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Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the Religious Right
A surprising and disturbing origin story
There is a commonly accepted story about the rise of the Religious Right in the United States. It goes like this: with righteous fury, American evangelicals entered the political arena as a unified front to fight the legality of abortion after the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.
The problem is this story simply isn’t true.
Largely ambivalent about abortion until the late 1970s, evangelical leaders were first mobilized not by Roe v. Wade but by Green v. Connally, a lesser-known court decision in 1971 that threatened the tax-exempt status of racially discriminatory institutions—of which there were several in the world of Christian education at the time. When the most notorious of these schools, Bob Jones University, had its tax-exempt status revoked in 1976, evangelicalism was galvanized as a political force and brought into the fold of the Republican Party. Only later, when a more palatable issue was needed to cover for what was becoming an increasingly unpopular position following the civil rights era, was the moral crusade against abortion made the central issue of the movement now known as the Religious Right.
In this greatly expanded argument from his 2014 Politico article “The Real Origins of the Religious Right,” Randall Balmer guides the reader along the convoluted historical trajectory that began with American evangelicalism as a progressive force opposed to slavery, then later an isolated apolitical movement in the mid-twentieth century, all the way through the 2016 election in which 81 percent of white evangelicals coalesced around Donald Trump for president. The pivotal point, Balmer shows, was the period in the late 1970s when American evangelicals turned against Jimmy Carter—despite his being one of their own, a professed “born-again” Christian—in favor of the Republican Party, which found it could win their loyalty through the espousal of a single issue. With the implications of this alliance still unfolding, Balmer’s account uncovers the roots of evangelical watchwords like “religious freedom” and “family values” while getting to the truth of how this movement began—explaining, in part, what it has become.
There is a commonly accepted story about the rise of the Religious Right in the United States. It goes like this: with righteous fury, American evangelicals entered the political arena as a unified front to fight the legality of abortion after the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.
The problem is this story simply isn’t true.
Largely ambivalent about abortion until the late 1970s, evangelical leaders were first mobilized not by Roe v. Wade but by Green v. Connally, a lesser-known court decision in 1971 that threatened the tax-exempt status of racially discriminatory institutions—of which there were several in the world of Christian education at the time. When the most notorious of these schools, Bob Jones University, had its tax-exempt status revoked in 1976, evangelicalism was galvanized as a political force and brought into the fold of the Republican Party. Only later, when a more palatable issue was needed to cover for what was becoming an increasingly unpopular position following the civil rights era, was the moral crusade against abortion made the central issue of the movement now known as the Religious Right.
In this greatly expanded argument from his 2014 Politico article “The Real Origins of the Religious Right,” Randall Balmer guides the reader along the convoluted historical trajectory that began with American evangelicalism as a progressive force opposed to slavery, then later an isolated apolitical movement in the mid-twentieth century, all the way through the 2016 election in which 81 percent of white evangelicals coalesced around Donald Trump for president. The pivotal point, Balmer shows, was the period in the late 1970s when American evangelicals turned against Jimmy Carter—despite his being one of their own, a professed “born-again” Christian—in favor of the Republican Party, which found it could win their loyalty through the espousal of a single issue. With the implications of this alliance still unfolding, Balmer’s account uncovers the roots of evangelical watchwords like “religious freedom” and “family values” while getting to the truth of how this movement began—explaining, in part, what it has become.
101 pages, Kindle Edition
First published August 10, 2021
69 people are currently reading
1632 people want to read
About the author
Randall Balmer
42 books68 followersRandall Herbert Balmer, Ph.D. (Princeton University, 1985), is an ordained Episcopal Priest and historian of American religion, and holds the John Phillips Chair in Religion at Dartmouth College. He also has taught at Barnard College; Columbia, Rutgers, Princeton, Drew, Emory, Yale and Northwestern universities; and at Union Theological Seminary. Balmer was nominated for an Emmy Award for the PBS documentary "Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory," based on his book of the same title.
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November 16, 2022
“I’m afraid I don’t find much that I recognize as ‘Christian’ in the actions and policies of the Religious Right.” ~Randall Balmer, 2021
American Evangelicalism today looks little to nothing like the benevolent and progressive movement of its genesis. Early proselytizers campaigned for prison reforms, quality public education, subsidies for the poor and destitute, and increased rights for women. In short, they were in alignment with the teachings of Jesus Christ and embodied a “least of these” philosophy.
“God’s rule requires universal benevolence. I abhor a faith which has no humanity in it and with it. God loves both piety and humanity.” ~Charles G. Finney, Evangelist Minister, 1876
In Bad Faith, Randall Balmer makes a powerful argument that it was not until the mid to late twentieth century that compassionate and benevolent evangelicalism really fell apart.
1970: Following the shooting deaths of four students at Kent State University by the Ohio National Guard, evangelical preacher and leader Billy Graham defended the actions and policies of then president Richard Nixon. Many white evangelicals followed suit.
1973: In apparent opposition to the political shift lead by Graham, fifty-five evangelical leaders gathered at a YMCA in Chicago and drafted what became known as The Chicago Declaration of Evangelical Social Concern. In writing, these 55 prominent religious leaders reaffirmed their commitment to the teachings of Christ. They condemned racism, militarism and social inequity. Additionally, they publicly declared support of women’s rights. Unfortunately for everyone, the Chicago Declaration fell largely on deaf ears.
Enter the Abortion Myth
In spite of the assertions of talking heads like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, it was the protection and preservation of racism [not abortion] that first motivated evangelical engagement in political discourse. Forget ‘Roe v. Wade’ (1973); the Republican Far-Right is founded on ‘Green v. Connally’ (1971).
On June 30 1971, the District Court of D.C. ruled that organizations engaged in racial discrimination or segregation could not be defined as charitable organizations and therefore were not eligible for tax exemption. For the IRS it was officially open-season on private religious schools with long histories of racist exclusion. At the top of their hit list was Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina.
Formed primarily in response to the mandated desegregation order of ‘Brown v. Board of Education,’ 1954, many of these fundamentalist schools had an openly “whites only” policy. Ironically, it was the Christian-Right’s own Richard Nixon who first directed the IRS to rescind tax exemptions for all segregated private (religious) schools. The outcry was immediate:
“We don’t accept any federal money; therefore, the government can’t tell us what to do.”
It must be understood that tax exemption is itself a public subsidy. Although the so-called “Moral Majority” framed ‘Green v. Connally’ as an attack on religious freedom, it was, in truth, a response to racist segregation. The Christian-Right organized and the Moral Majority coalesced to preserve and protect institutionalized racism. Abortion was a non-issue.
Balmer’s research is solid. The modern incarnation of the Christian-Right was inarguably birthed on a foundation of racism and bigotry. The only real question is, does it matter? Does unacknowledged and unreconciled racism tend to fester? Do most evangelicals even know the genealogy of their crusade? Would they even care if they did?
______________________________________
“The Religious New Right did not start because of a concern about abortion. I sat in the non-smoke-filled back room with the Moral Majority and frankly do not remember abortion being mentioned…” ~Ed Dobson, assistant to Rev. Jerry Falwell
“The religious right did not get started in 1962 with prayer in school. And it didn’t get started in ‘73 with Roe v. Wade. It started in ‘77 or ‘78 with the Carter administration’s attack on Christian schools…” ~Grover Norquist, Moral Majority Activist
“…the IRS tried to deny tax exemption to private schools… That more than any single act brought fundamentalists and evangelicals into the political process.” ~Paul Weyrich, co-founder of the Moral Majority
American Evangelicalism today looks little to nothing like the benevolent and progressive movement of its genesis. Early proselytizers campaigned for prison reforms, quality public education, subsidies for the poor and destitute, and increased rights for women. In short, they were in alignment with the teachings of Jesus Christ and embodied a “least of these” philosophy.
“God’s rule requires universal benevolence. I abhor a faith which has no humanity in it and with it. God loves both piety and humanity.” ~Charles G. Finney, Evangelist Minister, 1876
In Bad Faith, Randall Balmer makes a powerful argument that it was not until the mid to late twentieth century that compassionate and benevolent evangelicalism really fell apart.
1970: Following the shooting deaths of four students at Kent State University by the Ohio National Guard, evangelical preacher and leader Billy Graham defended the actions and policies of then president Richard Nixon. Many white evangelicals followed suit.
1973: In apparent opposition to the political shift lead by Graham, fifty-five evangelical leaders gathered at a YMCA in Chicago and drafted what became known as The Chicago Declaration of Evangelical Social Concern. In writing, these 55 prominent religious leaders reaffirmed their commitment to the teachings of Christ. They condemned racism, militarism and social inequity. Additionally, they publicly declared support of women’s rights. Unfortunately for everyone, the Chicago Declaration fell largely on deaf ears.
Enter the Abortion Myth
In spite of the assertions of talking heads like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, it was the protection and preservation of racism [not abortion] that first motivated evangelical engagement in political discourse. Forget ‘Roe v. Wade’ (1973); the Republican Far-Right is founded on ‘Green v. Connally’ (1971).
On June 30 1971, the District Court of D.C. ruled that organizations engaged in racial discrimination or segregation could not be defined as charitable organizations and therefore were not eligible for tax exemption. For the IRS it was officially open-season on private religious schools with long histories of racist exclusion. At the top of their hit list was Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina.
Formed primarily in response to the mandated desegregation order of ‘Brown v. Board of Education,’ 1954, many of these fundamentalist schools had an openly “whites only” policy. Ironically, it was the Christian-Right’s own Richard Nixon who first directed the IRS to rescind tax exemptions for all segregated private (religious) schools. The outcry was immediate:
“We don’t accept any federal money; therefore, the government can’t tell us what to do.”
