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7 The Success and Failure of the Religious Right, 1970s–​2010

Religious conservatives still lack a theology of direct political action.1 —​Ralph Reed

The 1970s witnessed the continuation of national political trends that had begun in the previous decade. Republican strategists sought to capitalize on the anger of white voters evident in Alabama Governor George Wallace’s in- dependent presidential campaign in 1968. This Southern Strategy bore fruit for Richard Nixon in his successful 1972 reelection bid, as more conservative whites in the South and ethnic blue-​collar voters in the North deserted the Democrats. The 1970s were also building years for what was becoming movement conserv- atism. Several key elements came together during this period. Sunbelt business interests helped bankroll new conservative think-​tanks, such as the Heritage Foundation (founded in 1973) and the libertarian Cato Institute (established in 1977). Further, the passage of California’s Proposition 13 in 1978 revealed how conservatives, like the campaign’s leader Howard Jarvis, could draw upon middle-​ class discontent over taxes. The decade also saw the emergence of two influen- tial movement fund-​raisers. Richard Viguerie and Paul Weyrich (both formerly active in the Goldwater campaign) made effective use of direct-​mail campaigns and other techniques that others would employ successfully during the 1980s and 1990s. Although a traditionalist Catholic, Weyrich was instrumental in creating an essential building block of the Religious Right in 1978, the Moral Majority, led by Fundamentalist Baptist preacher Jerry Falwell (1933–2007).​ Ronald Reagan’s lopsided election victory in 1980 was built upon the energy these varied elements generated. Reagan drew upon the grassroots conservatism gaining ground since at least the Goldwater candidacy but also included antiregulation probusiness groups and neoconservative intellectuals. Finally, Reagan’s nostalgic invocations of a simpler American past and criticism of the cultural legacy of the 1960s attracted many Protestant conservatives.2

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Thus, during the 1970s, the previously disparate collection of politically con- servative evangelicals became a well-​organized movement and received significant media attention. Indeed, the broader impact evangelicals came to enjoy prompted George Gallup to label 1976 “the year of the evangelical.”3 As evangelicals moved closer to the forefront of the public square, few of them grounded their polit- ical activism in fresh biblical study or historically informed doctrinal analysis. A handful did engage in systematic theological reflection about cultural and political matters. Arguably, two of the more influential evangelical Protestant thinkers during the 1970s were Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–​2001) and Francis Schaeffer (1912–1984).​ Although they sought to root Christian political action in deeper philosophical and biblical analysis, their conclusions did not depart sig- nificantly from the well-​worn paths established in the 1920s and 1930s. How they arrived at their political positions looked different in some respects, but the ide- ological destination was fairly familiar. Both Rushdoony and Schaeffer drew crit- icism from a few evangelicals, especially academics with confessional Reformed backgrounds, but this censure did not appear to hurt their popularity. Indeed, Schaeffer proved to have an especially broad influence. Furthermore, by the mid-1970s,​ systematic political mobilization of evangelicals emerged nationally, first under Falwell and the Moral Majority, which he founded in 1979, and then connected to the presidential candidacy of Pentecostal television personality Pat Robertson (1930- ​). These and similar groups supported a constitutional amendment to ban abortion, allow prayer in public schools, censor pornography, oppose gay marriage, and restrict govern- ment intervention in the private economy. The limited success of both the Moral Majority and Robertson’s candidacy, at least in terms of producing concrete public policy, gave birth to a more pragmatic approach and a more reflective and refined message during the 1990s under political strategist Ralph Reed (1961-​ ) and academic and journalist Marvin Olasky (1950-​ ). The Moral Majority and similar organizations associated with the Religious Right brought a robust mor- alism to the political arena, and they served to strengthen traditional American concern for individual accountability and limited government with supposed biblical sanction. Yet, by identifying their opponents as champions of secular humanism, which they denounced as a radical philosophy opposed to nearly everything Americans had once held sacred, they made pragmatic political compromise more difficult. At the same time, their deepening attachment to the Republican Party made them vulnerable to accusations of simple partisanship. Despite the more nuanced writings of Reed and Olasky, the activity of Reed’s Christian Coalition (CC) became indistinguishable from other secular lobbyists or ideologically based pressure groups. Evangelical conservatives reverted to earlier limited government 200

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polemics by the turn of the millennium with the emergence of the Tea Party and the rise of Fox television host and Mormon convert Glenn Beck. Hence, despite some shifts in focus, agenda, and strategy during the last quarter of the century, religious conservatives came full circle, returning by 2000 to the kind of nostalgic constitutionalism or civil religion with a comparatively thin Christian gloss that had characterized their movement toward political conservatism earlier in the twentieth century.

Movement Theologians: Rushdoony and Schaeffer Although he remained more of a fringe figure than Schaeffer, and his postmil- lennialism and his literalist application of Old Testament civil law were not embraced by most evangelicals, Rushdoony’s approach enjoyed a surprisingly broad influence during the last quarter of the century. In fact, his son-​in-​law, Gary North, argues that Rushdoony’s “writings are the source of many of the core ideas of the New Christian Right.”4 Rushdoony’s background and education made him an unlikely theorist for a movement of conservative, suburban white Protestants. Born in New York City in 1916, the son of Armenian immigrants, Rushdoony obtained his BA in English and MA in Education from the University of California at Berkeley, before studying divinity at the Pacific School of Religion, a mainline seminary founded by ecumenically minded Congregationalists. He was ordained in the Presbyterian Church U. S. A. in 1944 but joined J. Gresham Machen’s more confessional splinter denomination, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, in 1958—​at about the same time he and his first wife (the mother of his six children) were divorced. As a young pastor in California, Rushdoony was influenced by James Fifield’s robust defense of free market capitalism and warnings about communist subversion (see Chapter 6). Rushdoony read avidly SM’s organ Faith and Freedom and was especially impressed by articles critical of public education penned by Congregationalist pastor Edmund Ortiz. Ortiz ar- ticulated what Rushdoony later termed a “libertarian theology of freedom” that sought to build a laissez-​faire political platform on an evangelical foundation.5 In the early 1960s, Rushdoony took a position with the conservative William Volker Fund in Kansas City. The Fund brought together on its staff a number of classical liberal thinkers and promoted the wide distribution of their writings, including those of Hayek and Friedman. For example, the Fund underwrote American attendance at the seminal Mont Pèlerin Society gathering in 1947. Although Rushdoony’s controversial theological views soon prompted his dis- missal, the experience strengthened his commitment to libertarian economic ideas. After leaving Kansas City, Rushdoony returned to California and began the Chalcedon Foundation in 1965 to propagate his distinctive approach to 201

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political theory. In the wake of the failed Barry Goldwater presidential campaign, Rushdoony found an attentive audience. Both adherents of the Old Right and newly politicized evangelicals were interested in a nonsecularized conservatism. Rushdoony’s son Mark later recalled that “many of his [father’s] early supporters were in the John Birch Society and the Goldwater movement, and they were dis- illusioned with the loss of Goldwater . . . . My father was trying to turn their at- tention to a different focus, to a more theological view, a moral view of culture, civilization.”6 These followers believed that Rushdoony’s meandering and heavily footnoted writings represented a thoughtful and thoroughly Christian approach. Always aspiring to be the grand theorist, Rushdoony began with epis- temology. His first book,By What Standard? (1959), sought to employ the presuppositionalist thinking of Westminster Theological Seminary’s apologetics professor, Cornelius Van Til. Drawing upon the Neo-​Calvinism of Abraham Kuyper and others, Van Til had argued that the Creator–​creature distinction meant that fallen humans needed to presuppose God in all of their thinking and that non-​Christians would naturally oppose any such prerequisite. Accordingly, Van Til rejected the idea that one could develop a valid reasoning apart from Christian theism. Developing and applying Van Til’s ideas, Rushdoony concluded that only knowledge derived directly and immediately from the Christian scriptures was a sound basis for social and political thinking. As a theory of apol- ogetics, Van Til’s system rejected the kind of natural law or evidentialist meth- odology that Christian thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas and countless others had employed. Van Til, however, made no attempt to provide a biblical model for society, and he declined to endorse Rushdoony’s use of his theory. As histo- rian Molly Worthen notes, “Van Til’s writings gave intellectual ballast to his [i.e., Rushdoony’s] conviction that the Bible is the basis for all reality. However, Van Til offered nothing to replace the philosophies he had demolished—​no biblical outline of society or comprehensive substitute for natural law. Rushdoony de- voted himself to filling this gap.”7 A series of lectures Rushdoony gave in the early 1960s illuminates how he developed his thinking to fill that gap. These rambling and idiosyncratic lectures sought to demonstrate that the presuppositions of the American Founders (in- cluding even those conventionally viewed as deists) and those of their culture were drawn from Reformed Christian sources. Christian assumptions and categories were at work, maintained Rushdoony, even among nonevangelical founders such as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. The latter two could not have really been deists because they often affirmed God’s providen- tial involvement in recent events. “Actually, Deism was a late arrival in America,” Rushdoony asserted without evidence, “and very slight in extent and influence prior to the American Revolution.” Whereas the European understandings of the 202

