Christian Right

Remembering the New Right

Political Strategy and the Building of the GOP Coalition

A color image of Paul Weyrich, a black and white image of Morton Blackwell, and a color image of Richard Viguerie.

When the Washington Post ran an obituary for Paul Weyrich on its front page last December, the casual reader could be forgiven for not recognizing the name. But those who followed conservative politics inside Washington probably approved of the…

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Guest Commentary: Killing for Life Returns

The murder of Dr. George Tiller in Kansas raises again the question of what it means to defend life through killing. When militant antiabortionists began bombing clinics and shooting doctors in the 1980s and 1990s, law enforcement officials looked…

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Tying the Not

How the Right Succeeded in Passing Proposition 8

A group of people holding signs that read "Vote No on Prop 8"

On June 26, 2008, 1,000 ministers, mostly from evangelical congregations, met by conference call to discuss tactics for passing Proposition 8, a ballot initiative to ban same sex marriage in California by amending the state constitution.

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Scott Lively’s Quotes

Selections from Scott Lively’s presentations at a conference in Kampala, Uganda in March 2009

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A Growing Threat to Basic Human Rights

While gender-based discrimination and oppression are nothing new abroad, for the past decade the U.S. Christian Right has been aggressively exporting its campaigns against reproductive rights and gay rights to countries around the world. Recently,…

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Sexual Minorities Uganda Letter to Parliament Protesting Anti-Gay Witchhunt

RE: Launch of hate campaign against sexual minorities

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Ugandans oppose U.S. Christian Right interference in Africa's sexual politics

Efforts to mobilize Ugandans to hunt down and imprison Ugandan gays and lesbians received worldwide attention during a three-day Family Life Network conference held March 3-5 in Kampala. But the media haven’t caught up with the rest of the story:…

Press Release

Younger Evangelicals

Where Will They Take the Christian Right?

A White man wearing a sweater, with glasses and a bandana and dreadlocks.

Last October a chartered bus rolled deep through the South, its passengers college-aged young people drawing inspiration from the Freedom Riders of the 1960s. The black vinyl advertising plastered on the side broadcast the riders’ goals, “Equality…

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Christian Right Pushes Abstinence-Only Education Internationally

In 2003, the Christian Right shifted the foreign aid policy of the United States so that it promotes abstinence-only education abroad through HIV/AIDS relief grants channeled to the Christian Right base of the George W. Bush Administration. An…

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Saving Monsignor Ryan

Refuting the Myths of Neoconservative Roman Catholic Economics

In October 1936, a Roman Catholic priest and professor of moral theology at the Catholic University of America took to the airwaves to defend the New Deal from scurrilous attacks made by another Catholic priest, the demagogic radio personality of…

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The Culture Wars Are Still Not Over

The Religious Right in the States and Beyond

In the wake of pre-election punditry that the Religious Right is dead and that the so called Culture Wars are over, I wrote a piece for The Public Eye: “The Culture Wars Are Not Over: The Institutionalization of the Christian Right.”1 The year was…

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Becoming a Christian Citizen

Electoral Lessons from the Religious Right for the Religious Left

The main reason why the Religious Right became powerful is not what most people may think. Some would undoubtedly point to the powerful communications media. Others might identify charismatic leaders, the development of “wedge issues,” or even…

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All in The Family

Jeff Sharlet’s new book The Family: the Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, is in the best tradition of American investigative journalism. Sharlet, a scholar of religion based at New York University, writes with insight, verve and…

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How Roman Catholic Neocons Peddle Natural Law into Debates about Life and Death

As the rightist philosopher Richard Weaver famously said, “ideas have consequences.” And I can tell you from personal experience some of the consequences of at least one idea, that of “natural law.”

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Nativist Bedfellows

The Christian Right Embraces Anti-Immigrant Politics

a brown fence following around a dirt road that fades into green mountains.

If the September 2007 Values Voters Summit is anything to go by, the Christian Right is now nearly as worked up about illegal immigration as about abortion and same-sex marriage. At that political gathering—sponsored annually in Washington D.C. by…

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Pushed to the Altar

The Right-Wing Roots of Marriage Promotion

After the 2000 presidential campaign, I felt a shock of recognition when I read that the George W. Bush Administration planned to use its “faith-based” funding to support organizations to encourage women, especially welfare recipients, to marry. The…

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The New Secular Fundamentalist Conspiracy!