It must be understood that tax exemption is itself a public subsidy. Although the so-called “Moral Majority” framed ‘Green v. Connally’ as an attack on religious freedom, it was, in truth, a response to racist segregation. The Christian-Right organized and the Moral Majority coalesced to preserve and protect institutionalized racism. Abortion was a non-issue.
Balmer’s research is solid. The modern incarnation of the Christian-Right was inarguably birthed on a foundation of racism and bigotry. The only real question is, does it matter? Does unacknowledged and unreconciled racism tend to fester? Do most evangelicals even know the genealogy of their crusade? Would they even care if they did?
______________________________________
“The Religious New Right did not start because of a concern about abortion. I sat in the non-smoke-filled back room with the Moral Majority and frankly do not remember abortion being mentioned…” ~Ed Dobson, assistant to Rev. Jerry Falwell
“The religious right did not get started in 1962 with prayer in school. And it didn’t get started in ‘73 with Roe v. Wade. It started in ‘77 or ‘78 with the Carter administration’s attack on Christian schools…” ~Grover Norquist, Moral Majority Activist
“…the IRS tried to deny tax exemption to private schools… That more than any single act brought fundamentalists and evangelicals into the political process.” ~Paul Weyrich, co-founder of the Moral Majority
August 11, 2021
Balmer’s excellent analysis is well-argued and well-documented. This is the most thorough case for the racial, white supremacist origins of the Religious Right I have read. It also explains the significance of that origin for the current embodiment of the Religious Right. I hope many read the book and are persuaded.
August 10, 2021
Summary: An expansion of his 2014 Politico article.
This is a very short book that is an expansion of a well-known and controversial article. I listened to the book, and it was less than 2 hours. In paper, it is 128 pages, but those cannot be dense pages.
The rough thesis is that the rise of the religious right was not originally because of concern over abortion or gay rights as the story is sometimes told, but because of the IRS investigation or religious schools' segregation stances. On the narrow thesis, I think that it is hard to argue against race playing a role. Segregation academies, as they are sometimes called, were a response to public school integration requirements, and these Christian schools, which just happened to usually be all white, just happened to appear in the years following Brown v Board. By 1970 (following an IRS rule change), the IRS started to research the rise of these schools and sent requests to the school to ask about their integration policies. Many schools obfuscated or allowed in a small group of minority students to avoid IRS investigation. But Bob Jones and a few others schools were vocal in their segregation. After several initial court cases, the IRS revoked Bob Jones' tax exemption in 1976. Eventually, there was a Supreme Court case in 1983. (Ronald Reagan had a campaign stop at Bob Jones in 1980. George W Bush had a campaign stop in 2000. Also in 2000, Bob Jones University revoked its ban on interracial dating. In 2017, Bob Jones University regained its tax exemption.)
Up until the early 1970s, there was not a strong political movement within the religious right. Some Evangelicals were trying to raise concerns about abortion, but it was not a significant issue. The SBC had a weak resolution in support of allowing limited abortion in 1971. It was not until 1980 that the SBC had a resolution clearly opposing abortion. The Chicago Declaration of Evangelical Social Concern in the fall of 1973 did not mention abortion at all.
Balmer is broadly right in the basic thesis that racial concerns were one of the contributing factors that gave rise to the religious right. I think there was a bit more nuance and detail in Bad Faith than in the Politico article, but I think there should still have been more nuance and detail. This is a concise book, but if he was clearer about how limited his claims are, I think this would be a better book. I know that many understood the Politico article to have a more expansive thesis, something like, "abortion was never really a concern of the religious right, it was always just covert racism all along." That more expansive thesis would be too strong, but I think that the more expansive thesis is a misreading of the article facilitated in part by Balmer not limiting his claims more clearly.
My complaints here are similar to my complaints about White Evangelical Racism. Butler was clear early on that she was talking about a subset of Evangelicals and not all Evangelicals. But at the same time, there was not really enough detail or investigation about why some Evangelicals were more comfortable being complicit in racism or openly embracing segregation. Similarly, in Bad Faith, the thesis about concerns over government investigations of Christian schools around segregation does not spend enough time investigating the various reasons the IRS investigation may have been concerning to a variety of Evangelicals. Many areas, especially in the rural north, did not have Christian schools in the area at all, regardless of segregation status. Some Evangelicals were opposed to segregation but also were concerned about the precedent of regulation of the tax-exempt status of churches based on belief.
A more nuanced investigation would not necessarily undermine the main point that Evangelicals in the religious right (and today) are often willing to work with other Evangelicals that are more overtly embracing forms of racism that they would personally do not embrace. Part of the problem here is that we cannot simply assume a shared definition of racism. For example, racism among White Evangelicals is largely thought of as solely individual animus against individuals of a different race. Black and other racial minority Christians tend to think of the idea of racism more expansively and primarily think of it as a cultural system or institutional reality as well as individual animus.
The strong reaction against Balmer's original piece, I think, was largely based not just on a more expansive understanding of Balmer's thesis, although I think that is part, but also on the individualistic understanding of racism. By saying that race was an important part of the development of the religious right, Balmer was not saying that all, or most, Evangelicals involved were individually racist in all their interactions. Instead, like Jemar Tisby's main point in Color of Compromise, some Christians have opposed racism in all of its forms throughout the history of the United States. But most Christians were willing to be complicit with a culture that practiced a form of racial hierarchy. Or, if they did not actively support a racial hierarchy, they were unwilling to oppose that racial hierarchy enough to end it.
This is a form of complicity that all of us as Christians are involved in every day. We do not endorse slavery, but most of us are not actively investigating our chocolate or our electronics, or other products to ensure that they have no involvement with slave labor. That is not active support of modern slavery, but there is a level of complicity because it is fairly well known that the Chinese are enslaving ethnic minorities and using their labor for manufacturing and that the labor-intensive parts of chocolate production have had a history of the use of slave labor. Or, we may not actively be trying to destroy the environment, but our lifestyles contribute to climate change; we are complicit. As Christians, we need to become more comfortable admitting complicity in communal, cultural, or systemic sin, and then also become more active in addressing that systemic sin.
If you are unfamiliar with Balmer's basic argument, I would read the original Politico article. If you are hoping that this book would be much more nuanced and investigate the reasons why some would have been concerned about the government investigation of Christian schools, even if they were opposed to segregated schooling (let's be honest, many White Evangelicals in the 1970-80s would have thought was within the rights of the school to discriminate because they also had an individualist free-market view of contractual law). I wanted this book to be better than it was. It was more detailed and nuanced than the article, but it wasn't as good as I thought it should have been.
July 1, 2022
A wonderfully written but intellectually unserious book. The author’s understanding of Christianity, doctrine, religion, etc is cartoonish at best.
August 7, 2021
I discovered this book through Englewood Review. Published by Eerdmans, I found it very helpful in my journey to understand how the Christian/Evangelical right were drawn to Donald Trump (and to Ronald Reagan). Balmer carefully relates the history of the evangelical movement from the 1800's to the present. The most relevant discovery that Roe vs. Wade/abortion is and was not the key issue for religious conservatives. It was the 1978 Supreme Court ruling that private schools/colleges/institutions could not keep their tax exempt status is they refused entry to non-whites. The cry became "religious freedom." The premise of this analysis is that early evangelicalism promoted Biblical values like care of the poor, justice for the disenfranchised, and refuge for the immigrant. That was lost in the movement of Jim Crow and the fight against racial justice and equality in the 50's, 60's and 70's. A must read for Christians like me who are at a loss to understand.
March 3, 2022
This is a short, very accessible book that has some shocking and eye-opening documentation. I probably spent more time reading primary sources that were footnoted than I did reading the actual book. If you're curious about the origins of the religious right and want to tease out how the issues of race and abortion have shaped the movement and compromised the church's witness, this book is a great place to start.
March 21, 2023
Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the Religious Right (2021) by Randall Balmer briefly documents the role of racism in the formation of America's conservative Christian voting bloc. In recent (2016 and 2020) elections, overwhelming majorities of white Evangelical Christians voted for Republican Party candidates such as the vulgar authoritarian science-denying pathologically lying demagogue Trump. The movement's coalescence around the conservative basket full of deplorable issues was firmly established by the 2000s. See for example Faith No More: Why People Reject Religion (2011) which says that in general, the more religious you are, the more politically conservative you are, and vice versa.
I take slight issue with the book's title, as "Bad Faith" is redundant: given that faith is belief without sufficient evidence, there is no good faith. William Kingdon Clifford made that point. As a historian of religion, surely Balmer is aware of multiple instances of faith going bad. Perhaps while recounting this latest example he might ponder the question of why faith keeps producing the same result. Might it, for example, have something to do with faith's rejection of critical thinking and its embrace of selective willful ignorance? Those are not habits of mind one associates with virtue. Rather, they are traits of the self-serving narcissist and the psychopath. When religion teaches people to ignore some truths, how can it be surprising when they ignore other truths, with harmful results?
Many books cover a similar political landscape. Balmer's book is more narrowly focused on religion than, say, What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America.
The modern emergence of militant Christianity is in contrast to the political disengagement of Evangelicals through much of the 20th century until the 1970s. Balmer mentions the Scopes "Monkey" trial (1925) as a watershed moment:
As Balmer shows, Evangelicals' disengagement wasn't sustainable against the larger social changes occurring around them. The issue that catalyzed the movement's re-entry into politics was race, tracing back to Brown vs. Board of Education (1954). In response to the U.S. Supreme Court striking down racial segregation in public schools, racist Christians of the time set up their own private schools for white students only. But these schools were generally religious and therefore obtained religious tax exemptions. Eventually by the 1970s, court cases and IRS rulings eliminated the religious tax exemption for institutions that discriminate by race. And that drove conservative Christians back into politics, even though they could have continued to discriminate merely by agreeing to pay taxes like everyone else. Later, as racism evolved from an acceptable norm to something increasingly shameful, Evangelicals harnessed their well-honed dishonesty by switching to abortion and other culture war resentments, quietly forgetting their movement's racist roots. Balmer's book is worth a read to set the record straight.
