma, “Evangelicals Give Reagan a ‘Non-partisan’ Stump,” Christianity Today, September 19, 1980, 50.
James Mann, “Preachers in Politics: Decisive Force in ’80?” U.S. News and World Report, September 15, 1980, 24.
Anthony Lewis, “Religion and Politics,” New York Times, September 18, 1980; Rosenbaum, “Conservatives Embrace Reagan.”
Gary Scott Smith, Faith and the Presidency: From George Washington to George W. Bush (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 331–336.
Phil Gailey, “Charitably Speaking,” New York Times, January 22, 1982; Raines, “Reagan Backs Evangelicals.”
Matthew C. Moen, The Christian Right and Congress (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1989), 100.
Edwin Warner, “New Resolve by the New Right,” Time, December 8, 1980, 27.
Smith, Faith and the Presidency, 339; Michelle McKeegan, Abortion Politics: Mutiny in the Ranks of the Right (New York: Free Press, 1992), 66–67.
Marjorie Hyer, “‘Christian Right’ Optimistic: Seeking a Born-Again America,” San Francisco Chronicle, January 31, 1981.
Jon Margolis, “The American Conservatives’ Two Faces,” Chicago Tribune, July 12, 1981.
Adam Clymer, “Right Wing Seeks a Shift by Reagan,” New York Times, September 6, 1981, 20.
“Bush Lauds Christians’ Role,” New York Times, June 14, 1982; Baptist Press, “Bush Endorses Religious Right,” Southern Baptist Advocate, August/ September 1982, 4.
Howell Raines, “Reagan Endorses Voluntary Prayer,” New York Times, May 7, 1982.
Jerry Falwell, Direct Mail, February 29, 1984, “Moral Majority—— School Prayer, Feb./March 1984” folder, People for the American Way, Washington, D.C.
Ronald S. Godwin, “Symbols Wear Thin,” Moral Majority Report, August 1982, 2.
Charles Austin, “Religious Right Growing Impatient with Reagan,” New York Times, August 16, 1982.
Ronald Reagan, Abortion and the Conscience of a Nation (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1984); McKeegan, Abortion Politics 66; Smith, Faith and the Presidency 593; Jerry Falwell, Moral Majority direct mail, September 2, 1986, folder 4, MOR 1–5, Liberty University Archives, Lynchburg, VA.
Jerry Falwell, “A Bystander—How Not to Be One,” Christian Life, October 1983, 24.
Ellen M. Rosenberg, The Southern Baptists: A Subculture in Transition (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1989), 183.
John Rees, “The Religious Right’s Dr. Tim La Haye,” Review of the News, August 8, 1984, 36–37.
Jerry Falwell, “A Hero’s Story,” Liberty Report, May 1988, 3–4; Jerry Falwell, Moral Majority Direct Mail, June 1988, “Moral Majority—Fundraising Iran/Contra 1988” folder, PFAW.
E.J. Dionne, Jr., “Voters Delay Republican Hopes of Dominance in Post-Reagan Era,” New York Times, November 10, 1988.
Martin Mawyer, “Strength, Savvy of the New Right Scares Liberals,” Moral Majority Report, November 1984.
Dale Buss, Family Man: The Biography of Dr. James Dobson (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2005), 88, 154–155, 170.
John Dillin, “US Conservatives on the March: Religious Right Optimistic,” Christian Science Monitor, March 19, 1986.
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© 2008 Cheryl Hudson and Gareth Davies
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Williams, D.K. (2008). Reagan’s Religious Right: The Unlikely Alliance between Southern Evangelicals and a California Conservative. In: Hudson, C., Davies, G. (eds) Ronald Reagan and the 1980s. Studies of the Americas. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230616196_9
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