One of the most remarkable, and least remarked upon, features of the contemporary discussion of faith in public life is that a defining feature of the religious right worldview has filtered deeply into mainstream and even progressive thought. This…

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A White woman in a black coat holding a banner saying "Grab em by the midterms"

In 2008, ballot initiatives could impact races up and down the ballot, including the Presidential campaign, by elevating an issue and shaping the debate. Dissatisfied voters in particular may see ballot initiatives as a means to fill the leadership…

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Heritage is Hip to Culture

Think Tank Turns to Family Values

The Heritage Foundation’s headquarters sits two blocks from the Capitol in Washington, D.C., a symbolic representation of its intimate access to Congress and public policymakers. Heritage’s rise to prominence has paralleled the rise to power of…

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Living in the Gap: The Ideal and the Reality of the Christian Right Family

“Models of idealized family structure lie metaphorically at the heart of our politics,” writes linguist George Lakoff in his 2002 book Moral Politics. “Our beliefs about the family exert a powerful influence over our beliefs about what kind of…

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Male Victims of Abortion

New Theme of Right to Life Committee

A man wearing sunglasses holding a sign that says "Men Regret Lost Fatherhood"

They pledged to “Bring life to the heart of America and bring the heart of America to Life.” In 72 workshops, five plenaries, and three worship services, more than 500 members of the National Right to Life Committee gathered in Kansas City, Missouri…

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The Libertarian Theocrats

The Long, Strange History of R.J. Rushdoony and Christian Reconstructionism

In their struggle to understand George W. Bush, some liberal intellectuals have looked to the writings of Rousas John Rushdoony, the Armenian-American minister whose championing of a theocratic America influenced some of the nooks and crannies of…

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Churches Under Seige

Exposing the Right's Attacks on Mainline Protestantism

In February of the year 2000, in South St. Louis, Missouri, the 300-member Redeemer Evangelical United Church of Christ got a new pastor. His name was George Dohm. Soon after he arrived, he told select members whom he called his “disciples” that…

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"Focus" Leader Admits Court Ruling Endangers Women

Dispute within the Christian Right over the Supreme Court’s April 18 decision upholding the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act has led to the apparently inadvertent admission by a Focus on the Family official that the ruling could endanger women by…

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History is Powerful

Why the Christian Right Distorts History and Why it Matters

The notion that America was founded as a Christian nation is a central animating element of the ideology of the Christian Right. It touches every aspect of life and culture in this, one of the most successful and powerful political movements in…

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Religious Liberty Not Threatened By Gay Marriage, says Rev. Katherine H. Ragsdale, Director of Political Research Associates

Opponents of gay marriage in Massachusetts are misleading in saying that religious liberty is threatened by its legalization in the state, says The Reverend Katherine H. Ragsdale, an Episcopal priest and director of the Somerville, MA think tank…

Statement

Tax Revolt as a Family Value How the Christian Right is Becoming a Free Market Champion

“Death Should Not Be a Taxable Event.” In August of 2005, this headline appeared on the website of the conservative evangelical Christian organization Focus on the Family. The accompanying article asked Focus members to persuade their Senators to…

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Political Research Associates Report Documents Growing Threat to Reproductive Health Programs at UN from Right-wing NGOs

A new report by the progressive think tank Political Research Associates documents the growing threat Christian Right NGOs based at the United Nations pose to international policies supporting women’s reproductive health.

Statement

Whither the Christian Right?

How Religious Conservatives Succeeded and Failed in the 2006 Elections

It was a scant five weeks until the 2006 midterm elections, and photogenic Christian Right leader Tony Perkins gripped the podium and smiled confidently at the 1700 activists gathered at the Values Voters Summit. Perkins predicted that his new…

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New Report Exposes Christian Right's Midterm Election Strategy

Running Against Sodom and Osama: The Christian Right, Values Voters, and the Culture Wars in 2006, a newly released report from Political Research Associates, lays out the Christian Right’s midterm electoral strategy of demonizing gay men and…

Press Release

Back to the Future: GOP Revives Anti-Gay Marriage Campaign for ‘06

As George Bush’s approval ratings on the Iraq war and the economy continue their slide downward, the Republican Party is determined to use the gay marriage issue and other punitive anti-gay measures to retain control of Congress in the 2006 mid-term…

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Politicized Science

How Anti-Abortion Myths Feed the Christian Right Agenda

Three women at a prochoice rally holding signs that say "Safe, legal abortion on demand. No apologies!" and "Abortion is a right. No Going Back."