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social contract were statist, Americans read Locke and others differently through the lens of “their feudal-​born concept of local and federal government, limited in nature.” Indeed, Rushdoony declared that “the American political system . . . is, first, a development of Christian feudalism, with, as shall be noted, Reformation concepts. Second, it is therefore markedly different from the doctrines of John Locke, Whig politics, and the political faith of the Enlightenment.” As for the relationship between church and state, Rushdoony contended that most of the colonies had been founded as “holy commonwealths” with government viewed as a divinely ordained institution. The First Amendment was simply designed to prevent the federal government from imposing a national church, not to sep- arate government from religious belief. Here, Rushdoony stressed that the New England Puritan conception of the relationship between church and state was different from that of their Anglican opponents. According to Richard Hooker, the church and the state were a single organic unity, whereas for the Puritans they are “two free covenantal orders.”8 Rushdoony turned to developing a systematic biblical and theological treat- ment of the ideal legal and political order after returning to Southern California and establishing the Chalcedon Foundation. Through editing the monthly Chalcedon Report and especially by producing his massive three-​volume The Institutes of Biblical Law (volume 1, 1973), Rushdoony began to attract a sub- stantial following. More ambitious and theoretical than anything he had written previously, the Institutes had a broad influence. Viewing his thought as a faithful development of Calvinism, Rushdoony articulated his vision of total social re- construction by means of an elaborate commentary on the Ten Commandments. He began his magnum opus with a call for all Christians to fulfill the creation mandate laid out in Genesis to “subdue the earth and exercise dominion over it.”9 This command had never been withdrawn and was, in fact, confirmed by Christ in the wake of his atoning death and victorious resurrection in his call to make disciples of all nations. Christians were thus called to implement their rightful dominion in every sphere of human activity. Reconstructionists viewed this approach as holding forth a kind of “comprehensive redemption” distinc- tive from that offered by individualistic pietists, one that involved a return to the civil laws established under Moses in the Old Testament. While Christ’s atoning death fulfilled in reality what the ceremonial features of the Mosaic Law had symbolically anticipated, both the moral and civil aspects of the Law had never been abrogated, claimed Rushdoony. In fact, one could not neatly separate the moral from the civil law as described in the Old Testament because they were so intimately interrelated.10 Accordingly, the capital offenses listed in the Old Testament (such as sodomy, adultery, and blasphemy) should ideally still carry the death penalty under a contemporary Christian political order. 203

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One follower of Rushdoony, David Chilton, sums up this theonomic position simply: “The Christian goal for the world is the universal development of Biblical theocratic republics, in which every area of life is redeemed and placed under the Lordship of Jesus Christ and the rule of God’s law.”11 As postmillennialists, Rushdoony and his students were convinced that this Christian reconstruction could be achieved not only in the United States but worldwide. Unlike most twentieth-​century evangelicals, Reconstructionists held that scripture taught that Christ would return after an era of earthly perfection. Rather than expecting the world to deteriorate to the point of final crisis to be followed by Christ’s return and rescue (as most dispensationalists—​who were premillennialists—​believed), Rushdoony and his school saw the Christian church as triumphing on earth prior to her Lord’s return. Establishing a fully biblical legal, political, and social order was an integral part of that global triumph spearheaded by the church. At first glance, it seems hard to imagine how a thinker whose system championed (at least as an ultimate goal) a kind of theocracy would have enjoyed convivial fellowship among hard-​line libertarians. In many ways, Rushdoony personified the conflicting impulses that characterized twentieth-​century evan- gelical conservatives. Ancient Israel’s theocracy was an ideal that gave meaning to the struggles of Rushdoony’s postmillennialist followers. Again, Mark Rushdoony explains that when his father “spoke of biblical law, people assumed that he meant law imposed” by the state. However, “he was a Christian libertarian. He believed in a small state.” Rousas Rushdoony recognized libertarianism’s crit- ical flaw—​“that it had no moral foundation—​it had the same humanistic founda- tion as liberalism.” Although he stressed biblical law, Rushdoony “believed that basic government is the self-​government of the individual, the family, and the church. Christian reconstruction is a very bottom-​up approach,” explained his son.12 Long before the publication of his Institutes, Rushdoony also established himself as an influential critic of public education. Advocates of private Christian schools often cited his The Messianic Character of American Education (1963), and Rushdoony served as an effective expert witness on behalf of Christian parents who sought to defend the growing practice of homeschooling in court. Clearly many evangelicals rejected Rushdoony’s views, and even those who were influenced by his writings often did not subscribe to his entire system. Among Rushdoony’s most important students was Gary North, who became his son-​in-​law in the early 1970s. North produced scores of self-​published books, es- pecially focusing on the economic side of what was termed the “Dominionist” vision but, unlike his mentor, North reached out beyond conservative Reformed circles to engage a wider spectrum of Protestants from revivalist and charismatic backgrounds. With the help of Rushdoony, North worked briefly at the Volker Fund and at the libertarian Foundation for Economic Freedom. However, North 204

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and his father-​in-​law had a rancorous rupture in 1981 over a proposed article for the Chalcedon Report, and their open estrangement discredited the movement in some circles. Although the two disagreed about the specific roles and relative importance of the institutions of church and family in the process of Christian reconstruction, both subscribed to a postmillennial understanding of a literal building of God’s Kingdom on Earth. North was definitely more engaged po- litically than his mentor, even working on Texas Congressman Ron Paul’s staff during the mid-​1970s. Historian Michael J. McVicar concludes that “as a result of his popular appeal and tireless advocacy of the Reconstructionist world-​view, one could argue that North did more than any other Reconstructionist short of Rushdoony to reconstruct the world for Christendom.”13 Leaders of the Christian Right during the 1980s who had few theological affinities with the Reformed tra- dition such as Tim LaHaye and Pat Robertson notably used Dominionist lan- guage borrowed from Theonomists.14 While some journalists have exaggerated the influence of the Reconstructionists, Rushdoony and others did help promote political engage- ment by evangelicals, furnishing them with marching orders that were explicitly and unapologetically Christian. Those inspired by Reconstructionism to various degrees made important contributions to both electoral politics in gen­eral and to the legal debate about homeschooling. Furthermore, Rushdoony, North, and their associates played a crucial role in the conservative movement by promoting the further integration of evangelical theology and libertarianism.15 But exactly how Theonomists assembled their system is instructive. Despite his disdain for the Enlightenment, some of Rushdoony’s thinking was profoundly influenced by classical liberals such Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig Von Mises. Despite portraying himself as a Calvinist, Rushdoony’s approach to the civil law of Ancient Israel and his postmillennialism are based very little on either Calvin’s writings or in the confessions of the Magisterial Reformation. While (as noted in Chapter 1) Calvin’s thought definitely contains theocratic elements, even a cursory glance at Calvin’s Institutes confirms the Genevan Reformer’s unambiguous opposi- tion to much of Rushdoony’s project, especially his understanding of the Old Testament Law and the relationship between Old and New Testaments.16 Moreover, Rushdoony drew very little from the social and political thought of Old Princeton (though, significantly, he did admire Machen’s more libertarian position). Detached from Reformed confessionalism and traditionalists such as Noah Porter and Theodore Dwight Woolsey, Rushdoony and others were free to develop their idiosyncratic views based upon a naïve biblicism.17 Although he frequently invoked the Puritans as his model, Rushdoony did not recognize how different their understanding of the state as an active moral agent was, especially in their acceptance of traditional notions of a moral economy 205

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and state intervention in the market. Similarly, his use of Neo-​Calvinist ideas was highly selective. Although he endorsed Kuyper’s critique of a narrowly fo- cused pietism and shared his concern to apply the Christian faith to every aspect of existence, he did so in ways that would have dismayed Kuyper. For instance, Kuyper was far more pessimistic about the consequences of original sin and the inability of Christians to construct a thoroughly Christian earthly order prior to Christ’s return.18 Likewise, he borrowed terminology from Neo-​Calvinist philos- opher Herman Dooyweerd, but he used these terms very differently. As Worthen explains, “In Holland, sphere sovereignty was a means for securing religious plu- ralism and freedom of conscience for all citizens. Rushdoony stripped Kuyper’s concept of the tolerance inherent in its original Dutch context.” Rushdoony dug into church history, but he leapt over the Reformation and built much of his overarching interpretation upon an eccentric reading of the fifth century’s Council of Chalcedon and its canons; he interpreted its emphatic theological division of the human from the divine as the birthplace of political liberty and ev- idence of divine repudiation of statism. As Rushdoony put it, “Chalcedon made possible Western liberty . . . . When unity and particularity (or individuality) are in their ultimate source transcendental and firmly grounded in the triune God, man’s realization of unity and individuality is freed from the oppressive presence of the state as the realized order.”19 In short, despite their scholarly pretentions, Rushdoony’s work and that of many of his followers functioned within sectarian margins disconnected from the historic mainstream of Reformed thought. The other theologian whose work began to bear tangible fruit in conserv­ ative circles in the 1970s was Francis Schaeffer. Far more conventional than Rushdoony and his Reconstructionists, Schaeffer exercised a greater influence among evangelicals, and his books eventually sold in the millions. Although Schaeffer, born in 1912, did not come from a conservative Reformed background, his wife Edith Seville did, and she persuaded her husband to study divinity at Westminster Theological Seminary. Here, Schaeffer was instructed by Machen and Van Til, among others. The Schaeffers, however, joined the separatist and Fundamentalist Bible Presbyterian Church under the leadership of Carl McIntire when it split with the more confessional Orthodox Presbyterian Church in 1937. After gaining pastoral experience in three congregations, the Schaeffers went as missionaries to Switzerland in 1948. Differences with McIntire led the Schaeffers to break with the Independent Board for Presbyterian Missions and establish a study–​retreat center at Huémoz in 1955. Because of Francis’s thoughtful engage- ment with secular culture and Edith’s gift of hospitality, the center known as L’Abri gradually became a magnet for disillusioned young adults searching for life’s larger meaning. The Schaeffers believed that abstract doctrine without a per- sonal touch was a dead letter and would further alienate young seekers. Francis 206