Balmer claims to be an Evangelical himself, while embracing left-leaning politics, which must be an increasingly lonely position among his perhaps more Ann Coulter-ish religious peers. He pines for a past golden age of Evangelical progressivism, and writes as if he believes it can return (note his use of "once" instead of "if" to start that quote). As I largely share Balmer's politics (but not his metaphysics), I'd love it if he can reform Christianity into something less destructive. But I'm skeptical about that. For starters, there has never been "One True Version" of Christianity or any sizable religion. Christianity, being the world's largest religion at the moment, is also one of the most fractious and schismatic. A Pew report on global Christianity found 41,000 distinct organizations calling themselves "Christian." (See also 50 Simple Questions for Every Christian, Chapter 5: Who is a Christian?) As Balmer is a historian of religion, surely he must be aware of the countless doctrinal disputes dating from Christianity's earliest years. (See Bart D. Ehrman's many books for more on early Christian history and the gradual evolution of what later came to be called its "original" doctrines, vouchsafed to the Popes.)
Doctrinal disputes led to more than a few actual wars. Balmer's valiant prooftexting in support of progressive politics seems a hopeless gesture, given that every variety of Christian prooftexts for his own conflicting beliefs just as creatively. It's not as if conservative Christians are making some simple obvious mistake of exegesis. There are plenty of horridly regressive bible verses supporting their views. Rather, their problem is that they believe there are deep truths to be found in an ancient text written by men who didn't know where the Sun goes at night.
In addition to the difficulties posed by religious diversity, horrible scriptures, and no agreed interpretive method, Christianity during the modern era has experienced a kind of brain drain. Those Christians who happen to be smarter, more educated, and more literate are more likely to learn about the many areas of scientific, historical, and scholarly knowledge that cast serious doubts on their received beliefs. My religion shelf is full of books that document this multi-pronged intellectual broadside against religious superstition and tomfoolery.
The same people who are more educated and more literate also tend to have more progressive political views (with notable individual exceptions; I speak only of a correlation). That is, those Christians of a progressive bent are more likely to stop being Christian, leaving the remaining Christians dumber and more conservative as a group.
I have to believe that Balmer, in his postings at Columbia and Dartmouth, is aware of this trend. Among the intellectual elites who fill the facultires at leading universities, the level of faith (i.e. belief without evidence) is distinctly lower than for the population as a whole. That leaves religion with fewer "adults in the room."
And speaking of leaving the faith, Balmer ignores that trend entirely. This is strange for a book about American Christianity published in 2021, as the steady collapse of Christianity in America is one of the religion's most notable features. See for example the aforementioned Faith No More, and:
* Caught in The Pulpit: Leaving Belief Behind
* Nonverts: The Making of Ex-Christian America
* The End of White Christian America
* The Nones: Where They Came From, Who They Are and Where They Are Going
The current association between American Christianity and conservative politics is only strengthening this trend. Christianity is coming to exclude about half of America - the politically progressive half. A religion that becomes a political party narrows its appeal.
Most people who believe a religion believe the one they were brainwashed to believe as helpless children. In contrast, most adults seem able to recognize the obvious ridiculousness of any religion they weren't brainwashed to believe. (See for example Melanesian cargo cults, which are taken as seriously by their adherents as any Christian takes theirs.) But only a fraction of people are able to subject their own religious inheritance to this "Outsider Test for Faith." Almost every religious person sees themself as almost miraculously lucky to have been born into the one religion that happens to be true.
Incidentally, Balmer mentions that Evangelicals originally saw abortion as merely a "Catholic issue", but he doesn't mention that Catholics also gaslight on their own history, much like Evangelicals. Historically, the Catholic Church taught that life begins at the quickening. Later, with the invention of the microscope, Catholics quietly replaced their original infallible docrtine with a new infallible doctrine.
I take slight issue with the book's title, as "Bad Faith" is redundant: given that faith is belief without sufficient evidence, there is no good faith. William Kingdon Clifford made that point. As a historian of religion, surely Balmer is aware of multiple instances of faith going bad. Perhaps while recounting this latest example he might ponder the question of why faith keeps producing the same result. Might it, for example, have something to do with faith's rejection of critical thinking and its embrace of selective willful ignorance? Those are not habits of mind one associates with virtue. Rather, they are traits of the self-serving narcissist and the psychopath. When religion teaches people to ignore some truths, how can it be surprising when they ignore other truths, with harmful results?
Many books cover a similar political landscape. Balmer's book is more narrowly focused on religion than, say, What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America.
The modern emergence of militant Christianity is in contrast to the political disengagement of Evangelicals through much of the 20th century until the 1970s. Balmer mentions the Scopes "Monkey" trial (1925) as a watershed moment:
"American evangelicals lost decisively in the larger courtroom of public opinion. They were ridiculed, by Mencken and others, as backwoods country bumpkins."(For H.L. Mencken's coverage of the trial, see A Religious Orgy in Tennessee: A Reporter's Account of the Scopes Monkey Trial. Also see the play and film adaptations of the trial, Inherit The Wind.) Athough Balmer doesn't mention it, conservative Christian creationists continued to fail in court, such as with Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District (2004). (See Massimo Pigliucci's coverage of that trial in Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science from Bunk).
As Balmer shows, Evangelicals' disengagement wasn't sustainable against the larger social changes occurring around them. The issue that catalyzed the movement's re-entry into politics was race, tracing back to Brown vs. Board of Education (1954). In response to the U.S. Supreme Court striking down racial segregation in public schools, racist Christians of the time set up their own private schools for white students only. But these schools were generally religious and therefore obtained religious tax exemptions. Eventually by the 1970s, court cases and IRS rulings eliminated the religious tax exemption for institutions that discriminate by race. And that drove conservative Christians back into politics, even though they could have continued to discriminate merely by agreeing to pay taxes like everyone else. Later, as racism evolved from an acceptable norm to something increasingly shameful, Evangelicals harnessed their well-honed dishonesty by switching to abortion and other culture war resentments, quietly forgetting their movement's racist roots. Balmer's book is worth a read to set the record straight.
Balmer claims to be an Evangelical himself, while embracing left-leaning politics, which must be an increasingly lonely position among his perhaps more Ann Coulter-ish religious peers. He pines for a past golden age of Evangelical progressivism, and writes as if he believes it can return (note his use of "once" instead of "if" to start that quote). As I largely share Balmer's politics (but not his metaphysics), I'd love it if he can reform Christianity into something less destructive. But I'm skeptical about that. For starters, there has never been "One True Version" of Christianity or any sizable religion. Christianity, being the world's largest religion at the moment, is also one of the most fractious and schismatic. A Pew report on global Christianity found 41,000 distinct organizations calling themselves "Christian." (See also 50 Simple Questions for Every Christian, Chapter 5: Who is a Christian?) As Balmer is a historian of religion, surely he must be aware of the countless doctrinal disputes dating from Christianity's earliest years. (See Bart D. Ehrman's many books for more on early Christian history and the gradual evolution of what later came to be called its "original" doctrines, vouchsafed to the Popes.)
Doctrinal disputes led to more than a few actual wars. Balmer's valiant prooftexting in support of progressive politics seems a hopeless gesture, given that every variety of Christian prooftexts for his own conflicting beliefs just as creatively. It's not as if conservative Christians are making some simple obvious mistake of exegesis. There are plenty of horridly regressive bible verses supporting their views. Rather, their problem is that they believe there are deep truths to be found in an ancient text written by men who didn't know where the Sun goes at night.
In addition to the difficulties posed by religious diversity, horrible scriptures, and no agreed interpretive method, Christianity during the modern era has experienced a kind of brain drain. Those Christians who happen to be smarter, more educated, and more literate are more likely to learn about the many areas of scientific, historical, and scholarly knowledge that cast serious doubts on their received beliefs. My religion shelf is full of books that document this multi-pronged intellectual broadside against religious superstition and tomfoolery.
The same people who are more educated and more literate also tend to have more progressive political views (with notable individual exceptions; I speak only of a correlation). That is, those Christians of a progressive bent are more likely to stop being Christian, leaving the remaining Christians dumber and more conservative as a group.
I have to believe that Balmer, in his postings at Columbia and Dartmouth, is aware of this trend. Among the intellectual elites who fill the facultires at leading universities, the level of faith (i.e. belief without evidence) is distinctly lower than for the population as a whole. That leaves religion with fewer "adults in the room."
And speaking of leaving the faith, Balmer ignores that trend entirely. This is strange for a book about American Christianity published in 2021, as the steady collapse of Christianity in America is one of the religion's most notable features. See for example the aforementioned Faith No More, and:
* Caught in The Pulpit: Leaving Belief Behind
* Nonverts: The Making of Ex-Christian America
* The End of White Christian America
* The Nones: Where They Came From, Who They Are and Where They Are Going
The current association between American Christianity and conservative politics is only strengthening this trend. Christianity is coming to exclude about half of America - the politically progressive half. A religion that becomes a political party narrows its appeal.
Most people who believe a religion believe the one they were brainwashed to believe as helpless children. In contrast, most adults seem able to recognize the obvious ridiculousness of any religion they weren't brainwashed to believe. (See for example Melanesian cargo cults, which are taken as seriously by their adherents as any Christian takes theirs.) But only a fraction of people are able to subject their own religious inheritance to this "Outsider Test for Faith." Almost every religious person sees themself as almost miraculously lucky to have been born into the one religion that happens to be true.
Incidentally, Balmer mentions that Evangelicals originally saw abortion as merely a "Catholic issue", but he doesn't mention that Catholics also gaslight on their own history, much like Evangelicals. Historically, the Catholic Church taught that life begins at the quickening. Later, with the invention of the microscope, Catholics quietly replaced their original infallible docrtine with a new infallible doctrine.
