¹ Jimmy Carter, “White House Conference on Families Appointment of Wilbur J. Cohen as Chairman,” 14 April 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. I would also like to thank session participants and audience members from the 2007 American Academy of Religion meeting panel “Religion and the Politics of the Common Good,” where I initially presented a version of this paper and received thought-provoking feedback.

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 the Christian right. Other 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, Coontz, Stephanie, The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap (New York: Basic Books, 1992), 8–22Google Scholar and passim.

⁶ Falwell, Jerry, “America Was Built on Seven Great Principles,” Moral Majority Report, 18 May 1981, 3Google Scholar.

⁷ “Conservative Forum,” Human Events, 9 July 1977, 14.

⁸ Jelen, Ted G., “Political Esperanto: Rhetorical Resources and Limitations of the Christian Right in the United States,” Sociology of Religion 66:3 (Autumn 2005): 303–321CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁹ Falwell, “America Was Built on Seven Great Principles,” 3.

¹⁰ See, for instance, Bageant, Joe, Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War (New York: Crown, 2007)Google Scholar; Frank, Thomas, What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America (New York: Metropolitan, 2004)Google Scholar; Goldberg, Michelle, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006)Google Scholar; Hedges, Chris, American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America (New York: Free Press, 2006)Google Scholar; Phillips, Kevin, American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century (New York: Viking, 2006)Google Scholar; Sharlet, Jeff, The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power (New York: HarperCollins, 2008)Google Scholar.

¹¹ See, for instance, Colson, Charles W., “The Lures and Limits of Political Power,” in Piety & Politics: Evangelicals and Fundamentalists Confront the World, ed. Neuhaus, Richard John and Cromartie, Michael (Washington: Ethics & Public Policy Center, 1987), 171–185Google Scholar; Falwell, Jerry, Listen, America! (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1980), 21–70Google Scholar; LaHaye, Tim F., The Battle for the Mind (Old Tappan, N.J.: Revell, 1980), 181–195Google Scholar; Viguerie, Richard A., The New Right: We're Ready to Lead (Falls Church, Va.: Viguerie, 1981), 123–136Google Scholar.

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: Martin, William C., With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America (New York: Broadway, 2005)Google Scholar. 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 the story Martin lays out. I 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: Lindsay, D. Michael, Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 15–37, 218–223Google Scholar. 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 Diamond, Sara, Spiritual Warfare: The Politics of the Christian Right (Boston, Mass.: South End, 1989)Google Scholar; Darren Dochuk, “From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Southernization of Southern California, 1939–1969” (Ph.D. diss., University of Notre Dame, 2005); Liebman, Robert C., Wuthnow, Robert, and Guth, James L., The New Christian Right: Mobilization and Legitimation (Hawthorne, N.Y.: Aldine, 1983)Google Scholar; Lienesch, Michael, Redeeming America: Piety and Politics in the New Christian Right (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993)Google Scholar; Smith, Christian, Christian America?: What Evangelicals Really Want (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000)Google Scholar; Wilcox, Clyde, Onward Christian Soldiers?: The Religious Right in American Politics (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1996)Google Scholar.

¹³ Oral Memoirs of R. Albert Mohler, Jr., The Texas Collection, Baylor University, Waco, Texas.

¹⁴ Falwell, Jerry, If I Should Die before I Wake (Nashville, Tenn.: T. Nelson, 1986), 31–32Google Scholar.

¹⁵ Falwell, Jerry, Strength for the Journey: An Autobiography (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987), 336Google Scholar.

¹⁶ Plowman, Edward E., “Southern Baptists: Unity the Priority,” Christianity Today, 5 July 1974, 41–42Google Scholar. 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 the Pew to the Polls,” 285–300.

¹⁸ Luker, Kristin, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 141Google Scholar.

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 1980. See Adams, Greg D., “Abortion: Evidence of an Issue Evolution,” American Journal of Political Science 41:3 (July 1997): 723–730CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁰ Luker, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood, 126–137.

²¹ Critchlow, Donald T., The Conservative Ascendancy: How the GOP Right Made Political History (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007), 135Google Scholar.

²² Luker, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood, 127–128.

²³ Quoted 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-Catholic bias” led Protestants to take up the anti-abortion fight surprisingly late.

²⁴ Luker, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood, 144–157.

²⁵ Schaeffer, Francis A., A Christian Manifesto (Westchester, Ill.: Crossway, 1981), 19, 17, 131–132Google Scholar.

²⁶ Schaeffer, Francis A. and Koop, C. Everett, Whatever Happened to the Human Race? (Old Tappan, N.J.: Fleming H. Revell, 1979), 31, 198Google Scholar, pictures following p. 198.