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was convinced that the Christian faith had the answers that modern people were seeking in their own confused way. If presented in a sincere and winsome way, Christianity’s answers would be welcomed, and many youthful seekers were in- deed converted as a result of their time at L’Abri.20 With L’Abri thriving in Europe by the early 1960s, Francis Schaeffer began to accept speaking engagements elsewhere, including addressing evangelical audiences in the United States. His visit to evangelical bastion Wheaton College in 1965 proved to be a turning point for Schaeffer. The long-​haired, goateed, lederhosen-​wearing Schaeffer modeled a new kind of engaged Christian intel- lectual, a theological conservative abreast of contemporary culture, including the fine arts, to impressionable clean-​cut students. Schaeffer’s talks given in the mid to late 1960s were compiled into three popular books: The God Who Is There (1967), Escape From Reason (1968), and He Is There and Is Not Silent (1972). Through a quick and provocative survey of Western philosophy and art in the first two books, Schaeffer sought to show how secularists could not live consist- ently on the basis of their modern materialist assumptions. In the third volume, he contended that classical Christian orthodoxy was the only logical alternative for thinking people. Disagreeing with Van Til, Schaeffer held that non-​Christians and Christians shared a common rationality, which could be appealed to profit- ably in Christian apologetics.21 Although Schaeffer’s approach was creative and insightful in some respects and certainly far less idiosyncratic than Rushdoony’s interpretive template, evangelicals who went on to pursue graduate studies in philosophy (many initially inspired by Schaeffer’s trilogy) quickly discovered nu- merous flaws in his approach. As Barry Hankins has concluded, “Schaeffer’s idio- syncratic interpretations were the result of his isolation from Christian scholars, his tendency to place history on the procrustean bed of American fundamen- talism, and his propensity to view history in terms of decline and fall.”22 The Schaeffers moved back to the United States in 1976, and soon Francis’s message began to evolve. His new book, How Should We Then Live?, represented a Christian response to the successful BBC series on the history of Western art and architecture by Kenneth Clarke, Civilisation. Like Clarke’s project, it in- cluded a film, this one produced by the Schaeffers’ youngest son, Franky. Some attribute the more polemical and confrontational tone in Francis Schaeffer’s later work to his son’s influence, and that is partly correct.How Should We Then Live? rehearsed much of the historical overview of philosophy contained in the earlier trilogy, though it now extended the narrative back to ancient Greece and Rome. The most important new element, however, was the call to Christian political engagement issued by both the book and the film. Less prominent now were Schaeffer’s earlier expressions of environmental concern (seePollution and the Death of Man: A Christian View of Ecology [1970]) and cautions that “patriotic 207

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loyalty must not be identified with Christianity.”23 Instead, Schaeffer concluded with a call to action. The galvanizing issue became the 1973 Supreme Court de- cision in Roe v. Wade regarding abortion. Evidence suggests that Franky played a decisive role in getting his father to become openly political and champion what had been previously seen as mostly a Roman Catholic concern. The court ruling confirmed Schaeffer’s view that governing elites had adopted the age’s individual- istic relativism, essentially making the law say whatever the justices wanted. The book and accompanying film marked a clear shift in Schaeffer’s thinking, away from treating secular humanism as a mistaken worldview and toward targeting humanists as elitist individuals involved in a larger conspiracy to effect radical change. This significant transition brought Schaeffer more into line with other leaders of the Religious Right by the end of the 1970s. The culmination of this shift is evident in Schaeffer’s last book,A Christian Manifesto (1981). Unlike its predecessors, this book focused primarily on the United States and on recent challenges to traditional mores. The book’s opening chapters developed a historical argument for the Christian char- acter of the American political order, beginning in the colonial period and following events through the Founding and Early National eras. Unlike modern relativists, Schaeffer argued, the American colonists subscribed to traditional ethical absolutes and sought to create a republic based on the idea of a higher law, not on the laws of men. Schaeffer especially highlighted the teaching of the English Puritan Samuel Rutherford, especially as contained in his essay Lex Rex and its supposed influence on the Founders. Unlike moderns, Rutherford taught that the law was supreme and that when rulers set themselves up as the law, they could be forcibly removed. Drawing from the work of evangelical lawyer John Whitehead (notably, a student of Rushdoony’s), Schaeffer had first mentioned Rutherford inHow Should We Then Live? but now pursued the point further. In describing Rutherford’s position, he commented, “Only when the magistrate acts in such a way that the governing struc- ture of the country is being destroyed . . . is he to be relieved of his power and au- thority.” But that was precisely the contemporary challenge, Schaeffer claimed. “The whole structure of our society is being attacked and destroyed. It is being given an entirely opposite base which gives exactly opposite results.” Rutherford’s ideas were supposedly channeled to the patriot leaders through Presbyterian clergyman and Princeton instructor John Witherspoon, and allegedly influenced even those who were not orthodox Christians. Like Rushdoony, Schaeffer cherry-​picked only those examples that appeared to confirm his idiosyncratic interpretation. While thinkers like Jefferson were indebted to Locke, Schaeffer asserted without evidence that “Locke had secularized Lex Rex [but] had drawn heavily from it.”24 After the Revolution, those who drafted the Federal Constitution and led the young Republic in its early decades insisted that religious faith was a bulwark for the political order in particular and for society at large. The First Amendment, 208

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Schaeffer maintained, had only sought to avoid a coercive federal religious es- tablishment; it did not seek “a total separation of religion from the state.” As his book moved quickly through the nineteenth century, Schaeffer returned to the arguments of conservatives such as Chancellor James Kent whose judicial ruling in 1811 upheld a blasphemy conviction in New York and Joseph Story’s 1829 claim that “there never has been a period in which Common Law did not recognize Christianity as laying its foundation.” While the Founders had under- stood the Christian “base of government and law,” Schaeffer contended, the re- cent “takeover” of America by secular humanists was producing a repudiation of this position. As this liberal–​humanist shift occurred in public policy, philos- ophy, and theology during the twentieth century, very few orthodox Christians in various walks of life sounded an appropriate alarm because, lamented Schaffer, evangelicals were “not very good at blowing trumpets.” Despite having previously eschewed partisan politics, Schaeffer went on to describe Ronald Reagan’s elec- tion as grounds for rejoicing by evangelicals and representing “an open window” of opportunity for Christians. The political “conservative swing in the United States in the 1980 election” was now treated by Schaeffer as part of a larger spir- itual movement.25 Not all of the earlier, prophetic Schaeffer, however, had disappeared. Although expressing hope about the triumph of conservative elements within the Republican Party, he acknowledged that many political conservatives were either not Christians or did not understand the deeper theological and philo- sophical issues underlying the contemporary debates. He admitted candidly that conservatives and liberals were often “both operating on a humanistic base.” “As Christians,” he explained, “we must stand absolutely and totally opposed to the whole humanist system, whether it is controlled by conservative or liberal elements. Thus Christians must not become officially aligned with either group just on the basis of the name it uses.” Of course, such an alignment, though perhaps not yet official, was already well under way. Schaefer speculated about the possible need for civil disobedience if the window of opportunity was shut. “It is not too strong to say that we are at war, and there are no neutral parties in the struggle,” Schaeffer affirmed. “One either confesses that God is the final authority, or one confesses that Caesar is Lord.”26 In short, Schaeffer by 1980 sounded much more like other evangelical commentators who had turned in a politically conservative direction during the 1960s and before. Like them, he embraced a more partisan approach and took pains to enlist the history of the Founding Era to argue for a self-​consciously Christian America, often with little critique of America’s polit- ical order or history. The leading critics of Schaeffer’s new political approach were again evangelicals who had connections to Calvin College and espoused a more Kuyperian approach 209