April 11, 2024
Stunning in-depth reveal of the Religious Right
An excellent book that reveals the nefarious generation of the Religious Right.
I was stunned to learn the history of Evangelicals who, originally, were extremely progressive back in the day (pro women’s rights, pro workers rights, pro public education, pro prison reform, etc!). And then …. Well, they seem to have lost their souls in pursuit of political power.
This book really shows what a tragedy it has been for the Evangelicals of the USA.
Definitely an eye opener of a book.
I would highly recommend this for anyone who is curious about the origins of the Religious Right and how its followers came to be as they are now.
An excellent book that reveals the nefarious generation of the Religious Right.
I was stunned to learn the history of Evangelicals who, originally, were extremely progressive back in the day (pro women’s rights, pro workers rights, pro public education, pro prison reform, etc!). And then …. Well, they seem to have lost their souls in pursuit of political power.
This book really shows what a tragedy it has been for the Evangelicals of the USA.
Definitely an eye opener of a book.
I would highly recommend this for anyone who is curious about the origins of the Religious Right and how its followers came to be as they are now.
October 27, 2021
This is a very quick read, and Randall Balmer offers a succinct history of how the Religious Right initially consolidated, not over the now-hot abortion issue, but over the issue of segregation in private schools. Balmer encourages Christians to embrace a more wholistic Christian ethic as taught by Jesus and exampled by earlier evangelicals in American history.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 11, 2022
This is an important book. Randall Balmer is a historian who's father was affiliated with Westchester EFree church in Des Moines. He attended high school in Des Moines in the '70s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randall...
While it is a short book, and a quick read, this was a gut wrenching read for me.
Made me once again ashamed and asking forgiveness for the years I spent working on behalf of the "religious" right. While it has been more than a decade since I realized the error of my ways, there are truths presented here that make me sick. Truths that make me feel duped, conned and used.
This is an eye opening account of the rise of the Religious Right in the political arena, and how the real reason Christian leaders went after the evangelical vote and started encouraging Christians to war against abortion and Gays was because the IRS had taken away Bob Jones University tax exempt status. Christian schools had popped up in response to desegregation of public schools. The Christian schools didn't want the government telling them that they could not discriminate.
The people exposed in this book do not represent my brand of Christianity. A sobering reminder that it is not always obvious who are the wolves and who are the sheep.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randall...
While it is a short book, and a quick read, this was a gut wrenching read for me.
Made me once again ashamed and asking forgiveness for the years I spent working on behalf of the "religious" right. While it has been more than a decade since I realized the error of my ways, there are truths presented here that make me sick. Truths that make me feel duped, conned and used.
This is an eye opening account of the rise of the Religious Right in the political arena, and how the real reason Christian leaders went after the evangelical vote and started encouraging Christians to war against abortion and Gays was because the IRS had taken away Bob Jones University tax exempt status. Christian schools had popped up in response to desegregation of public schools. The Christian schools didn't want the government telling them that they could not discriminate.
The people exposed in this book do not represent my brand of Christianity. A sobering reminder that it is not always obvious who are the wolves and who are the sheep.
July 11, 2025
“Animated by their desire to bring about the kingdom of God on earth, they sought to alleviate suffering and work toward equality—crudely and imperfectly at times, to be sure, but determinedly. Theirs was not an abstract faith. Antebellum evangelicals understood that, in Finney’s words, ‘God loves both piety and humanity.’”
“The consequence of Darby’s premillennialism (Jesus would return before the millennium) was to absolve evangelicals of responsibility for addressing social ills. If Jesus was going to return at any moment, why bother with making this transitory world a better place? I call premillennialism a theology of despair because it allowed evangelicals to throw up their hands in resignation.”
“…evangelical leaders, prodded by Weyrich, chose to interpret the IRS ruling against segregationist schools as an assault on the integrity and the sanctity of the evangelical subculture, ignoring the fact that 𝗲𝘅𝗲𝗺𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝘁𝗮𝘅𝗲𝘀 𝗶𝘀 𝗶𝘁𝘀𝗲𝗹𝗳 𝗮 𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺 𝗼𝗳 𝗽𝘂𝗯𝗹𝗶𝗰 𝘀𝘂𝗯𝘀𝗶𝗱𝘆.”
“…even though Jimmy Carter had sought…to reduce the incidence of abortion, his refusal to seek a constitutional amendment outlawing it was viewed by politically conservative evangelicals as an unpardonable sin. Never mind the fact that his Republican opponent that year, 𝗥𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹𝗱 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗴𝗮𝗻, 𝗵𝗮𝗱 𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗼 𝗹𝗮𝘄, 𝗮𝘀 𝗴𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗻𝗼𝗿 𝗼𝗳 𝗖𝗮𝗹𝗶𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗮 𝗶𝗻 𝟭𝟵𝟲𝟳, 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗺𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗹𝗶𝗯𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗹 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗻𝘁𝗿𝘆.”
“As president, Reagan proceeded systematically to emasculate the Civil Rights Commission, the independent, bipartisan watchdog created by the Civil Rights Act of 1957…Using maneuvers of dubious legality…Reagan dismissed commission members and replaced them with appointees who took a dim view of women’s rights and civil rights, one of whom had called for the abolition of the Civil Rights Commission itself.”
“For decades, leaders of the Religious Right have assured us that theirs was a movement devoted to ‘family values,’ a statement that is difficult to reconcile with support for a thrice-married former casino operator and self-confessed sexual predator who cavorts with a porn star.”
“There is a kind of tragic continuity in the Religious Right’s embrace of Donald Trump. A movement that began with the defense of racial segregation in the late 1970s climbed into bed with a vulgar demagogue who recognizes “some good people” among white supremacists, who equivocates about denouncing a representative of the Ku Klux Klan, and who admonished a white supremacist terrorist group to “stand by” in advance of the 2020 election…𝗦𝗮𝗱𝗹𝘆, 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗥𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗶𝗼𝘂𝘀 𝗥𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝘄𝗮𝘀 𝗻𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗮𝗱𝘃𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝗯𝗶𝗯𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝘃𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗲𝘀.”
“The consequence of Darby’s premillennialism (Jesus would return before the millennium) was to absolve evangelicals of responsibility for addressing social ills. If Jesus was going to return at any moment, why bother with making this transitory world a better place? I call premillennialism a theology of despair because it allowed evangelicals to throw up their hands in resignation.”
“…evangelical leaders, prodded by Weyrich, chose to interpret the IRS ruling against segregationist schools as an assault on the integrity and the sanctity of the evangelical subculture, ignoring the fact that 𝗲𝘅𝗲𝗺𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝘁𝗮𝘅𝗲𝘀 𝗶𝘀 𝗶𝘁𝘀𝗲𝗹𝗳 𝗮 𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺 𝗼𝗳 𝗽𝘂𝗯𝗹𝗶𝗰 𝘀𝘂𝗯𝘀𝗶𝗱𝘆.”
“…even though Jimmy Carter had sought…to reduce the incidence of abortion, his refusal to seek a constitutional amendment outlawing it was viewed by politically conservative evangelicals as an unpardonable sin. Never mind the fact that his Republican opponent that year, 𝗥𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹𝗱 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗴𝗮𝗻, 𝗵𝗮𝗱 𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗼 𝗹𝗮𝘄, 𝗮𝘀 𝗴𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗻𝗼𝗿 𝗼𝗳 𝗖𝗮𝗹𝗶𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗮 𝗶𝗻 𝟭𝟵𝟲𝟳, 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗺𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗹𝗶𝗯𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗹 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗻𝘁𝗿𝘆.”
“As president, Reagan proceeded systematically to emasculate the Civil Rights Commission, the independent, bipartisan watchdog created by the Civil Rights Act of 1957…Using maneuvers of dubious legality…Reagan dismissed commission members and replaced them with appointees who took a dim view of women’s rights and civil rights, one of whom had called for the abolition of the Civil Rights Commission itself.”
“For decades, leaders of the Religious Right have assured us that theirs was a movement devoted to ‘family values,’ a statement that is difficult to reconcile with support for a thrice-married former casino operator and self-confessed sexual predator who cavorts with a porn star.”
“There is a kind of tragic continuity in the Religious Right’s embrace of Donald Trump. A movement that began with the defense of racial segregation in the late 1970s climbed into bed with a vulgar demagogue who recognizes “some good people” among white supremacists, who equivocates about denouncing a representative of the Ku Klux Klan, and who admonished a white supremacist terrorist group to “stand by” in advance of the 2020 election…𝗦𝗮𝗱𝗹𝘆, 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗥𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗶𝗼𝘂𝘀 𝗥𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝘄𝗮𝘀 𝗻𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗮𝗱𝘃𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝗯𝗶𝗯𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝘃𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗲𝘀.”
November 11, 2021
Very thorough history, especially considering how short the book is. I already had an inkling that Reagan wasn't the guy that he's portrayed to be in evangelical circles, but this book blew any hint of goodness away. I'm devastated at where white Christians stand in so many places today, and only didn't give the book five stars because I think the things I see in the South make it evident that what's in this book wouldn't be accepted as truth from most people I know, and the author optimistically puts forth that his research proves his point. It does for me, but the cultural/political identity of "Christian" insulates people against truth like this.
June 26, 2022
This is not a book review, it is the ramblings of a disgruntled, annoyed, and tired Christian who is a political liberal-moderate and happens to live in America. Also, I guess there are spoilers? Can you spoil a book like this? Either way, this book is good.
When did abortion become a top-tier issue for American Christianity and the Republican party? Roe v. Wade was ruled upon in 1973, but it was '78-'79 before abortion became a voter issue. This was on the heels of conservative Christians coming out in force to oppose the IRS's battle with the evangelical Bob Jones University over integration: BJU was proud it had no black students, so the IRS took away the school's tax exempted status. This was the first time conservative Christians came out in numbers as a voting bloc. This group had largely relegated itself as an isolationist group, uninterested in the politics of the world. The movement to vote came because Christians in conservative circles saw the IRS's threat of tax exemption over not integrating as a violation of their isolationism.
