We use Supreme Court amicus curiae briefs filed by seven religious groups—four liberal and three conservative—to understand the changing nature of political conflict between American religious groups in the predominantly White Protestant tradition from 1969 to 2020. Religious groups on both sides of the ideological divide have increased the frequency of their amicus filings, and increasingly become involved in issue areas which were once primarily the concern of groups on the other side. These findings suggest that the culture war that redefined party politics in America has also shaped religious activism, including legal activism. We argue that these groups have increased their involvement in a wider range of issues for two reasons: their rivalry for influence over the nation's moral center has become more encompassing and overtly political, and their appreciation for and consciously developed ability to tap into the courts' influence on American politics has grown.

This article traces the changing sexual politics of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) from the 1950s through the 1980s. It argues that the moderates who led the denomination in the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s joined other supporters of “sexual containment” during the early Cold War to develop a theology about the salvific power of marital sex—and the personal, social, and national harm created by extramarital sex—which undergirded the sexual conservatism of the denomination's fundamentalist leadership who rose to power during the 1970s and 1980s. This analysis reframes our understanding of Southern Baptists within the broader religious right coalition as it reveals how the SBC's commitment to marital sexuality, which was forged during the early Cold War, informed its approach to later hot-button issues like abortion and homosexuality. Rather than simply reacting against the loosening sexual mores of the 1970s and 1980s or in favor of the rising visibility of other politically engaged Christians on issues of sexual morality, the SBC instead drew on longer traditions within the denomination to engage with a changing political and sexual landscape.

As a new cohort of religious conservatives became major players in U.S. political discourse during the 1970s and 1980s, they expressed ambivalence about the political realm and often represented their religious motivations as simultaneously separate from politics and as justification for their political activism. Prominent conservative evangelical women drew on this ambivalence in specifically gendered ways, referencing their religious commitments as well as their roles as mothers, which they asserted both compelled them to speak out on political issues, and proved that these issues were not fundamentally political. Building on scholarship about women’s grassroots support in conservative movements, this article underscores the importance of women’s national leadership in the New Christian Right. It focuses on the career of singerturned- activist Anita Bryant, who offers a particularly instructive example due to her public and explicit transformation from representative symbol of American motherhood to outspoken political activist in the late 1970s. Within the context of a flourishing evangelical subculture and shifting political landscape, Bryant’s negotiations of her political authority exemplify conservative evangelical women’s ways of understanding their leadership in support of a platform that emphasized women’s domestic roles. It demonstrates how they invoked an existing tension between religious and political identification to expand the ideology of “traditional gender roles” without overstepping its bounds. More broadly, Bryant’s career offers insight into the importance of women’s national leadership in framing the rhetoric and priorities of the New Christian Right, including its central emphases on gender and its relationship with contemporary feminist movements.