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to political engagement. They had closer ties to a confessional sort of Protestantism that had been less influenced by American Fundamentalism. More important, their academic training provided them greater interaction with secular scholars and made them less tolerant of Schaeffer’s frequent simplifications. Historian George Marsden of Calvin wrote Schaeffer after reading theChristian Manifesto. Marsden defended his expert testimony in court (attacked by Schaeffer) against a new Arkansas law that required (rather than simply allow) the teaching of cre- ationism in the state’s public schools. He noted that despite Schaeffer’s praise of the Magisterial Reformers, he apparently dissented from their more theocratic approach to the political order. Instead, Schaeffer endorsed the more secularized political thought of Locke and his followers among the Revolutionary gener- ation, ideas rooted in natural law notions rather than in the Bible.27 Marsden recognized what had been a central feature of evangelical political thinking since the 1920s—​the acceptance of classical liberal paradigms and the abandonment of earlier templates constructed by Reformed conservatives such as William Greene, Theodore Woolsey, or Timothy Dwight and others. Moreover, their exchange highlighted the differences between the methods of the evangelist and popular- izer on the one side and those of the academic on the other. Marsden stressed that accuracy in comparatively small details was crucial to academic historians; certainly sloppiness about facts would not earn Christian scholars any credibility in the wider academy. Much of the research for A Christian Manifesto had been done by John Whitehead, a lawyer with no graduate academic training in history. A 1982 Newsweek article critical of Schaeffer led Wheaton historian Mark Noll to enter the fray. Although Noll originally wrote to Schaeffer to apologize that only his critical comments had been quoted in the piece, their extensive exchange of letters soon became fairly heated. Noll politely but firmly rejected Schaeffer’s assertions about the influence of Reformation thinking upon the Founders. As biographer Barry Hankins describes the argument, Noll maintained that even “explicitly evangelical founders deliberately set aside the Bible and the whole category of revelation when they entered the political arena.” Perhaps most sig- nificantly, Noll invoked the example of Dutch Neo-​Calvinist Abraham Kuyper. Unlike Schaeffer, Kuyper (a political activist) fought for Christian principles but not by invoking some idealized Christian past. For Noll, Schaeffer’s filiopiety about the Founders was undermining his Christian apologetics, and Marsden agreed that Schaeffer’s ministry was more effective before it became embroiled in contemporary political causes. Noll sought to get Schaeffer to do the hard work of rethinking evangelical political theology, rather than simply adopting the secular assumptions of laissez-​faire conservatives. Schaeffer’s response to Noll was predictably prickly; writing to John Whitehead, he commented, “I am in- creasingly convinced that this stream of Christian historians is one more element, 210

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along with those who devaluate Scripture and those who confuse the socialistic program with the kingdom of God, who really must be challenged.”28 As far as Schaeffer was concerned, naïve Christian academics were taking the wrong side in the emergent culture war, and he suspected that their disloyalty to his right- eous cause was rooted in quasi-​liberal theology. Marsden and Noll, however, fully grasped that Schaeffer was guilty of the same error for which he had attacked so many evangelicals. He uncriti- cally endorsed the problematic Enlightenment–​Christian amalgam of the Revolutionary patriots while ironically denouncing his evangelical opponents for not being consistently biblical. Like too many of the Founders he praised, Schaeffer had not managed to construct a genuinely Christian political theology but had instead unwittingly embraced secular models covered with a fairly su- perficial pietist veneer.29 Moderates within mainline Protestant denominations agreed with Marsden and Noll. Gabriel Fackre, a United Church of Christ theologian who taught at Andover Newton Seminary, criticized leaders of the Religious Right for importing unscriptural political ideas into their thinking. While he appreciated their attention to core Christian doctrines and their eth- ical zeal, Fackre maintained (in a 1982 book) that the clerical leaders of the move- ment had unwittingly adopted a different version of secular humanism. As he concluded, “the substitution of human opinion for God’s Word, Jesus Christ, can take place under the most pious of auspices. The implicit secular humanism of the Religious Right, which imports partisan political judgments and culture-​bound mores into the proclamation of the Gospel, is as anthropocentric as the explic- itly self-​congratulatory humanism of the secular left.”30 Meanwhile, the debate with Marsden and Noll only convinced Schaeffer that genuine Christian scholar- ship should be fashioned primarily to serve the political program of the Religious Right. Before his political turn, Schaeffer had argued that “one of the greatest injustices we do to our young people is to ask them to be conservative,” but by the early 1980s he had clearly changed his mind.31 Schaeffer’s influence among American evangelicals has been extensive and long lasting. Part of the breadth of his influence can be attributed to the distinc- tive phases in his lifelong ministry and the unique focus of his writing within those different phases. Certainly his early critical engagement with modernist and existentialist thought taught his followers to take the concerns of alienated youth seriously and to attempt a sweeping worldview analysis. Such an approach definitely broke with the carefully circumscribed model of Christian social in- volvement adopted by Machen and reflected in the Southern Presbyterian “spirit- uality of the church” position. The implicit message of Schaeffer’s trilogy was that culture was primary, in some respects “upstream” from politics and thus must not be neglected by evangelicals.32 Yet, as previously noted, Schaeffer’s later, more 211

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politicized writing often linked Christianity with particular candidates or uncrit- ical patriotism. Still, Schaeffer brought an impassioned, theologically informed focus to the abortion issue and was instrumental in galvanizing evangelical opposition to the Roe v. Wade (1973) decision. In a 7–​2 ruling, the Supreme Court on January 22, 1973, found state laws outlawing abortion unconstitutional (some on the books since the mid-​nineteenth century), arguing that they violated a woman’s right to privacy allegedly rooted in the Fourteenth Amendment. The major party platforms of 1976 took opposing positions on the question of a constitutional amendment to ban abortion, thus laying the foundation for how the question would be debated in subsequent years. An antiabortion campaign soon emerged in response, though initially supported mostly by Catholics. Surprisingly, even orthodox Protestants were not critical of the decision initially, including the Southern Baptist Convention. Well into the 1970s, many Protestants con- tinued to see the question of legalized abortion as primarily a Catholic issue, but Schaeffer convincingly explained that the failure to protect unborn human life was evidence of a broader social descent into ethical relativism. Having much earlier shelved some of the shrill anti-​Catholicism of Carl McIntire and his Bible Presbyterians, Schaeffer understood the need for evangelicals and Catholics to be co-​belligerents even if significant doctrinal differences remained. As Schaeffer put it, “there is no Biblical mandate against evangelical Christians joining hands for political and social causes as long as there was no compromise of theolog- ical integrity.” Schaeffer’s argument persuaded a Fundamentalist Baptist, the Reverend Jerry Falwell, to open his Moral Majority organization to Catholics, Jews, and Mormons.33 One evangelical who imbibed Schaeffer’s uncompromising ethical idealism was antiabortion activist Randall Terry. Terry implemented the civil disobedi- ence ideas only hinted at in Schaeffer’s later works. While some evangelicals who attended showings of How Should We Then Live? organized to register evangel- ical voters, Terry took a more aggressive approach. While an impressionable stu- dent at Elim Bible Institute, Terry became radicalized about the abortion issue by reading Schaeffer’s works. Founding Operation Rescue in 1987, Terry chose the route of civil disobedience, managing to close temporarily some abortion clinics through massive sit-​ins. “If you want to understand Operation Rescue,” Terry observed, “you have to read Schaeffer’sA Christian Manifesto.” Thousands of evangelical protestors were arrested for participating in such protests in the years that followed.34 When Terry became frustrated and disappointed with the lack of policy change on the abortion question, he tilted toward Rushdoony’s Reconstructionism. By the early 1990s, he stressed more the need to return to biblical law and the need for Christians to gain political power. Speaking to 212

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followers in 1993, he proclaimed, “Our goal is a Christian Nation . . . we have a biblical duty, we are called by God to conquer this country. We don’t want equal time. We don’t want Pluralism. We want theocracy. Theocracy means God rules. I’ve got a hot flash. God rules.”35 Another evangelical leader of the 1980s and 1990s whose thinking was pro- foundly shaped by Schaeffer’s books was Tim LaHaye (1926–2016).​ Raised in a blue-​collar Detroit family, LaHaye graduated from Bob Jones College in 1950 and by the late 1950s was pastoring a large Baptist Church in San Diego. In the early 1970s, LaHaye founded what would later become San Diego Christian College and was increasingly involved in political activity. He also participated in Christian Voice, a path-​breaking evangelical political organization that arose from antipornography and anti–​gay-​rights campaigns in California and introduced Congressional voter guides or “report cards.” LaHaye wrote The Battle for the Mind in 1979, a best-​selling popularization of some of Schaeffer’s ideas, especially the threat posed by secular humanism and the need for Christian political action. LaHaye dedicated the book to Schaeffer, whom he called hyper- bolically “the renowned philosopher-​prophet of the twentieth century.” LaHaye expressed his admiration for “the enormous contribution his books, movies, seminars, and other teachings have made in the current awakening of our people to the dangers of humanism.” His book stressed what were by then becoming fa- miliar points in this sort of literature: America had been founded as a Christian nation; secular humanism had become an influential force in recent decades; and humanistic ideas were promoted by the public school system and by cultural and political elites who were out of touch with the vast majority of Americans who, while not evangelicals, were at least theists and subscribed to traditional mores. “Our unique check-​and-​balance system of government would never have been conceived by humanism,” claimed LaHaye. “It is borrowed,” he asserted, “directly from Scripture.”36 Since LaHaye argued that this poisonous secular humanism was subscribed to by political liberals, voting for conservative Republicans auto- matically became a Christian duty.

