The Real Origins of the Christian Right

In my new piece “What Were the Real Origins of the Christian Right?”, which Mere Orthodoxy published online this morning, I respond to some of David French’s recent questions about the reasons for conservative evangelicals’ political mobilization in the late 1970s, and I correct some common misunderstandings about evangelical politics.

Here’s a taste:

“When conservative evangelicals launched the Christian Right in the late 1970s, were they acting to protect the unborn by rescinding Roe v. Wade? Or were they motivated instead by a self-interested desire to protect their own racially segregated Christian schools from federal civil rights policy?

“In a recent New York Times opinion piece, David French said that as an evangelical who believed in the pro-life cause, he had long defended the view that the Christian Right formed as a principled campaign to protect unborn life, but in the wake of evangelicals’ enthusiasm for Trump and their willingness to abandon nearly every principle they claimed to espouse, he’s not so sure. He’s beginning to wonder whether the Christian Right really was motivated by racism all along, and their pious professions of interest in moral character or defending the unborn were merely a cynical façade.

“But maybe neither of the two explanations French suggested is fully correct. There’s a better way to tell the story of the Christian Right’s origins that makes sense of all the data – the timing of the Christian Right’s formation, the commitment of evangelicals to the Republican Party, and even the enthusiasm of evangelical voters for Donald Trump. And when we tell that nuanced story, it will address French’s frustrations with the Christian Right without resorting to caricature. . . .”

To read the rest, click here.