²⁷ Schaeffer, A Christian Manifesto, 110. Schaeffer's comment revealed the ways that conservative Christians drew on the rhetoric of the civil rights movement. On this point, see Marley, David John, “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. Romano, Renee Christine and Ford, Leigh (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2006), 346–362Google Scholar. Jon Shields's recently published book offers an expanded treatment of the ways the Christian right revived the democratic impulses of 1960s liberal activism: Shields, Jon A., The Democratic Virtues of the Christian Right (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cf. Neuhaus, Richard John, “The Pro-Life Movement as the Politics of the 1960s,” Wall Street Journal, 8 January 2009Google Scholar; Turner, John G., “Civility and Boldness,” Books & Culture (May/June 2009): 18–19Google Scholar.

²⁸ Oral Memoirs of James T. Draper, Jr., The Texas Collection, Baylor University, Waco, Texas.

²⁹ “6 Questions Asked Most of Christians in Politics,” Moral Majority Report, 15 May 1980.

³⁰ Falwell, Jerry, “Falwell Defends Assault by Bob Jones: Morally Concerned Must Unite Clout,” Moral Majority Report, 14 July 1980, 4Google Scholar.

³¹ Falwell's associate Norman Keener recounted this phone call in a letter 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 Baker, Kenneth, “Catholics and Moral Majority,” Moral Majority Report, 20 April 1981, 14Google Scholar.

³⁵ “Letters from America,” Moral Majority Report, 1 May 1980, 11.

³⁶ Falwell, Strength for the Journey, 335.

³⁷ Catholics' firm 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. Time 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.

⁴⁰ Jerry Falwell, “Advancing through Prayer [unpublished sermon],” 1964, Archives, Pierre Guillermin Library, Liberty University, Lynchburg, Va. Falwell made a similar 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: Ribuffo, Leo P., The Old Christian Right: The Protestant Far Right from the Great Depression to the Cold War (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1983)Google Scholar. Also see Carpenter, Joel A., Revive Us Again: The Reawakening of American Fundamentalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997)Google Scholar; Marsden, George M., Fundamentalism and American Culture, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006)Google Scholar; and Morone, James A., Hellfire Nation: The Politics of Sin in American History (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003)Google Scholar.

⁴² “Family Manifesto,” Moral Majority: Policy Documents, Family Manifesto folder, Archives, Pierre Guillermin Library, Liberty University, Lynchburg, Va.

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: Hansen, Susan B., “State Implementation of Supreme Court Decisions: Abortion Rates since Roe V. Wade,” The Journal of Politics 42:2 (May 1980): 375CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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 the 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; Forbes, Cheryl, “Survey Results: Changing Church Roles for Women?” Christianity Today, 27 September 1974, 42–44Google Scholar.

⁵¹ Letha Scanzoni and Nancy Hardesty, All We're Meant to Be: A Biblical Approach to Women's Liberation (Waco, Texas: Word Books, 1974), 60, 205.

⁵² Mathews, Alice, “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, 95Google Scholar.

⁵³ Lindsell, Harold, “Egalitarianism and Scriptural Infallibility,” Christianity Today, 26 March 1976, 45Google Scholar.

⁵⁴ Henry, Carl F. H., “Reflections on Women's Lib,” Christianity Today, 3 January 1975, 26Google Scholar.

⁵⁵ I borrow this phrase from Felsenthal, Carol, The Sweetheart of the Silent Majority: The Biography of Phyllis Schlafly (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1981)Google Scholar.

⁵⁶ Critchlow, Donald T., Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism: A Woman's Crusade (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005), 218Google Scholar.

⁵⁷ Ibid.

⁵⁸ Schlafly, Phyllis, “Can Federal Bureaucrats Buy Passage of Equal Rights Amendment?” Human Events, 15 May 1976, 10Google Scholar.

⁵⁹ Schlafly, Phyllis, “How ERA Would Change Federal Laws,” Moral Majority Report, January 1982, 9Google Scholar; Sex Bias in the U.S. Code: A Report of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 1977, iii.

⁶⁰ Schlafly, “How ERA Would Change Federal Laws,” 9.

⁶¹ Quoted in Critchlow, Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism, 224.

⁶² Mathews, Donald G. and De Hart, Jane Sherron, Sex, Gender, and the Politics of ERA: A State and the Nation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 43, 36Google Scholar.

⁶³ Schlafly, Phyllis, The Power of the Christian Woman (Cincinnati, Ohio: Standard, 1981), 27, 26Google Scholar.

⁶⁴ Critchlow, Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism, 12.