Two Attempts at Political Organization: Falwell and Robertson LaHaye played a central part with others in forming the Moral Majority in 1979. Here again, one sees Schaeffer’s influence. The latter’s encouraging telephone call in 1978 to Jerry Falwell appears to have performed an important role in con- vincing the previously separatist, apolitical Baptist to step out onto the political stage. Falwell wrote later that Schaeffer had “shattered that world of isolation for 213

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me . . . . He was the one who pushed me into the arena and told me to put on the gloves.”37 Falwell had prepared for the ministry at a Fundamentalist seminary in Missouri, and returned to Lynchburg, Virginia in 1956 to found Thomas Road Baptist Church. Thanks to his effective use of radio and television, Falwell’s con- gregation grew to several thousand members, and he established Liberty Baptist College in 1971. Although Falwell had originally argued that evangelical clergy should not play an explicitly political role, he had become increasingly interested in the national political scene by the 1970s. Falwell used a musical bicentennial musical tour (“I Love America”) performed by Liberty students to blend evangel- ical moral concerns and patriotism. At these rallies, Falwell deplored the culture’s ethical decline and exhorted average Americans to speak out. Given the large au- dience for his Old Time Gospel Hour, it was not surprising that several conserv­ ative Republicans identified Falwell as the ideal agent to mobilize evangelicals for the conservative cause in general and Ronald Reagan’s candidacy in particular. The strategists included Paul M. Weyrich (founding president of the Heritage Foundation), Richard A. Viguerie (direct-​mail guru and Goldwater supporter), Ed McTeer (an evangelical and former executive at Colgate-​Palmolive), and Howard Phillips (chair of the Conservative Caucus). At meetings with Falwell in early 1979 they found him to be an enthusiastic recruit. The creation of Moral Majority, Inc. (MM) enabled Falwell to engage in partisan politics without undermining his church’s tax-​exempt status.38 As noted in previous chapters, when Fundamentalists had been politically active previously, it had either been in anticommunist crusades (such as those conducted by Carl McIntire and Billy James Hargis) or moral reform campaigns like temperance or Prohibition. Falwell now turned to what Marsden characterizes as a “national moral crusade,” incorporating even Catholics and Jews.39 Although this represented a departure for him, Falwell’s Fundamentalist militancy continued to show through, espe- cially in MM’s combative tone and penchant for black-​and-​white thinking. One of Falwell’s best-​selling books, Listen, America!, published several months after the creation of MM, reveals his political thinking. The TV preacher began the volume with a bleak description of the nation’s “military, economic, and political malaise,” but he insisted that “America’s moral dilemma” was even more alarming. He then outlined what he characterized as the country’s three major crises: “our military, economic, and political malaise.” In discussing the first crisis (i.e., military), Falwell was on what had long been familiar anticommunist ground for many Fundamentalists, at least since the 1950s. The military crisis was the product of leaders who were blind to the enormous Soviet military threat. Too many politicians were considering disarmament, despite the Soviets having alleg- edly achieved both nuclear and conventional superiority. Only the recent inva- sion of Afghanistan had awakened some US decision-​makers, who had previously 214

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been asleep at the switch. Second, Falwell argued that America was “in desperate trouble economically.” Here his emphasis was not on recent, specific problems but on broader, long-​term trends. Since the 1930s, the government had simply become far too intrusive and Americans had foolishly “exchanged freedom for security.” This mentality was reflected in a sort of “welfarism” that undermined personal responsibility. “Welfare programs tend to destroy one’s initiative, skill, work habits, and productivity,” he claimed, without offering any empirical evi- dence.40 Indeed, Falwell suggested that if all Christians tithed, Christian charities could provide for the needy and the size and activities of the federal government could be reduced dramatically. In this way, Falwell echoed well-​established bib- lical defenses of the modern American economic order going back to J. Howard Pew and his predecessors. “The free-​enterprise system,” claimed Falwell, “is clearly outlined in the Book of Proverbs in the Bible . . . . Competition in business is bib- lical. Ambitious and successful business management is clearly outlined as a part of God’s plan for His people.”41 But Christians could perhaps make the most important contribution with re- gard to the third crisis: “a vacuum of leadership.” Like many evangelical preachers, Falwell began his discussion of government by quoting St. Paul’s explanation of the role of the magistrate in Romans 13. The Apostle taught that state authority was ordained by God and that Christians owed the magistrate their obedience, even if she or he was not an admirable person, as long as the magistrate did not ask citizens to do anything the Bible proscribed. Yet, Falwell cited this familiar Pauline passage without pursuing the deeper implications of the divine origin of government. In fact, he moved quickly to contend that Americans had un- wisely “made a god of government,” not exactly the Apostle’s point. But Falwell maintained that certain types of state activism were appropriate, at least in terms of US global leadership. Falwell subscribed firmly to the concept of American exceptionalism—​that the United States was uniquely blessed by God and called to play a larger redemptive role. Falwell’s case was based (like that of Rushdoony and Schaeffer before him) on a now-familiar,​ though highly selective, reading of American history. “I believe,” he declared, “that God promoted America to a greatness no other nation has ever enjoyed because her heritage is one of a re- public governed by law predicated on the Bible.” Finally, Falwell argued that only the political engagement of Christians could put America “back on a divine course.” Christians needed to register to vote and to vote for candidates with firm religious commitments. Only those who were knowledgeable students of sacred scripture could be effective leaders. These faithful leaders could help remedy what Falwell described as five “national sins”: abortion, homosexual behavior, pornog- raphy, humanism, and the “fractured family.”42 America’s corporate sins would not be corrected without Christians in government, and the large number of both evangelical Christians and others of good will could reverse this perilous course. 215

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Although Falwell invoked scripture frequently in his political treatise, it was a biblicism of a curiously limited or blinkered sort. While Falwell affirmed that “the Bible is absolutely infallible, without error in all matters pertaining to faith and practice,” seldom did he discuss larger themes central to scripture.43 More often, his method adhered to a sort of simple proof-​texting, citing individual verses of questionable relevance (as when he asserted that Proverbs taught capitalism). Indeed, the authorities invoked to buttress particular assertions, were frequently secular ones. On military or foreign policy matters, Falwell was fond of quoting Marine Corps General Lewis W. Walt; in the realm of politics, Senator Jesse Helms was a favorite; on economic matters, Milton Freedman’s Free To Choose was frequently cited, along with William E. Simon (conservative treasury secre- tary under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford). As Protestant theologian Robert McAfee Brown commented at the time in Christianity & Crisis, Falwell’s approach was “biblicist, all right, evoking those stray verses here and there . . . . But it never subjects itself to the great biblical themes of doing justice and loving mercy, or acknowledging that God is truly Lord of all (even the Russians), or suggesting that peacemaking rather than warmaking might be an important task for believers.” Moreover, following in the footsteps of Cold Warrior preachers, such as Billy James Hargis, Falwell demonized his opponents, painting liberals as indistinguishable from communists. Like his predecessors, Falwell brought with him, as he entered the public square, an apocalyptic tone and a Manichean tendency to divide the world into black and white. Accordingly, his political opponents were evil and ungodly, not just mistaken.44 Constructive consensus building seemed ruled out of order in Falwell’s brand of conservative politics. The Moral Majority thus borrowed some of the worldview terminology of Kuyperian thought but as overly simplified by Francis Schaeffer and Tim LaHaye. They saw secular humanism as a virulent cultural force and portrayed the cultural crisis as an apocalyptic battle of worldviews. Although the portrait painted was often overdrawn, it persuaded many American evangelicals confronting the major cul- tural changes of the 1960s and early 1970s. By the late 1980s, the torch had been passed to another evangelical cleric, Pat Robertson. One can recognize both continuity with previous postwar evan- gelical political projects and change in Robertson’s campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in 1988 and in the creation of the CC a year later under wunderkind Ralph Reed. Robertson came from an affluent political household with a father who had been elected to both the House and the Senate from Virginia. Although Robertson served briefly in the Marines and earned a Yale law degree in 1955, he ultimately chose the Christian ministry, being ordained a Southern Baptist clergyman in 1961. An entrepreneur with considerable organ- izational skills, Robertson created the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) in 1960 and soon began cohosting its anchor program, a newsmagazine called 216