The Christian right, which was hardly even a thing yet, was fine to leave alone and be left alone. Until they were told by the state that their organizations could not exclude blacks, anyway.
It is telling that early in the 1970s, the Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution acknowledging that abortion was necessary:
This resolution was reaffirmed two more times before the end of the 1970s, both after Roe v. Wade was ruled upon by the Supreme Court.
After the fruitless battle over integration, however, those who saw their chance to overturn American politics needed a new topic: the battle against homosexuality and the disintegration of the American family was chosen. This proved less able to move people to vote than expected. There were, of course, quiet minorities within conservative Christianity who were upset about abortion, but they were just that: a minority within the group. Then, in 1979, a man named Frank Schaeffer and his father, Francis Shaeffer, traveled the country showing a film entitled "Whatever Happened to the Human Race?". After a showing in March of that year, the younger Schaeffer gave a speech, he later recounted by saying:
So the agenda was set: abortion would be the issue used to upend American politics and turn one of its two parties into the public-policy wing of conservative Christianity. And despite Jimmy Carter, who had worked to reduce the number of abortions both during his time as governor of Georgia and President, being an "evangelical" himself, he was made a villain when he refused to seek a constitutional amendment outlawing abortion. Ronald Reagan, who was allied with the religious right, became President despite having signed into law "the most liberal abortion bill in the country" in 1967. He was also divorced (Carter was not), which should have been a big no-no for Christians. A Harris poll indicated that Carter would have won the election...if the religious right hadn't voted.
It may have helped that Reagan at least partially campaigned on "unconstitutional regulatory agendas....against independent schools." Race-baiting at its finest, if you ask me. Also, Reagan opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Listen: Ronald Reagan was a racist. Period the end.
But don't just take my word for it. Look up the Reagan-Nixon tape on YouTube and listen to how Reagan describes black people. Go do it right now. It's horrible.
Thus a group which had been largely apolitical (as an overall, unified voting bloc), having retreated in a staunch isolationism in order to distance themselves from the culture, were now being radicalized into action because of the threat of racial equality and moved on to the fight against gay marriage and abortion: not because they were terribly passionate about those issues, mind you, but because they were the necessary tools for the, as quoted above, takeover of the Republican party.
Unfortunately, it was not the religious right itself which motivated the change, nor the Republican party, but a group of a few individuals who wanted to see the two groups coalesce into a political force to be reckoned with. This small group of individuals wanted political power, knew they needed control of the Republican party to achieve it, and knew they needed the religious right to get there.
Forgive me for, at least somewhat, recounting the content of this book. But it's important to know what this book is and isn't. It's not an argument that abortion should be legal or illegal. It is, however, an argument that abortion was a fringe issue, later raised on the tail-end of the losing battle for segregation, by a few bad actors who wanted to seize control of a political party. This is a takeover which is largely complete today. Christians who identify as liberal, or (worse yet) as the D-word (Democrats) are view with skepticism within conservative Christianity. To be a Christian in modern America, it seems as though a person must almost have a Republican Party membership card in their wallet, donate to conservative politicians, own shotguns, hate gay people, wear MAGA caps (and "Make American Great Again," by the way, was used as a Reagan slogan), and hold on...*checks notes*...oh! try to overthrow the government by the impeding of a largely ceremonial Congressional process. Don't forget what Schaefer said after his movie:
It's all according to plan.
When did abortion become a top-tier issue for American Christianity and the Republican party? Roe v. Wade was ruled upon in 1973, but it was '78-'79 before abortion became a voter issue. This was on the heels of conservative Christians coming out in force to oppose the IRS's battle with the evangelical Bob Jones University over integration: BJU was proud it had no black students, so the IRS took away the school's tax exempted status. This was the first time conservative Christians came out in numbers as a voting bloc. This group had largely relegated itself as an isolationist group, uninterested in the politics of the world. The movement to vote came because Christians in conservative circles saw the IRS's threat of tax exemption over not integrating as a violation of their isolationism.
The Christian right, which was hardly even a thing yet, was fine to leave alone and be left alone. Until they were told by the state that their organizations could not exclude blacks, anyway.
It is telling that early in the 1970s, the Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution acknowledging that abortion was necessary:
under such conditions as rape, incest, clear evidence of fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother
This resolution was reaffirmed two more times before the end of the 1970s, both after Roe v. Wade was ruled upon by the Supreme Court.
After the fruitless battle over integration, however, those who saw their chance to overturn American politics needed a new topic: the battle against homosexuality and the disintegration of the American family was chosen. This proved less able to move people to vote than expected. There were, of course, quiet minorities within conservative Christianity who were upset about abortion, but they were just that: a minority within the group. Then, in 1979, a man named Frank Schaeffer and his father, Francis Shaeffer, traveled the country showing a film entitled "Whatever Happened to the Human Race?". After a showing in March of that year, the younger Schaeffer gave a speech, he later recounted by saying:
We were calling for civil disobedience, the takeover of the Republican Party, and even hinting at overthrowing our 'unjust pro-abortion government.'
So the agenda was set: abortion would be the issue used to upend American politics and turn one of its two parties into the public-policy wing of conservative Christianity. And despite Jimmy Carter, who had worked to reduce the number of abortions both during his time as governor of Georgia and President, being an "evangelical" himself, he was made a villain when he refused to seek a constitutional amendment outlawing abortion. Ronald Reagan, who was allied with the religious right, became President despite having signed into law "the most liberal abortion bill in the country" in 1967. He was also divorced (Carter was not), which should have been a big no-no for Christians. A Harris poll indicated that Carter would have won the election...if the religious right hadn't voted.
It may have helped that Reagan at least partially campaigned on "unconstitutional regulatory agendas....against independent schools." Race-baiting at its finest, if you ask me. Also, Reagan opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Listen: Ronald Reagan was a racist. Period the end.
But don't just take my word for it. Look up the Reagan-Nixon tape on YouTube and listen to how Reagan describes black people. Go do it right now. It's horrible.
Thus a group which had been largely apolitical (as an overall, unified voting bloc), having retreated in a staunch isolationism in order to distance themselves from the culture, were now being radicalized into action because of the threat of racial equality and moved on to the fight against gay marriage and abortion: not because they were terribly passionate about those issues, mind you, but because they were the necessary tools for the, as quoted above, takeover of the Republican party.
Unfortunately, it was not the religious right itself which motivated the change, nor the Republican party, but a group of a few individuals who wanted to see the two groups coalesce into a political force to be reckoned with. This small group of individuals wanted political power, knew they needed control of the Republican party to achieve it, and knew they needed the religious right to get there.
Forgive me for, at least somewhat, recounting the content of this book. But it's important to know what this book is and isn't. It's not an argument that abortion should be legal or illegal. It is, however, an argument that abortion was a fringe issue, later raised on the tail-end of the losing battle for segregation, by a few bad actors who wanted to seize control of a political party. This is a takeover which is largely complete today. Christians who identify as liberal, or (worse yet) as the D-word (Democrats) are view with skepticism within conservative Christianity. To be a Christian in modern America, it seems as though a person must almost have a Republican Party membership card in their wallet, donate to conservative politicians, own shotguns, hate gay people, wear MAGA caps (and "Make American Great Again," by the way, was used as a Reagan slogan), and hold on...*checks notes*...oh! try to overthrow the government by the impeding of a largely ceremonial Congressional process. Don't forget what Schaefer said after his movie:
We were calling for civil disobedience, the takeover of the Republican Party, and even hinting at overthrowing our 'unjust pro-abortion government.'
It's all according to plan.
July 25, 2024
Randall Balmer's Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the Religious Right is an eye-opening and meticulously researched work that deftly unravels the intricate history behind the Religious Right's emergence in America. Balmer, a respected historian and professor of American religious history, delivers a compelling narrative that challenges widely held assumptions about the origins of this powerful political movement.
At the heart of Balmer's book is the revelation that the rise of the Religious Right was not initially fueled by opposition to abortion, as commonly believed, but rather by a reaction to the civil rights movement and efforts to maintain racial segregation. Balmer effectively debunks the false narrative that the movement's primary concern was the moral opposition to abortion. He traces the true roots back to the defense of segregated schools and opposition to government intervention in racial matters, providing a clear and persuasive account of how this agenda was later repackaged into a moral crusade against abortion to broaden its appeal and consolidate political power.
Balmer's writing is both engaging and accessible, making complex historical and political developments understandable to a broad audience. He utilizes a wealth of primary sources, including speeches, articles, and internal memos, to support his arguments and bring the story to life. His meticulous attention to detail and balanced analysis ensure that the book is not just an indictment but a thoughtful exploration of the motives and strategies that shaped the movement.
One of Bad Faith's most powerful aspects is its ability to provoke reflection on the intersection of religion and politics. Balmer's work invites readers to critically examine the ways in which religious rhetoric can be manipulated to serve political ends and the consequences of such manipulation for faith communities and broader society.
In summary, Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the Religious Right is a must-read for anyone interested in understanding the complex history of American politics and religion. Randall Balmer's thorough research and insightful analysis provide a crucial corrective to the prevailing narratives about the Religious Right's origins, revealing the deep-seated issues of race and segregation that lie at its foundation. This book is a significant contribution to the field and a compelling call for greater honesty and integrity in the discourse surrounding religion and politics.