The anti-abortion movement uses B.A.D science and agenda-driven journals to back up false claims about abortions, in an effort to make abortions illegal.

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A teacher looking at a classroom of students, with one student's hand in the air

Commentary Dover is over, for now. Beginning in 2004, an elected school board attempted to change the Dover, PA, science curriculum so that it cast significant doubt on the evolutionary hypothesis. The board tried to substitute a textbook,…

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The Battle for Mainline Churches

“Make no mistake,” wrote Avery Post, the national president of the United Church of Christ in 1982, “the objectives of the Institute on Religion and Democracy are the exact opposite of what its name appears to stand for. The purpose of its leaders…

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The Globalization of an Agenda

The Right Targets the UN with its Anti-Choice Politics

A banner at a protest that says "Pro Choice, Pro Child, Pro Family"

This article is derived from the PRA report UNdoing Reproductive Freedom: Christian Right NGOs Target the United Nations. In June 2004…

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The Rise of Dominionism

Remaking America as a Christian Nation

When Roy Moore, the Chief Justice of the Alabama State Supreme Court, installed a two-and-one-half-ton granite monument to the Ten Commandments in the Alabama state courthouse in Montgomery in June of 2001, he knew it was a deeply symbolic act. He…

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Faith Matters: George Bush and Providence

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Scared Chaste, Scared Straight

Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage Education in U.S. Schools

A person holding a sign that reads "I choose to have sex responsibly"

The welfare reform law of 1996, premised on the unproven claim that poor women’s failure to marry is the cause of high rates of family poverty in the United States, promoted an abstinence-only-until-marriage policy that teaches that sex outside the…

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The Christian Right’s “Defense of Marriage:” Democratic Rhetoric, Antidemocratic Politics

Introduction¹

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Tilting at Faith-Based Windmills

Over a Year in the Life of President Bush’s Faith-Based Initiative

It may seem like several lifetimes ago, but it was only on January 29, 2001, when President Bush unveiled a cornerstone of his domestic policy agenda—“charitable choice.” Amidst great fanfare and surrounded by Christian, Jewish, and Muslim clergy,…

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For Faith and Family

Christian Right Advocacy at the United Nations

A cresent moon sculpture that says "Beijing '95"

Since the United Nations held the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China in September 1995, women’s rights and human rights groups in the US and throughout the world have worked to “bring the Beijing platform home.” Adopted by consensus…

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Reproducing Patriarchy

Reproductive Rights Under Siege

Protester at Rally for Reproductive Rights Chicago Illinois, sign says: Our Bodies, Our Right to Choose, Our Decision to make not yours!"

A woman’s ability to control her reproductive decisions—her reproductive rights—involves more than her right to safe and legal abortion. Reproductive rights encompass the right to bear and raise children, the right to access adequate reproductive…

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The Resurgent Right

Why Now?

Boxes, prams, tarps, and other disparate items piled up under a blue sky on the sidewalk

For those who have worked to further social justice and democratic values in the United States, the election of November 8, 1994 was a defeat. The election results indicate that the American public has repudiated the liberalism that has been the…

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Jerry Falwell, a white man wearing a suit coat, speaks in front of a crowd holding signs reading "I love America."

Michael Lienesch Redeeming America: Piety and Politics in the New Christian Right University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1993. 260 pp., plus footnotes and index. In Redeeming America, Michael Lienesch examines…

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Christian Reconstructionism

Theocratic Dominionism Gains Influence

Overview and Roots The Christian Right has shown impressive resilience and has rebounded dramatically after a series of embarrassing televangelist scandals of the late 1980s, the collapse of Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority, and the failed…

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Constructing Homophobia

Colorado's Right-Wing Attacks On Homosexuals

Two trans people in a park, looking at each other, laughing.

An eerie unease hangs in the air in Colorado. For lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals, nagging questions pervade everyday life: did the kindly person who just gave me her parking place vote for Amendment 2? Did my landlord vote for the amendment,…

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Theocracy and White Supremacy: Behind the Culture War to Restore Traditional Values

The first version of this article appeared in December 1992, and reviewed the role of Dominionism inside the Christian Right. To understand the Tea Party of today, it helps to see where the trend emerged. As the United States slides…

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The Mapplethorpe Censorship Controversy

Chronology of Events: The 1989-1991 Battles The National Endowment for the Arts was established in 1965. President Lyndon Johnson said upon signing the enabling legislation for the NEA, “We fully recognize that no government can call artistic…

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