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the “700 Club.” CBN developed a national audience of more than a million viewers; it was the third-​largest cable network in the United States at one time. Accordingly, when Robertson endorsed Ronald Reagan’s candidacy against the Southern Baptist Jimmy Carter in 1980, political operatives took notice. The immediate wake of the Carter presidency witnessed new cooperative efforts be- tween Republican political operatives and evangelicals. Howard Phillips, Richard Viguerie, and Paul Weyrich (among others) helped construct an evangelical or- ganization closely wedded to the Republican Party.45 Robertson praised Reagan’s performance as president but maintained he had never been sufficiently conserv­ ative. By 1986, Robertson was prepared to run for the Republican presidential nomination. Weyrich gushed that “Robertson understands politics . . . better than anyone else in the Religious Right.” Described as “telegenic and personable,” Robertson had managed to avoid close connections with Falwell and associations with some of his earlier missteps. Elements of the Republican Party establish- ment were surprised and worried about the size and influence of the evangelical constituency, and a few even believed that Robertson had a chance to defeat in- sider favorites George H. W. Bush and Bob Dole. Yet Robertson quickly dis- covered that he could not rely on unanimous evangelical support. Pentecostal televangelist Jimmy Swaggert backed him, but the LaHayes, Falwell, and many other prominent Southern Baptists notably did not. Robertson’s Pentecostal habits appear to have hurt him among dispensationalist Baptists, and more sec- ular conservatives were also frightened by old videotapes of Robertson engaged in faith healing and tongue-speaking​ on his television program. Robertson did well in a few state caucuses but not in statewide primaries; he won only 9% of the overall Republican vote as Bush captured the nomination.46 Moreover, persistent concerns were raised in the press about Robertson’s alleged theocratic inclinations. Although many of these were exaggerated, the candidate did have indirect connections with some elements of Christian Reconstructionism. Back in late 1979, Robertson had published “A Christian Action Plan for the 1980s,” which was subsequently reprinted in Gary North’s newsletter Biblical Economics Today. As the piece demonstrated, Robertson subscribed to economic views outside of what was then the accepted mainstream of the Republican Party, including advocating a return to the gold standard and harsh criticism of the Federal Reserve. His “Action Plan” sounded in places like a throwback to ultraconservative tracts of the early 1950s, or even the 1930s. Indeed, the article began by invoking the fiftieth anniversary of the stock market crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression. While he credited “New Deal Keynesian policies” as helping “reverse the economic tragedy then,” Robertson held that this approach was one of the causes of the current economic crisis.47 Among the five “critical problems America must face now,” Robertson listed inflation and 217

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its chief cause—​deficit spending—​as number one, rather than moral or spiritual malaise. Second was the devaluation of the currency brought on by President Nixon’s departure from the gold standard. Meanwhile, Robertson’s discussion of the proper role of government sounded like a Liberty League tract. The lim- itation of individual freedoms by New Deal legislation, Robertson protested, amounted to “dictatorship.” The welfare state’s subsequent expansion even in- cluded determining “who could eat in a restaurant” (a thinly veiled reference to the Civil Rights Act of 1964). Echoing early Cold War polemics, Robertson’s fifth “critical problem” was the communist threat at home and abroad. Communist sympathizers had shaped American policy; the expansion of the Soviet Union was partly the product of an American third column, and there existed a “flir- tation with Marxism on the part of the U.S. intellectual community . . . which unfortunately, in some quarters still continues to this day.”48 Most of Robertson’s action plan was not especially Christian. He did not ex- plicitly invoke God until the very last page. Here, he argued that before the listed challenges could be addressed effectively “a profound moral revival in the land” was necessary. He exhorted Christians to get involved in the electoral process to fight “the triumph of humanism and atheism in our land,” including in the field of public education (where he denounced court-​directed busing). Building on his success in television, moreover, Robertson encouraged Christians to “be- come aware of the awesome power of the media to mold our moral and political consensus.”49 Hence Robertson did not logically derive particular policies from theological or biblical premises but, rather, he explicitly appealed to Christianity only at the end of his argument when addressing the practical question of how to fix the five critical problems. Like many of his predecessors, Robertson treated Christianity in utilitarian terms. Disappointment with his failed presidential campaign in 1988 prompted Robertson to hire the young Ralph Reed in January 1989. Reed had actually supported New York Congressman Jack Kemp in 1988 and had earlier been a combative, hard-​drinking, and smoking politico until his conversion in 1983. Robertson envisaged a new national organization to rally Christians to the con- servative cause. Focusing on building an extensive grassroots organization and avoiding some of the Moral Majority’s tactical and public relations mistakes, Reed’s CC enrolled 150,000 members by 1992. National power would not come quickly, said Reed, but gradually by means of winning local and state elections. What Reed constructed looked quite different from what others had attempted before him. The CC, writes historian Daniel K. Williams, “was more closely al- lied with the Republican Party than any previous Christian Right organization had been, and it exercised an unprecedented degree of influence in the party.”50 In order to build credibility among party elites, for instance, Reed chose not to 218

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support the more solidly prolife and culturally conservative Pat Buchanan in 1992. Reed explained that he wanted to avoid the sort of political marginalization of Christians that had led to Robertson’s spectacular failure in 1988. By 1995, Reed had put together a CC mailing list of roughly 350,000. Reed succeeded in grassroots organization where MM had failed because the CC was led by local businessmen and businesswomen, not clergy. Further, Reed’s ap- proach was more political and pragmatic than the MM had been.51 Fund-raising​ had been too high a priority for the MM; Reed focused instead on grassroots or- ganization. Linked closely to these characteristics was what one set of scholars has described as “the obvious Republican partisanship of the Christian Coalition.”52 After Bill Clinton’s election victory in 1992, followed by the Congressional Republican comeback under Speaker Newt Gingrich and his conservative “Contract with America,” Reed’s CC embraced Republican Party fiscal or tax issues that were clearly tangential to the culture war agenda. In this regard, Reed helped convert, in the words of John C. Green, “social conservatives into political conservatives and Republicans.”53 The CC’s focus on economic issues such a tax cuts eventually drew heavy fire from some evangelical critics. Popular radio host and Focus on the Family founder James Dobson expressed his disgust with Reed’s apparent attempt to deemphasize traditional ethical issues, such as abortion, and his opposition to CC’s support for party nominee Bob Dole in 1996. Dobson actually voted for third-​party candidate Howard Phillips, who ran on the conservative Taxpayer Party ticket. Although Dobson did not explicitly embrace Reconstructionism, Phillips had long-​standing ties to Rushdoony. 54 When Reed left the CC in 1997, Dobson assumed a leading position among evangelical political activists. Near the end of his tenure, Reed wrote an account of the CC, its activities, and the vision behind them. From the outset of Active Faith: How Christians Are Changing the Soul of American Politics (1996), it was clear that Reed was not from the same mold as many of his evangelical predecessors; the contrast with Jerry Falwell was particularly striking. For reasons both generational (Reed was born in 1961 and therefore did not experience the heyday of Cold War anticommunism) and educational (he earned a PhD in American history from Emory in 1989), his style and approach were very different. Certainly his tone toward his polit- ical opponents was softer. He even acknowledged that some liberals were com- mitted Christians; they were not necessarily evil, just mistaken about certain issues. History suggested that when Christians were convinced that “they had a monopoly on the truth” they actually did harm; notably, Reed cited the Puritans during the English Civil War and at the Salem Witch Trials as examples of this pitfall.55 Christians needed simply to follow the established rules in the political realm as players would do in any organized sport and not demonize their enemies. 219

The Success and Failure of the Religious Right 219 Refining the Message: Reed and Olasky Reed’s academic background was perhaps most evident in his lengthy survey in Active Faith of the role of religious commitment in various American reform movements stretching back to the colonial era. Revealingly, Reed did not begin his book with the familiar argument about the Christian character of America’s founding. Instead, the Christian faith was highlighted as the animating force be- hind many positive changes in American history. For instance, Reed portrayed the Great Awakening of the 1730s and 1740s as a democratizing agent, a revival that opened up political debate beyond “the powdered-​wig intellectuals.” Although Reed referred to his movement as consisting of “religious conservatives,” the con- servative aspect per se was not as visible during his historical survey. Evangelical conservatives, observed Reed, needed to recognize the “painful truth” that “liberals have been correct throughout history on issues of social justice.” Reed thought that the religious faith that animated assorted reformers in American history would make their examples more palatable to his conservative followers. Politically engaged Christians all leaned in a decidedly egalitarian direction in Reed’s account. Both the abolitionist and temperance movements were portrayed as the positive fruit of grassroots evangelical social concern. Perhaps most sur- prisingly, Reed’s lengthy account of the Social Gospel movement was almost entirely positive. He praised it as “a crusade for social justice within American Protestantism that merged traditional faith with radical political reform” and that had an “appealing moral purpose.”56 While Reed acknowledged that the movement was rightly criticized for not recognizing the pervasiveness of original sin, he portrayed its impact as mostly salutary. Reed diverged from the accepted religious conservative narrative as he tackled the twentieth century. First, he broke with early twentieth-​century conservatives by praising effusively William Jennings Bryan. Reed maintained that “it was im- possible to grasp Bryan the politician [and his reform agenda] without coming to terms with his evangelical faith.” Even the early labor and Progressive movements were depicted favorably in Reed’s account because of their explicitly religious perspective and political rhetoric. Reed was definitely critical of FDR and the New Deal, but he insisted that Roosevelt’s motives were laudable and that his arguments for reform were often deeply embedded in Christian thinking. Although he complained that New Dealers placed too much confidence in state activism, Reed stressed that their project was “based on a profoundly moral vi- sion of society.” The New Deal may have failed to end the Great Depression, Reed opined, but its appeal to voters was religious in several respects, indeed, in ways that secularized liberals today would find embarrassing. But perhaps Reed’s most notable detour from what had become the conventional Protestant 220