May 5, 2023
A very short, but very well written history of the religious right. The first few sections were basically what the author wrote in his politico article, but I particularly enjoyed the last section where he answered the question "so what?" This was the most important part of the book. The author rejects the common claim that abortion is what got evangelicals out to vote. He shows the initial political stance of evangelicals was actually very focused on social programs, and shows how that quickly got corrupted. After establishing that the real issue that the leaders of the religious right used to motivate evangelical voters was the right of private Christian schools to remain segregated, he moves into how that has affected current politics. He ties the much ignored or misunderstood development of evangelical politics to the current state of evangelical politics. A very interesting history of the rise of the religious right, and a must read for evangelical people who vote conservative, and take a strong stance on abortion.
December 27, 2021
This slim book by a Dartmouth professor of religion shows the path of evangelical Christians from the First Great Awakening in the eighteenth century to Trumpism in the twenty-first. Along the way, socially progressive concerns about poverty, racism, and public schooling are replaced by the single issue of abortion, albeit as a fig leaf for racism, nativism, and feelings of victimhood in the face of modern culture and the progress of civilization. The names in the story are familiar - Billy and Franklin Graham, Jerry Falwell, Anita Bryant, Nixon/Ford/Carter/Reagan - but the story may be different than you remember. The centrality of preserving the IRS tax exemption for religious schools practicing racial discrimination to the early development of the "religious right" ties it all together. This is an enlightening but depressing book, a reminder of all that is lost when religion becomes political for all the wrong reasons.
September 29, 2025
Well-written and well-documented. I do believe he supports his thesis, and the result is a disturbing history of Evangelicals, racism, and thirst for political power. I do wish he took the time to explore Evangelical communities that did not support segregation, yet took issue with the removal of tax-exempt status for other reasons. There were a few other generalizations he made as well, but overall he supports his claim it was the fight against desegregating Christian private schools and the loss of tax-exempt status that got Evangelicals into the political arena and not abortion. The roots of racism go deep in the Evangelical church's history and remain unreckoned with, for the most part. And we're all dealing with the consequences of that today with the majority of Evangelical's embrace of Trump, a president with many positions and policies rooted in racism.
September 29, 2023
This is a short book, so I’ll keep my review short as well.
Balmer explores the origins of the Christian Right, its revisionism of its “why” and after exploring those facts discusses why the movement’s history matters today even though not everyone currently involved in the Christian Right has a share in the racism of the movement’s founding.
The leaders of the movement these days like to pretend that it was Roe v Wade that initially galvanized Fundamentalist Evangelicals into a potent political force But the record, as Balmer pretty convincingly demonstrates, is that what initially galvanized the Christian Right was a defense Bob Jones University. Balmer lays out a convincing body of evidence to support his hypothesis.
This is important history and certainly worth a credit.
Balmer explores the origins of the Christian Right, its revisionism of its “why” and after exploring those facts discusses why the movement’s history matters today even though not everyone currently involved in the Christian Right has a share in the racism of the movement’s founding.
The leaders of the movement these days like to pretend that it was Roe v Wade that initially galvanized Fundamentalist Evangelicals into a potent political force But the record, as Balmer pretty convincingly demonstrates, is that what initially galvanized the Christian Right was a defense Bob Jones University. Balmer lays out a convincing body of evidence to support his hypothesis.
This is important history and certainly worth a credit.
September 2, 2023
Fantastic, short book--an extended essay, really--on how race, not abortion, was the unifying factor behind the "Moral Majority," and the rise of the religious right in the 1970s and 1980s. Documented with great footnotes to primary and secondary literature. This is a quick, but important, read by a senior historian of evangelicalism.
December 28, 2025
I’ve been hyperfixating on the white Christian psyche (esp in regards to in todays political scope) and boy oh gee was this the most relevant book to read.
To summarize for future reference:
1. In the mid eighteenth century, the enthusiasm America bore for evangelicalism stemmed from New England Puritanism, Scots-Irish Presbyterianism, and continental pietism.
2. Early in the nineteenth century, postmillennialism was fostered by the belief that Jesus would return to earth after the millennium, provided we bring about his kingdom on earth (this was a very well intentioned time period as I understand it).
3. This optimism was halted following the Civil War, and premillenialism took foot, anticipating Jesus to arrive any moment. Subsequently, this idea absolved evangelicals of responsibility, and instead prompted their individual obsession.
4. In the mid 20s, the Scopes Monkey Trial found John Scopes guilty of teaching evolution (though the charges were later overruled on a technicality). William Jennings Bryan (3x democratic presidential nominee and Wilson’s secretary of state) led the prosecution and contributed to the overwhelming publicity at the time. Evangelicals were ridiculed, the country bumpkin attitude was evident and they got all self conscious about it. This is when they started forming private instutions (many of these organizations are now donating hundreds of millions annually to the Christian nationalist movement).
5. Carter won largely due to his evangelical support, though his approach was more in line with human rights. Other politicians took note.
6. The Roe v. Wade decision, in favor of Roe (1973), is seen as the catalyst that pulled evangelicals out of their decades long political indifference (since the rise of premillenialism). It was instead the court case of Green v. Connally (1971) that politically united and moved evangelists into action. In this case, it was ruled that any racist activity would reverse the tax-exempt status given by the IRS to charitable organizations. This ruling threatened the private institutions that evangelicals had cultivated, and shattered their illusion of safety from what they viewed as a corrupt America. This is where shit gets fucked.
7. It wasn’t until the late 1970’s (largely due to Paul Weyrich’s influence) that abortion rights became a bedrock for Christian voters. Single issue voting was something to be proud of.
8. Then Reagan gets elected… you know the rest and I’m bored of typing.
Basically I’m goated. And you should read the book. It’s a short read and very informative.
To summarize for future reference:
1. In the mid eighteenth century, the enthusiasm America bore for evangelicalism stemmed from New England Puritanism, Scots-Irish Presbyterianism, and continental pietism.
2. Early in the nineteenth century, postmillennialism was fostered by the belief that Jesus would return to earth after the millennium, provided we bring about his kingdom on earth (this was a very well intentioned time period as I understand it).
3. This optimism was halted following the Civil War, and premillenialism took foot, anticipating Jesus to arrive any moment. Subsequently, this idea absolved evangelicals of responsibility, and instead prompted their individual obsession.
4. In the mid 20s, the Scopes Monkey Trial found John Scopes guilty of teaching evolution (though the charges were later overruled on a technicality). William Jennings Bryan (3x democratic presidential nominee and Wilson’s secretary of state) led the prosecution and contributed to the overwhelming publicity at the time. Evangelicals were ridiculed, the country bumpkin attitude was evident and they got all self conscious about it. This is when they started forming private instutions (many of these organizations are now donating hundreds of millions annually to the Christian nationalist movement).
5. Carter won largely due to his evangelical support, though his approach was more in line with human rights. Other politicians took note.
6. The Roe v. Wade decision, in favor of Roe (1973), is seen as the catalyst that pulled evangelicals out of their decades long political indifference (since the rise of premillenialism). It was instead the court case of Green v. Connally (1971) that politically united and moved evangelists into action. In this case, it was ruled that any racist activity would reverse the tax-exempt status given by the IRS to charitable organizations. This ruling threatened the private institutions that evangelicals had cultivated, and shattered their illusion of safety from what they viewed as a corrupt America. This is where shit gets fucked.
7. It wasn’t until the late 1970’s (largely due to Paul Weyrich’s influence) that abortion rights became a bedrock for Christian voters. Single issue voting was something to be proud of.
8. Then Reagan gets elected… you know the rest and I’m bored of typing.
Basically I’m goated. And you should read the book. It’s a short read and very informative.
June 10, 2022
Read in one day. Anyone that thinks that abortion was the impetus for conservative evangelicals to get into politics and in the United States should read this. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t …
August 1, 2022
A short, straightforward exposition that uses quotes from the founders of the movement themselves to show that the formative issue of the religious right was not - as it so often claims - opposition to abortion, but was actually opposition to desegregating its private christian schools. Crucial for understanding the current amerikan political, cultural, and religious context.
September 12, 2021
My guess is that most thinking people would give this book five stars for it accomplishes what it sets out to do, prove that the racism of religious leaders and Republican operatives is the motivating force behind the religious right that is still with us today. The abortion issue is often the scapegoat for this, but Balmer proves that came later and race was the spark that created the (im)moral majority. It is interesting that most Evangelical Christians even supported some form of abortion at the time they mobilized to let religious institutions legally discriminate against non-white people, especially African Americans. It was when that cause ran its course, i. e., the religious right began to win with the election of arch bigot Ronald Reagan (see p. 70 and following) that they looked for a new cause to keep Evangelicals engaged in conservative causes. I am disappointed that so many references are taken from the popular press, that so many quotes are summarized instead of given in full, and that the book is just too short, shorter than I expect from a full academic work-up of the subject. Nevertheless, this central argument is very important and the corrections of common misconceptions necessary today. So, read this book. It matters a lot.
June 1, 2022
Very important story for understanding American politics and religious history.
Reviews by others:
* Coudert, Allison P. (30 April 2022). Reading Religion
* Finley, Jeanne Torrence. (26 October 2021). Englewood Review of Books .
* Reinach, Alan J. (January 2022). Liberty Magazine .
* Rood, Jeremiah. (July 2021). Foreword Reviews .
* Shields, Adam. (10 August 2021). Bookwi.se .
* Shimron, Yonat. (22 September 2021). Religion News Service
* Tripp, Jeffrey M. (9 April 2022). Reviews in Religion & Theology. https://doi.org/10.1111/rirt.14079 Additional notes on his blog.
* Wagner, Michael. (16 December 2021). American Vision .
Reviews by others:
* Coudert, Allison P. (30 April 2022). Reading Religion
* Finley, Jeanne Torrence. (26 October 2021). Englewood Review of Books .
* Reinach, Alan J. (January 2022). Liberty Magazine .
* Rood, Jeremiah. (July 2021). Foreword Reviews .