⁶⁵ “Family Manifesto,” Moral Majority: Policy Documents, Family Manifesto folder, Archives, Pierre Guillermin Library, Liberty University, Lynchburg, Va.

⁶⁶ Charlie Judd, “Listen America Radio Broadcast,” 12 April 1988. Transcript available in Listen America Radio folder, Archives, Pierre Guillermin Library, Liberty University, Lynchburg, Va.

⁶⁷ Rus Walton, “Will Baptists Ever See through Carter?” Human Events, 25 September 1976, 14.

⁶⁸ Critchlow, Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism, 276–281.

⁶⁹ “What Next for U.S. Women,” Time, 5 December 1977.

⁷⁰ Quoted in Martin, With God on Our Side, 164.

⁷¹ Judd, “Listen America Radio Broadcast,” 12 April 1988.

⁷² Ryskind, Morrie, “What in the World Are We Coming To?,” Human Events, 3 November 1979, 11Google Scholar.

⁷³ See Philip Jenkins's chapter, “Mainstreaming the Sixties,” for analysis of how elements of the 1960s counterculture won official endorsements in the 1970s: Jenkins, Philip, Decade of Nightmares: The End of the Sixties and the Making of Eighties America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 24–36Google Scholar.

⁷⁴ “Falwell Lied About Carter, White House Aide Says,” Lynchburg News, 7 August 1980, A2.

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.

⁷⁷ Ryskind, “What in the World Are We Coming To?,” 11.

⁷⁸ Jenkins, Decade of Nightmares, 120–122.

⁷⁹ “Will White House Cool It on Counterculture?” Human Events, 18 June 1977, 3.

⁸⁰ On the role of fear—specifically, fear of homosexuals—in late twentieth-century evangelicalism and conservative politics, see Bivins, Jason, Religion of Fear: The Politics of Horror in Conservative Evangelicalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 76–78, 216–220CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jenkins, Decade of Nightmares, 119–125.

⁸¹ Quoted in Falwell, Listen, America!, 160.

⁸² Graham, Billy, “An Agenda,” Christianity Today, 4 January 1980, 25Google Scholar.

⁸³ On the political influence of the Christian right, see Green, John C., “The Christian Right and the 1994 Elections: A View from the States,” PS: Political Science and Politics 28:1 (March 1995)Google Scholar; Green, John C. and Guth, James L., “The Christian Right in the Republican Party: The Case of Pat Robertson's Supporters,” The Journal of Politics 50:1 (February 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Green, John C. and Guth, James L., “Religion, Representatives, and Roll Calls,” Legislative Studies Quarterly 16:4 (November 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Green, John C., Guth, James L., and Hill, Kevin, “Faith and Election: The Christian Right in Congressional Campaigns 1978–1988,” The Journal of Politics 55:1 (February 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Green, John C., Rozell, Mark J., and Wilcox, Clyde, “Social Movements and Party Politics: The Case of the Christian Right,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 40:3 (September 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Guth, James L., The Bully Pulpit: The Politics of Protestant Clergy (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1997)Google Scholar; Guth, James L. and Green, John C., “Politics in a New Key: Religiosity and Participation among Political Activists,” The Western Political Quarterly 43:1 (March 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸⁴ Falwell, Jerry, Listen, America! (New York: Bantam, 1980), 104Google Scholar.

⁸⁵ Critchlow, The Conservative Ascendancy, 131–142; Jenkins, Decade of Nightmares, 109–111, 120–123.

⁸⁶ Falwell, Listen, America!, 162–209.

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 Gallagher, Sally K., Evangelical Identity and Gendered Family Life (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2003)Google Scholar.

⁹⁰ Hankins, Barry, Francis Schaeffer and the Shaping of Evangelical America (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2008), 109–135, 200–204Google Scholar.

⁹¹ Francis's son, Frank Schaeffer, has questioned his father's initial motivation for opposing abortion in a recent memoir: Schaeffer, Frank, 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), 265–267Google Scholar. Cf. Guinness, Os, “Fathers and Sons: On Francis Schaeffer, Frank Schaeffer, and Crazy for God,” Books & Culture, March/April 2008, 32–33Google Scholar.

⁹² See Lassiter, Matthew D., The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2006), 5Google Scholar.

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: Wacker, Grant, “Uneasy in Zion: Evangelicals in Postmodern Society,” in Reckoning with the Past: Historical Essays on American Evangelicalism from the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals, ed. Hart, D. G. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1995), 376–393Google Scholar. Also see Wacker, Grant, “Searching for Norman Rockwell: Popular Evangelicalism in Contemporary America,” in The Evangelical Tradition in America, ed. Sweet, Leonard I. (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1984), 289–315Google Scholar.