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conservative narrative was his treatment of the Civil Rights Movement. While briefly acknowledging that the Fundamentalist participants in postwar conserv- atism included some “colorful figures,” Reed focused on Martin Luther King, Jr., lauding his courage and inspirational leadership. Again, Reed stressed that “King’s movement was a religious movement from start to finish” and that it possessed a “theology of direct political action” that religious conservatives had thus far failed to develop. Unlike Goldwater, Pew, and in contrast to the tim- orous editorials in Christianity Today during much of the 1960s, Reed openly praised the Voting Rights Act of 1965. But his account not only celebrated prog- ress on civil rights during the 1950s and 1960s, it also attacked head-​on what Reed termed “the white evangelical church’s . . . shameful legacy of racism.” Reed was optimistic about improvements in this area, but he warned ominously that “God won’t fully bless the pro-family​ movement until it first repented for this legacy of racism.”57 In spite of Reed’s significant departures from what had become the accepted approach for evangelical conservatives since at least the 1950s, Active Faith offered relatively little in terms of a theological or biblical rethinking of the relationship between evangelical Christianity and political conservatism. In fact, Reed can- didly allowed that his adult conversion to evangelicalism had never prompted any sort of political or philosophical reconsideration. As Reed phrased it, “my religious beliefs never changed my views on the issues to any great degree, because my political philosophy was already well developed. As a conservative, I believed in less government, lower taxes, tough laws against crime and drugs, and policies to strengthen the family. After my faith experience, I became more skeptical of government’s ability to legislate morality or reform people’s souls.” Becoming an evangelical, therefore, confirmed his limited government assumptions but did not lead to significant ideological change; rather, it mostly inspired Reed to play the political game more fairly and graciously. “More than shifting my ideology,” he explained, “my Christian faith caused me to shift my tactics.”58 Reed no longer harshly attacked his opponents, and he even tried to befriend some of them. When Reed’s analysis tackled the movement’s theological underpinnings, his treatment was less than probing. Reed sought merely to “answer the ques- tion of why religious people should be involved in the political process,” rather than trace or explain the content of a Christian political vision. Moreover, Reed again stressed tactics more than ideological reflection. “This new political the- ology,” Reed explained, “is defined by its essential optimism, charitable spirit, understanding of the limits of politics, and appreciation both of man’s strength and his moral shortcomings.” In brief, the four core principles that Reed laid out were (1) Strive to use state power to establish justice but do so with restraint be- cause political power invariably corrupts (Reed quoted Reinhold Niebuhr here). 221

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(2) Following St. Paul, Christians should view “citizenship as a spiritual obliga- tion.” (3) Also following the Apostle, Christians should not be reluctant to “as- sert our full rights as American citizens,” just as Paul did by using his protections as a Roman citizen as described in the Book of Acts. (4) In the public square, Christians should model “grace and humility in speech and deed.” President Reagan was good at observing this sort of charity, but too many conservatives had recently indulged in character assassinations of Bill Clinton. Reed did repudiate explicitly Rushdoony and theonomy, which he described as “an authoritarian ide- ology that threatens the most basic civil liberties of a free and democratic society.” Reed stressed that religious conservatives “must firmly and openly exclude the triumphalist and authoritarian elements from the new theology of Christian po- litical involvement.” He also appeared to recognize how political conservatism could use evangelicals and make “our churches . . . mere means to a partisan end.” 59 Yet beyond being “pro-family,”​ the movement Reed described had few specific goals and little Christian theology shaping its understanding of society or of the political realm. The ultimate goal was “a changed society and a thoroughly Judeo-​ Christian culture,” declared Reed, but what exactly that culture looked like and how it was either biblically based or authentically conservative remained more implied than explicit.60 More secularly minded neoconservatives registered their approval of this new version of Christian conservatism. Writing in Commentary, Adam Wolfson noted positively what he characterized as the “secular character” of Reed’s “program.” Reed’s principles “are not so much distinctively Christian, though they certainly draw sustenance from the Christian theological tradition, as distinctively bourgeois.”61 Wolfson deemed that a welcome feature of Reed’s approach. Another evangelical who exercised considerable influence in conservative political circles during the late 1990s and early 2000s was University of Texas journalism Professor Marvin Olasky. Although Olasky was a theorist rather than a partisan organizer, he was also (like Reed) an adult convert to evangel- ical Protestantism. Raised in a Jewish home, Olasky had become an atheist as a teen and, briefly, even a young Communist Party member. A graduate of Yale, Olasky went on to complete a doctorate in American Studies at the University of Michigan in 1976, becoming a Christian that same year. Like Reed, Olasky’s graduate study and experience in academe distinguished him from many politi- cally engaged evangelical conservatives. While teaching in Austin, Olasky wrote Tragedy of American Compassion (1992) that garnered the attention of several key conservative Republicans, including House Speaker Newt Gingrich and then Texas Governor George W. Bush.62 Olasky’s book was unusual in its historical perspective, in its aim to speak to a wider, non-​Christian audience, and in its narrow focus on poverty as a political 222

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challenge. In sum, the book argued that, though poverty was often more extreme in the past, the needs of the poor were better met mostly through private charities or local public authorities. Big impersonal government bureaucracies often made matters worse since they did not engage the poor as unique individuals with spir- itual needs. Both champions of modern welfare-​state policies and their libertarian critics neglected the ethical and religious dimensions that characterized social work before 1900. Because of the commandeering of charity by public authorities, the political debate regarding welfare policies appeared to have reached a dead end at the close of the twentieth century. Even more than in Reed’s book, his- torical description provided much of the evidence to support Olasky’s critique. Moreover, it was the theology of the periods under study that Olasky credited with shaping of welfare policy. As Olasky explained,

Cultures build systems of charity in the image of the god they worship, whether distant deist, bumbling bon vivant, or “whatever goes” gopher. In colonial America, emphasis on a theistic God of both justice and mercy led to an understanding of compassion that was hard-​headed but warm-​ hearted . . . . Since mercy meant rapid response when people turned away from past practice, malign neglect of those willing to shape up also was wrong.63

Olasky’s approach was more nuanced and more theologically and historically informed than the populist writings of Falwell and Robertson. During the colonial era and for much of the nineteenth century, Olasky claimed that welfare policies were based on a largely Calvinistic understanding of human sinfulness and moral responsibility. Under such a system, the proper roles of neighborhood, church, and family were recognized, and poverty was dis- tinguished from pauperism—​the former the result of circumstances, the latter a bad habit linked to irresponsible dependency. Similarly, the approach of early twentieth-​century Progressives reflected their liberal theology. Now the environ- ment rather than individual moral failing was identified as the root cause of pov- erty. “There were sins but not sin,” wrote Olasky, “evil acts but not evil. Problems arose from social conditions rather than an inherent moral corruption.” By the 1930s and the New Deal, three shifts in thinking were clearly evident: The col- lective became more important than personal responsibility; a dispassionate, bu- reaucratic approach to charity prevailed (which contributed to increased fraud in the system); and many social workers leaned toward Marxist thinking, focusing more on society than on the individual poor.64 The substantial extension of wel- fare programs under President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs during the 1960s only exacerbated these problems. 223

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Although Olasky’s critique of the evils of welfare statism was very familiar to a long line of conservative predecessors, how he reached this position certainly was different. His treatment was more substantial and sophisticated than either the Liberty League tracts or the jeremiads of postwar Fundamentalists. The book’s analysis was informed by ample historical research and featured considerable theological reflection. Also, Olasky’s book served to retrieve and reappropriate for religious conservatives an altruistic and benevolent impulse that had often been lacking in the deepening alliance of evangelicals and political conservatives. Several historians and social workers did disagree with Olasky; they published searching critiques of Olasky’s evidence and generalizations.65 Nevertheless, Olasky’s credentials and his weighty, well-​documented study gave him credibility in both religious and secular conservative circles. Olasky believed that the contemporary policy lesson to be drawn from his historical survey was that private, religiously based organizations could effec- tively take over much of the effort to lift the marginalized out of poverty, though funded indirectly by the government through tax credits. Given his own expe- rience overcoming alcohol abuse through embracing evangelicalism, Governor Bush was attracted to the idea and highlighted it during his 2000 presidential campaign. Once elected, however, the new administration modified the orig- inal plan. Federal grants rather than tax credits were given preference, and the program was implemented in a more centralized way. As Olasky commented later in an interview, “I should have been shrewd enough to know that once you start talking about both grants and credits, the grants would win and the tax credits and vouchers would be tossed to the side . . . . So, unfortunately, many conservatives [now] think of Compassionate Conservatism as just another big government program.”66 But Olasky remained adamant that since the book was, he maintained, simply “based on the Bible and on history” it remained valid, de- spite its failure to be successfully implemented.67 The writings of both Reed and Olasky marked a significant departure for evangelical conservatives, but it proved to be a path not many followed in subsequent years.