* Shields, Adam. (10 August 2021). Bookwi.se .
* Shimron, Yonat. (22 September 2021). Religion News Service
* Tripp, Jeffrey M. (9 April 2022). Reviews in Religion & Theology. https://doi.org/10.1111/rirt.14079 Additional notes on his blog.
* Wagner, Michael. (16 December 2021). American Vision .
July 1, 2024
This book was very interesting and is a good primer on the rise of the religious right with relation to racism. I don't think Balmer argued that there is nothing Christian in the acts and policies of the religious right, though.
He failed to give a nuanced view of the internal diversity of Christianity. The Bible can be interpreted in a myriad of ways and I think the religious right can certainly support its beliefs with biblical evidence just as moderates and Christians on the left can. For example, the Old Testament clearly supports ethnocentrism, ethnic cleansing, favoritism of a specific group of people, distrust and mistreatment of outsiders, and harsh capital punishment for those who don't follow the rules. The religious right certainly employs interpretation of the Bible through this lens and can find a surplus of scripture to support their side.
Just as people on the religious right excoriate religious extremists in Islam, so too is there extremism and violence in some interpretations of Christian scripture.
I would have enjoyed a more explorative approach of this specific aspect of religious diversity, but I do understand that this was meant as a primer.
He failed to give a nuanced view of the internal diversity of Christianity. The Bible can be interpreted in a myriad of ways and I think the religious right can certainly support its beliefs with biblical evidence just as moderates and Christians on the left can. For example, the Old Testament clearly supports ethnocentrism, ethnic cleansing, favoritism of a specific group of people, distrust and mistreatment of outsiders, and harsh capital punishment for those who don't follow the rules. The religious right certainly employs interpretation of the Bible through this lens and can find a surplus of scripture to support their side.
Just as people on the religious right excoriate religious extremists in Islam, so too is there extremism and violence in some interpretations of Christian scripture.
I would have enjoyed a more explorative approach of this specific aspect of religious diversity, but I do understand that this was meant as a primer.
September 5, 2021
3.5 stars. I think this is an important book as we consider faith and politics, but the writing was somewhat elementary (“here’s my thesis. point 1. point 2. point 3. now I’m restating my thesis.”) and repetitive. But it’s a short introduction that makes a nice companion to Jesus & John Wayne.
Read
May 5, 2022An extended essay by Randal Balmer written in large part as a response to the overwhelming electoral support Trump received from white evangelicals.
December 7, 2025
Whether an expansive essay or primer, Balmer's Bad Faith clarifies why right-wing evangelicals--those who claim to espouse Christianity--came to embrace an authoritarian political ideology that runs counter to the gospel as preached by the ancient Nazarene mystic whose central ethos was love and concern for downtrodden.
He introduces readers to influential culture warriors of conservative Christianity, including Paul Weyrich, Jerry Falwell, and Ed Dobson.
Other scholars and experts in the space may quibble a bit, but he defines "evangelical" as someone who "believes in the Bible as God's revelation to humanity" and "typically engage in the ruse of selective literalism." For this reason, they "believe in the centrality of conversion," as depicted in the Gospel of John, which is also accompanied by a "dramatic" and emotional experience where they are "born again." Lastly, and most obviously, evangelicals, for Balmer, are those who take seriously their call to spread their faith and bring others into the gospel of Jesus Christ, as they understand it.
(Which is quite different from what the Jewish revolutionary actually preached and practice.)
The argument of his book follows thusly:
A) Many antebellum evangelicals embraced social reform causes. They felt a "responsibility for the improvement of society and especially the interests of those most vulnerable." This social justice focus also stems from the Christian idea of postmillennialism, "the doctrine that Jesus will return to earth after the millennium, the thousand-year period of peace and righteousness predicted in the book of Revelation."
B) Following the carnage of the Civil War and rapid industrialization and urbanization, many evangelicals reevaluated this doctrine. Around this time, they began adopting ideas from John Nelson Darby, such as "the rapture," stoking fears of being "left behind." If the world is going to hell in a hand basket, then why bother working to improve the world, they reasoned. This premillennialism gave them cover for focusing on social reform. In other words, weakening their sense of duty to the marginalized and vulnerable in society. Evangelicalism became naval-gazy, overly concerned with "the salvation of individuals," and obsessive over the imagined moral catastrophes that torment contemporary evangelicals.
C) Evangelicals where made a national embarrassment at the Scopes Trial, which pitted science and reason opposite creationism and dogmatism. As Balmer writes, "For many American evangelicals, it seemed as though the larger American culture had turned against them and their values. So they retreated into a subculture where they could provide a "safe space, a refuge from the dangers of an increasingly secular society." This turned them profoundly apolitical until their ascension in the 1970s.
D)Contrary to revisionist history argued by right-wing evangelicals, it wasn't abortion but the desegregation of private schools that galvanized the Religious Right in the last 70s. Abortion wasn't a particularly important issue to evangelicals throughout most of the 70s, even in the few years after Roe v. Wade. In fact, a myriad of viewpoints on abortion were accepted in the discourse, a striking contrast with the virulent, anti-abortionism that plagues right-wing Christian circles today.
E) Idealogues like Paul Weyrich and Bob Jones, Jr. used this supposed overreach by the federal government as a way to champion "religious freedom." Since evangelicals, especially those with a commitment to racist ideology and white supremacy, could no longer shield their families from "secular society," they had to take over government.
F) Right-wing evangelicals quickly abandoned the notion of separation between church and state, and advocated for a bevy of "Christian" policies that have become staples of authoritarian Christianity ever since: anti-abortion, anti-welfare programs, homophobia, transphobia, anti-social justice, free market economics, "traditional marriage," purity culture, misogyny, etc.
G) Ronald Reagan was a forerunner for Donald Trump. The John the Baptist to Trump's savior complex?
H) Now we face an onslaught of extremist religion with little commitment to democracy, pluralism, or equality.
Balmer concludes:
"A fresh reading of Jesus' injunctions to feed the hungry and welcome the stranger or an appreciation for evangelical social reform in the nineteenth century might prompt evangelicals to reconsider their views on immigration and public education, their attitudes about prison reform and women's rights, or their support of tax cuts for the affluent. Jesus, after all, enjoined his followers to care for the 'least of these,' and taking those words seriously could very well prompt a direction of evangelical political energies, even a rethinking of single-issue voting in favor of a broader, more comprehensive appraisal of political agendas. Such a reconsideration might also provide an opening for reprochement with Black evangelicals and other evangelicals of color. Repentance is good for the soul."
He introduces readers to influential culture warriors of conservative Christianity, including Paul Weyrich, Jerry Falwell, and Ed Dobson.
Other scholars and experts in the space may quibble a bit, but he defines "evangelical" as someone who "believes in the Bible as God's revelation to humanity" and "typically engage in the ruse of selective literalism." For this reason, they "believe in the centrality of conversion," as depicted in the Gospel of John, which is also accompanied by a "dramatic" and emotional experience where they are "born again." Lastly, and most obviously, evangelicals, for Balmer, are those who take seriously their call to spread their faith and bring others into the gospel of Jesus Christ, as they understand it.
(Which is quite different from what the Jewish revolutionary actually preached and practice.)
The argument of his book follows thusly:
A) Many antebellum evangelicals embraced social reform causes. They felt a "responsibility for the improvement of society and especially the interests of those most vulnerable." This social justice focus also stems from the Christian idea of postmillennialism, "the doctrine that Jesus will return to earth after the millennium, the thousand-year period of peace and righteousness predicted in the book of Revelation."
B) Following the carnage of the Civil War and rapid industrialization and urbanization, many evangelicals reevaluated this doctrine. Around this time, they began adopting ideas from John Nelson Darby, such as "the rapture," stoking fears of being "left behind." If the world is going to hell in a hand basket, then why bother working to improve the world, they reasoned. This premillennialism gave them cover for focusing on social reform. In other words, weakening their sense of duty to the marginalized and vulnerable in society. Evangelicalism became naval-gazy, overly concerned with "the salvation of individuals," and obsessive over the imagined moral catastrophes that torment contemporary evangelicals.
C) Evangelicals where made a national embarrassment at the Scopes Trial, which pitted science and reason opposite creationism and dogmatism. As Balmer writes, "For many American evangelicals, it seemed as though the larger American culture had turned against them and their values. So they retreated into a subculture where they could provide a "safe space, a refuge from the dangers of an increasingly secular society." This turned them profoundly apolitical until their ascension in the 1970s.
D)Contrary to revisionist history argued by right-wing evangelicals, it wasn't abortion but the desegregation of private schools that galvanized the Religious Right in the last 70s. Abortion wasn't a particularly important issue to evangelicals throughout most of the 70s, even in the few years after Roe v. Wade. In fact, a myriad of viewpoints on abortion were accepted in the discourse, a striking contrast with the virulent, anti-abortionism that plagues right-wing Christian circles today.
E) Idealogues like Paul Weyrich and Bob Jones, Jr. used this supposed overreach by the federal government as a way to champion "religious freedom." Since evangelicals, especially those with a commitment to racist ideology and white supremacy, could no longer shield their families from "secular society," they had to take over government.
F) Right-wing evangelicals quickly abandoned the notion of separation between church and state, and advocated for a bevy of "Christian" policies that have become staples of authoritarian Christianity ever since: anti-abortion, anti-welfare programs, homophobia, transphobia, anti-social justice, free market economics, "traditional marriage," purity culture, misogyny, etc.
G) Ronald Reagan was a forerunner for Donald Trump. The John the Baptist to Trump's savior complex?
H) Now we face an onslaught of extremist religion with little commitment to democracy, pluralism, or equality.
