This 1980 report, 42 years later, sheds light on the Christian nationalist extremism of 2022

21 November 2022

Editor's note: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Paul Robeson was a White fundamentalist evangelical. The article has been updated to identify James Robison as a White fundamentalist evangelical. Paul Robeson was a famous bass-baritone artist and football player who was investigated by the House Committee on Un-American Activities after he refused to affirm he was not a communist. AlterNet regrets this error.

On August 24, 1980, the Washington Post published a report by journalist Kathy Sawyer that took a close look at what was, at the time, a new phenomenon on the right: the alliance of far-right White evangelicals and the Republican Party. And 42 years later, in 2022, Sawyer’s reporting sheds light on a movement that, critics argue, is unapologetically authoritarian in nature — a movement that has made considerable advances since then.

When Sawyer’s article was published, President Jimmy Carter was running for reelection; in November 1980, he suffered a landslide defeat at the hands of Republican former California Gov. Ronald Reagan, who turned out to be the most influential U.S. president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. From 1932 (the year in which FDR was elected) until 1980, liberalism arguably dominated the political conversation in the United States. But Reagan’s victory over Carter pushed the U.S. in a much more conservative direction. All of the Democratic presidents elected after the 1980s have been centrists — Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden — and the U.S. hasn’t had a staunch liberal in the White House since President Lyndon B. Johnson in the 1960s.

As president, Reagan oversaw a fragile right-wing coalition that included everyone from far-right evangelicals to fiscal conservatives to libertarians. The Reagan coalition was by no means one big happy family, and ultimately, White evangelicals became much more influential in the Republican Party than than the libertarians they despised.

Sawyer’s report vividly describes the progress that White fundamentalist evangelicals like James Robison and the Rev. Jerry Falwell, Sr. were making in the GOP in August 1980. Reporting from Texas, Sawyer explained, “Evangelist leaders joined forces with conservative politicians here last week in exhorting millions of non-voting Christians to ‘crawl out from under those padded pews’ and take up political arms in the equivalent of a moral war to save America. The two-day gathering in the brimstone shimmer of 105-degree Texas heat was billed sedately as The National Affairs Briefing. But it was really a fusion of Bible-thumping revivalist oratory with hardline New Right politics. Its goal: to get godly conservatives elected to offices high and low across the land.”

Sawyer described a speech by Robeson in Texas, who railed against “perverts, radicals, leftists, communists, liberals and humanists" and declared, “Not voting is a sin against Almighty God.”

Sawyer reported, “The crowd heard speakers ranging from Phyllis Schlafly, anti-feminist leader of the Stop ERA movement, to a general who predicted a nuclear holocaust within a decade if America does not ‘turn to God’ and beef up military defenses against godless communism. The repentant son of atheist crusader Madelyn Murray O'Hair urged that prayer be returned to the schools. Champions of the anti-abortion National Right to Life Committee promoted their cause. And throughout, attentions swung wildly from theology and scripture to instruction on how to organize without violating tax laws, the practicalities of registering a congregation to vote during the Sunday service and the importance of keeping a ‘moral score card’ on the voting record of elected representatives.”

Sawyer noted that the August 1980 event in Texas “grew out of the fledgling movement founded largely by radio and television preachers such as Jerry Falwell of Lynchburg, Va.”

“The movement, however, has yet to demonstrate a significant ability to turn out the born-again vote,” Sawyer reported. “But it has shown enough promise to draw presidential nominee Reagan as a speaker Friday night in an appeal for Christian support. Reagan tried to avoid getting specific on such flammable topics as homosexual rights, abortion and the Equal Rights Amendment during his stopover here.”

But even though Sawyer described the Christian Right as a “fledgling movement” in her article, that movement had its share of scathing critics in the early ‘80s — critics who hoped to nip it in the bud. And they were both liberal and conservative.

Liberal television producer Norman Lear — who gave us politically minded 1970s sitcoms like “All in the Family,” “Maude,” “Good Times” and “The Jeffersons” — founded People For the American Way in 1980 in response to the threat that the Christian Right posed. And on the right, conservative Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona made no secret of his disdain for the movement, which he believed was terrible for the GOP and terrible for the conservative movement. Liberal Lear and conservative Goldwater disagreed on many things, but they were on the same page when it came to saying that the U.S. needed to maintain a robust separation of church and state.

Goldwater viewed the Christian Right as a Pandora’s box, and just as he feared, the movement has only tightened its grip on the Republican Party — especially with the rise of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement. Presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush were allies of far-right White evangelicals, but Trump has been much more inflammatory when speaking to them. Trump, who was only 34 when Sawyer’s article was published, repeatedly tells his evangelical and Christian nationalist supporters that Democrats pose an existential threat to Christianity in the U.S.

Of course, plenty of Democrats are churchgoing Christians. Centrist President Joe Biden is a devout Catholic; Sen. Raphael Warnock is a Protestant minister. Barack Obama, a Mainline Protestant, has quoted scripture much more often than Trump. But the Christian Right believes that only evangelical fundamentalists are true Christians.

When the Post published Sawyer’s article, White evangelicals were railing against Roe v. Wade but knew that there weren’t enough socially conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices to overturn it. But eventually, the Christian Right got the socially conservative Supreme Court it was hoping for. With the High Court’s 2022 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Roe v. Wade was overturned after 49 years. And Justice Clarence Thomas made it clear that he would also like to see the Court “reconsider” rulings that offered protections for contraception (1965’s Griswold v. Connecticut), same-sex marriage (2015’s Obergefell v. Hodges) and gay relationships (2003’s Lawrence v. Texas).

In October, megachurch pastor Robert Jeffress called for “Christian nationalists” to “impose their values” on nonbelievers whether they liked it or not. In 2021, Michael Flynn, former national security adviser in the Trump Administration, called for the U.S. to “embrace one religion” and has made it clear that he believes religions other than Christianity should be illegal. And far-right Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, in June 2022, declared, “The church is supposed to direct the government. The government is not supposed to direct the church. That is not how our Founding Fathers intended it…. I’m tired of this separation of church and state junk.”

Forty-two years after Sawyer’s article was published, the Christian Right is not a marginal part of the Republican Party. It is a sizable GOP voting block — especially in red states — that many Republicans are afraid to criticize. And the movement, feeling empowered by the MAGA movement and the Dobbs decision, is showing no signs of backing down.

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