Sober Second Thoughts and Retrogression Before Bush’s election in 2000, especially during Clinton’s second term, dis- sent had been bubbling up among evangelical conservatives, especially among those critical of the tactics of the CC and the Moral Majority before it. Two of the most high-​profile dissenters were popular newspaper columnist Cal Thomas (previously a MM vice president) and Baptist minister Ed Dobson (no relation to James Dobson). The two wrote a controversial mea culpa in 1999 highlighting the mistakes of the Moral Majority in particular and of politicized evangelicals in 224

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general. Blinded by Might declared that “whenever the church cozies up to polit- ical power, it loses sight of its all important mission to change the world from the inside out.”68 Put simply, the Religious Right had failed to distinguish properly its Christian faith from a political agenda. Since Christ’s kingdom is not of this world, evangelicals who had thrown in their lot with partisan conservatives had actually surrendered the only truly effective way to transform American society—​ the dynamic power of the gospel. The alternative path was not isolationism but rather adopting a different perspective, one that recognized that the divine plan transcended partisan platforms and that the most important calling for Christians as citizens was to live their lives in an exemplary and gracious way wherever they were planted. This dissenting view was greeted with horrified opposition by those still heavily invested in the Religious Right’s institutions and methods.69 Among the most important recent manifestations of the Religious Right has been the Tea Party movement. Although a few conservative groups had earlier attempted to use the Tea Party moniker (with its historical resonance), it was not until early 2009 that the movement began to take its mature form. The immediate backdrop was the subprime mortgage crisis and the ensuing Great Recession. Some fiscal conservatives reacted angrily to the decision of the outgoing Bush and incoming Obama administrations to bail out several major investment banks with federal funds. These critics first found a voice in the person of CNBC re- porter Rick Santelli who, on February 18, 2009, gave an impromptu and emo- tional televised speech denouncing the bailouts for rewarding irresponsible investor behavior with taxpayers’ money. Several public demonstrations followed Santelli’s rant, focused primarily on the bailouts but also on the burgeoning fed- eral debt and deficits. The following year saw the conservative Republican Scott Brown win the Massachusetts senate seat previously held by Ted Kennedy; while in the House, twenty-​eight conservative Republicans under the leadership of Minnesota Congresswoman Michelle Bachman formed the Tea Party Caucus. In the fall 2010 Congressional elections, Republicans won a majority with roughly thirty victorious candidates enjoying the backing of various Tea Party groups. While Tea Party–​endorsed candidates did less well in 2012, the movement was ac- knowledged to have become a major force within the party, drawing Republicans in a decidedly more conservative direction.70 Academics and journalists have debated the exact nature of this new move- ment. In one of the most thorough scholarly studies to date, Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson portray the Tea Party as a genuinely grassroots move- ment whose influence has been enhanced both by electronic media and select supporters with deep pockets. Local organizations sprang up across the country buoyed by generous Fox News coverage on cable television and endless discus- sion on conservative talk radio. Elite donors, such as the libertarian millionaires 225

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Charles and David Koch and political organizers such as former Congressional Republican leader Dick Armey, quickly hitched their wagons to the movement, keen to amplify its message of fiscal restraint and limited government.71 Because of its more secular focus on economic issues, some commentators have concluded that the movement was distinct from the Religious Right. Empirical evidence suggests, however, that there is considerable overlap between Tea Partiers and evangelical conservatives. Surveys conducted by Robert P. Jones and Daniel Cox demonstrated that eight out of ten movement members identified themselves as Christians, while 57% of their respondents said they considered themselves part of the Christian conservative movement. Further, though movement leaders have not stressed the older moral issues as much, members do not appear to be con- sistent libertarians; in 2010, 63% opposed abortion and only 18% then favored same-sex​ marriage.72 Among the most notable features of the movement is its reversion to the style and rhetoric of the radical right during the 1950s. Historian Sean Wilentz describes the movement as characterized by “a revival of ideas that circulated on the extremist right half a century ago.”73 Absent are the measured arguments of Ralph Reed and Marvin Olasky, with a relapse toward what historian Richard Hofstadter once called the “paranoid style” of anticommunist organizations such as the John Birch Society. A survey of Tea Party conservatives discovered, for instance, that three-​quarters of them held that President Barack Obama’s policies were socialist in design.74 The theme of internal communist subversion that had been less prominent among religious conservatives since the 1960s now took front seat again. Combined with talk of creeping socialism were grand conspiratorial theories made infamous by Birchers decades before.75 Other commentators have argued that the movement is adopting many of the tactics favored by the radical left during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Like some an- tiwar demonstrations, Tea Party protests can take on a carnival look or street the- ater spirit, with protesters sporting tricornered colonial hats and carrying posters with Obama’s image defaced with a Hitler mustache. Unlike the conservative movement that had worked so hard to enter the mainstream of American politics during the 1950s and 1960s, many Tea Partiers appear happy to drop out and em- brace the ideological fringes. In contrast to Buckley (who sought to distance the National Review from extremists like the Birchers), the Tea Party now allies with previously marginalized extremists. Its approach may reflect the despondency of conservative organizer Paul Weyrich who, though Catholic, had done much to draw evangelicals to conservative politics. In 1999, Weyrich lamented in a widely circulated letter, “I no longer believe that there is a moral majority. I do not be- lieve that a majority of Americans actually shares our values.”76 There is an air of resignation or desperation in the Tea Party’s openness to the extremist margins. 226

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Television and radio host Glenn Beck (1964-​ ) best illustrates both this re- turn to Red-​baiting and conspiratorial thinking as well as the lack of Christian theological reflection within Tea Party ranks. Beck’s personal history and reli- gious affiliation make him, at first glance, an unlikely candidate to lead evangel- ical conservatives. A former freewheeling radio personality, Beck is a divorced and remarried father of four who speaks openly of his earlier struggles with drugs and alcohol. His experience with Alcoholics Anonymous led him on a search for a church home, which ended in his conversion to Mormonism in 1999. Beck sees himself as an educator more than simply a radio or television entertainer; indeed, Beck’s program on Fox often assumes the atmosphere of a classroom. Like many Tea Party adherents, Beck argues that Obama is a sort of closet totalitarian and that the country is well on its way down the slippery slope toward socialism. Like some of his predecessors, Beck maintains that the decline began at the turn of the twentieth century, aiming relentless criticism at the Progressive movement in general and Woodrow Wilson in particular.77 Among Beck’s sources is the conspiratorialist Mormon writer W. Cleon Skousen. After a desk job with the FBI, Skousen taught speech and religion at Brigham Young University. During the 1960s, Skousen wrote tracts that bested even the conspiratorial theories of the Birchers. He denounced the Federal Reserve and developed speculations about the Council on Foreign Relations. Although some Mormon authorities criticized Skousen’s writings as extreme, he went on to publish The 5,000 Year Leap in 1981. This book argued that the Constitution of 1787 could best be understood as reflecting biblical rather than Enlightenment principles. Although Skousen died in 2006, Beck’s endorsement of The 5,000 Year Leap as “essential to understanding why our Founders built this Republic the way they did” catapulted the book to the top of best-seller​ lists by 2009. With an audience estimated to be near two million viewers by 2010, Beck has managed to bring (in Wilentz’s words) “neo-​Birchite ideas to an audience beyond any that Welch or Skousen might have dreamed of.”78 Beck’s meteoric rise to popularity among Tea Partiers underlines how comparatively unimpor- tant biblical or theological considerations had apparently become among many evangelical conservatives. Although Beck managed to gather an impressive following, some evangelicals have denounced Beck’s brand of religious conservatism. Russell Moore, presi- dent of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, notes that Beck is yet another example of a popular figure rallying American evangelicals around “at best, a generically theistic civil religion and, at worst, some partisan political movement.” Conservatively inclined evangelicals should have instead been “cultivating a Christian vision of justice and the common good (which would have, by necessity, been nuanced enough to put us sometimes 227

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at odds with our political allies).” But instead they had in recent decades “relied on populist God-​and-​country sloganeering and outrage-​generating talking heads.” “We’ve tolerated,” lamented Moore, “heresy and buffoonery in our lead- ership as long as with it there is sufficient political ‘conservatism.’ ”79 Glenn Beck and the Tea Party movement certainly represent a vivid contrast with the more serious and substantial theological aspirations of a Rushdoony or a Schaeffer. From Russell Moore’s perspective, the trajectory from the thoughtful analysis of Schaeffer to the paranoid fulminations of Beck definitely constitutes a depressing “plummet.” And it is difficult not to concur with his bleak assess- ment.80 The liaison between evangelical Protestantism and political conservatism had been anticipated in the early twentieth century and solidified considerably in the postwar era. Yet, instead of critically rethinking that relationship or analyzing the biblical and theological foundations of their political thought at the close of the century, many Protestant conservatives adopted an even more ideological approach. The rapid rise of the Tea Party movement, its demonizing of President Obama as a religious and ideological “other” (Muslim and socialist), and its rel- ative neglect of the older cultural–​ethical issues such as abortion all confirm the ascendancy of an essentially nontheological and partisan tactic. As the larger cul- ture and its politics continued to secularize, most evangelical conservatives did not go back to the Bible but doubled down on the generic theism, moralism, and sentimental appeals to conventional civil religion offered by Beck and others. Their weakness for a mythicized Protestant American past and their fondness for charismatic authority figures would bring them to consider previously unthink- able alliances in the years to come.