Balmer concludes:
"A fresh reading of Jesus' injunctions to feed the hungry and welcome the stranger or an appreciation for evangelical social reform in the nineteenth century might prompt evangelicals to reconsider their views on immigration and public education, their attitudes about prison reform and women's rights, or their support of tax cuts for the affluent. Jesus, after all, enjoined his followers to care for the 'least of these,' and taking those words seriously could very well prompt a direction of evangelical political energies, even a rethinking of single-issue voting in favor of a broader, more comprehensive appraisal of political agendas. Such a reconsideration might also provide an opening for reprochement with Black evangelicals and other evangelicals of color. Repentance is good for the soul."
November 20, 2023
You’ve probably heard the self-reinforcing story. Yes, in general, American Evangelicals were not a well-mobilized group for voting and influencing American politics throughout much of the twentieth century. But then the Supreme Court handed down their decision on Roe vs. Wade, and Evangelicals were mobilized to vote regarding abortion.
Well, as said by the Secretary of Defense in Independence Day, “that’s not entirely accurate.”
In Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the Religious Right, Randall Balmer provides the far more unsettling story based on primary documents and conversations and interviews with some of the primary architects of the rise of the “Religious Right.”
Paul Weyrich is the name regarding which you rarely hear but was highly influential behind the scenes. For years he sought to find some way to catalyze conservative Evangelicals to vote, and specifically, to vote Republican. He sought issue after issue. Nothing was really “sticking.”
There was not, in fact, a polarization or political push in the immediate aftermath of the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision. The primary documents Balmer presents might surprise you: many Evangelical denominations were not against the decision, sought to find ways to value the lives of women and children, and emphasized how access to abortion was not the same as mandating or requiring abortion. Criswell is even quoted in his belief of a child’s life not being fully his or her own until birth and thus why he was not as concerned about abortion as many are today.
Those Evangelicals who were activated to vote in 1976 mostly did so…for the Democratic candidate Jimmy Carter, who was an Evangelical and spoke regarding how his Evangelical faith shaped many of his political commitments.
So what changed? If abortion was not the catalyzing political issue, what was?
As Balmer powerfully demonstrates, the catalyzing issue was the push by the Internal Revenue Service to revoke the religious non-profit status of the secondary and post-secondary “segregation academies” and colleges like Bob Jones University in the middle of the 1970s.
Southern segregationalists did not just fade away into the sunset after the Brown vs. Board of Education decision was enforced in the South. They often developed their own private schools which maintained segregation. These were maintained in the 1960s and 1970s and became quite popular among a certain set of white Evangelicals in the South.
And they did not take kindly to the IRS considering them no longer religious non-profit organizations. Even though it was a matter of a tax benefit being removed, many Evangelicals organized and argued as if it were a significant violation of the separation of church and state and a form of persecution. And even though the matter was done and even adjudicated in the days of the Gerald Ford administration, it would be in the 1980 election in which the matter would come to a head.
This was the catalyst Weyrich was looking for and he took full advantage. Believe it or not, Ronald Reagan was not the most ideal conservative Christian candidate. He had been divorced and remarried. As Governor of California he signed pro-choice and gun control legislation. But he managed the dog whistles well and had been well coached about how to cultivate conservative Evangelical votes. And vote for him they did. And they got what they wanted: under the Reagan administration, IRS efforts against the “segregation academies” was pulled back.
During the late 1970s and into the 1980s was when abortion came to the fore and became more than just a “[Roman] Catholic issue.” Nuance was dropped and significant concern for the health and lives of women were marginalized in the attempt to emphasize the health and lives of babies and what it meant for a society to provide access to abortion. Within a few years even the Falwells and other such Evangelical authors of the Religious Right had told themselves often enough that abortion was the catalyzing issue that they believed it.
Does this mean every politically conservative Christian who is fervently against abortion is a closeted, secret racist? No, of course not. But the real history well explains why the moral character and dog whistle racism of DJT was not disqualifying in the eyes of most Evangelicals, and how it can be that conservative Christendom writ large remains quite comfortable with white supremacists in their midst. It was their energy which got the whole political machine up and moving. And it’s never been fully and decisively repudiated.
Well, as said by the Secretary of Defense in Independence Day, “that’s not entirely accurate.”
In Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the Religious Right, Randall Balmer provides the far more unsettling story based on primary documents and conversations and interviews with some of the primary architects of the rise of the “Religious Right.”
Paul Weyrich is the name regarding which you rarely hear but was highly influential behind the scenes. For years he sought to find some way to catalyze conservative Evangelicals to vote, and specifically, to vote Republican. He sought issue after issue. Nothing was really “sticking.”
There was not, in fact, a polarization or political push in the immediate aftermath of the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision. The primary documents Balmer presents might surprise you: many Evangelical denominations were not against the decision, sought to find ways to value the lives of women and children, and emphasized how access to abortion was not the same as mandating or requiring abortion. Criswell is even quoted in his belief of a child’s life not being fully his or her own until birth and thus why he was not as concerned about abortion as many are today.
Those Evangelicals who were activated to vote in 1976 mostly did so…for the Democratic candidate Jimmy Carter, who was an Evangelical and spoke regarding how his Evangelical faith shaped many of his political commitments.
So what changed? If abortion was not the catalyzing political issue, what was?
As Balmer powerfully demonstrates, the catalyzing issue was the push by the Internal Revenue Service to revoke the religious non-profit status of the secondary and post-secondary “segregation academies” and colleges like Bob Jones University in the middle of the 1970s.
Southern segregationalists did not just fade away into the sunset after the Brown vs. Board of Education decision was enforced in the South. They often developed their own private schools which maintained segregation. These were maintained in the 1960s and 1970s and became quite popular among a certain set of white Evangelicals in the South.
And they did not take kindly to the IRS considering them no longer religious non-profit organizations. Even though it was a matter of a tax benefit being removed, many Evangelicals organized and argued as if it were a significant violation of the separation of church and state and a form of persecution. And even though the matter was done and even adjudicated in the days of the Gerald Ford administration, it would be in the 1980 election in which the matter would come to a head.
This was the catalyst Weyrich was looking for and he took full advantage. Believe it or not, Ronald Reagan was not the most ideal conservative Christian candidate. He had been divorced and remarried. As Governor of California he signed pro-choice and gun control legislation. But he managed the dog whistles well and had been well coached about how to cultivate conservative Evangelical votes. And vote for him they did. And they got what they wanted: under the Reagan administration, IRS efforts against the “segregation academies” was pulled back.
During the late 1970s and into the 1980s was when abortion came to the fore and became more than just a “[Roman] Catholic issue.” Nuance was dropped and significant concern for the health and lives of women were marginalized in the attempt to emphasize the health and lives of babies and what it meant for a society to provide access to abortion. Within a few years even the Falwells and other such Evangelical authors of the Religious Right had told themselves often enough that abortion was the catalyzing issue that they believed it.
Does this mean every politically conservative Christian who is fervently against abortion is a closeted, secret racist? No, of course not. But the real history well explains why the moral character and dog whistle racism of DJT was not disqualifying in the eyes of most Evangelicals, and how it can be that conservative Christendom writ large remains quite comfortable with white supremacists in their midst. It was their energy which got the whole political machine up and moving. And it’s never been fully and decisively repudiated.
October 30, 2021
This is an extremely short book - roughly 89 pages and much of it is information covered in Thy Kingdom Come. As in that volume, the author emphasizes that it was Green vs. Kennedy/Conally that was the relevant case launching the Christian right, not Roe v. Wade. This court case revolved around tax exempt status for "segregation academies", "Christian" schools created specifically to avoid the desegregation being pushed through public school systems. Bob Jones University was the flagship for these institutions, refusing to admit Black students and emphasizing that God had made a clear separation between Blacks and whites via skin color and thus placed his seal of approval on racial segregation. No mention made of His brown, Jewish Son and where He would land as a result of these practices. James Dobson and Jerry Falwell are on record as having held this opinion and supporting these schools. Jimmy Carter was accused of spearheading the campaign against Christian schools via the IRS, one of two reasons given for evangelicals not to support his re-election, although that is a complete fabrication. The book points out how in fact Bob Jones lost its tax exempt status under Gerald Ford.
Balmer also covers the many racist acts of Republican saint Ronald Reagan, as well as pointing out that he was an early champion of abortion rights. Reagan appointed William Rehnquist, the sole pro-segregation voice in the Green case to the Supreme Court. Reagan worked at gutting Civil Rights and Affirmative Action, programs he opposed from the start. He was an FBI informer during the McCarthy era, supported the repeal of the Rumsford Fair Housing Act, loved "states rights" ( a dog whistle for segregation), in taped conversation referred to "those monkeys from those African countries" and openly supported the Apartheid states of Rhodesia and South Africa.
Bad Faith is really just an essay on the fact that Reagan was a racist elected by racists who covered themselves with the cloak of religion to sanctify their sins. Much of the material here is covered in other books in greater detail and again, the first two thirds read very much like Thy Kingdom Come. This is all good to know, I just think it would have been better as a long piece in a magazine or with a much lower price tag.
Balmer also covers the many racist acts of Republican saint Ronald Reagan, as well as pointing out that he was an early champion of abortion rights. Reagan appointed William Rehnquist, the sole pro-segregation voice in the Green case to the Supreme Court. Reagan worked at gutting Civil Rights and Affirmative Action, programs he opposed from the start. He was an FBI informer during the McCarthy era, supported the repeal of the Rumsford Fair Housing Act, loved "states rights" ( a dog whistle for segregation), in taped conversation referred to "those monkeys from those African countries" and openly supported the Apartheid states of Rhodesia and South Africa.
Bad Faith is really just an essay on the fact that Reagan was a racist elected by racists who covered themselves with the cloak of religion to sanctify their sins. Much of the material here is covered in other books in greater detail and again, the first two thirds read very much like Thy Kingdom Come. This is all good to know, I just think it would have been better as a long piece in a magazine or with a much lower price tag.
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