Elliott Thomas is a second-year history student at the University of Portsmouth, and studied modern US history with Dr Lee Sartain as part of the first-year World Histories module. In the wake of Trump’s presidential victory, he discusses how the evangelical Christians and the Republican Party came to be so closely aligned.
In the early hours of November the 6th, the victorious Republican president elect Donald Trump would give his victory speech to a crowd of his supporters, who would soon break out into the popular Evangelical hymn “How Great Art Thou”.[1] Despite being mired in controversy, including being put on trial for paying hush money to cover up an extramarital affair, Trump won about 8 out of every 10 Evangelical voters – similar numbers to his 2020 run.[2] This highlights how ingrained the Evangelical movement has become in the Republican party, but the question arises: how did this occur? How did the Evangelical movement find its modern political home? This blog post seeks to explore the Evangelical movement’s alliance with the Republican party, focusing on the lead up to the Reagan years.
President Trump visits St. John’s Episcopal Church in Washington in June 2020. Official White House photo by Shealah Craighead.
Evangelical Christians saw three key threats to their view of America, which they saw as the ‘last best hope of earth’ in a famous phrase of Abraham Lincoln. These were the Catholic John F Kennedy, Counterculture, specifically the increasing openness of sexuality and the Counterculture movement and the Liberalism of the 1950/60s.
The nomination of John F Kennedy to the Democratic presidential ticket in 1960 was one of the first signs of unwelcome cultural change to Evangelicals.[3] Kennedy was a Catholic, which made him suspect in the eyes of many Protestants, especially Evangelicals and other fundamentalist Christians who viewed Catholicism as not only a preacher of false doctrine but as the whore of Babylon, who would play an important role of the Antichrist’s plan for world domination.[4] Thunder from the right grew massively. Republican leaders understood that Kennedy and his clan proved the perfect target – Historian Erling Jorstad observed that Kennedy was a: ‘Roman Catholic, Harvard intellectual, Boston-accented, sophisticated, very wealthy, liberal and was a media darling’, something that Evangelical and Republican leaders understood that played poorly in their constituencies, and so exploited it by proclaiming that they were ‘America’s only real antidote to the venomous New Frontier’.[5]
Another factor that led Evangelicals to make an alliance with the Right was Counterculture. Homosexuality, to many Evangelicals is not just immoral or lamentable weakness, but a perversion of nature, an abomination and an act deserving of imprisonment or death.[6] The 1960s were a time of seismic shift in sexual attitudes, and many conservative Christians saw this as an outrage, and many – especially women – hoped they could stop it. The Sex Information and Educational Council of the US (SIECUS) sought to advocate increased sexual education teaching to school children; this mission made it a lightning rod for opposition from Evangelicals and Conservatives, who saw it as libertine, communistic and perhaps even Satanic.[7] In California and New Jersey, religious people organised (often under the leadership of women) and proved that they could punch well above their weight and exert influence outside of their base, winning victories such as the ‘Battle of Anaheim’, seeing SIECUS removed from Anaheim schools.[8] Meanwhile, other Christians took aim at the increasing openness of homosexuality. Jerry Falwell (who would go on to lead the Moral Majority movement) warned his followers that ‘Our Grand Old Flag is going down the drain’; they were ‘losing the war’ against homosexuals, decrying that gay people were given permission to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unkown Soldier at Arlington Cemetary, to which he would proclaim ‘gays were allowed to turn our Tomb of the Unknown Soldier into: THE TOMB OF THE UNKNOWN SODOMITE!’. [9] They also denounced Midnight Cowboy, a film which saw the titular character, a male prostitute, hugging a shrunken, diseased and dishevelled Jewish man, to which some like Barbara Walters explained as signifying the Hollywood trend of ‘dealing openly with homosexuality’.[10] Phyllis Schlaffy, who led the crusade against the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) remarked that efforts by Betty Friedan and Eleanor Smeal to include lesbians in their movement gave assistance to her cause, citing comments from the Democratic governor of Missouri in response to a question whether he supported the ERA, ’Do you mean the old ERA or the new ERA? I was for equal pay, equal work, but after they went down to Houston and got all tangled up with all those lesbians, I can tell you Missouri will never Ratify ERA’.[11]
The politics of the late 1950s and 1960s was dominated by Liberalism. Evangelicals took particular issue with the Supreme court led by Earl Warren (known as the Warren Court) despite the fact that Warren had attended and spoke at annual Presidential Prayer Breakfasts throughout the 1950s.[12] The Warren court was extremely Liberal, its decisions ordered the end of segregation, placed restrictions on witch-hunts like those of Joseph McCarthy – but the true sticking point was the 1962 and 1963 decision that banned sponsored prayer and Bible reading in public, something seen as a declaration of war.[13] They joined conservatives in protesting against the court, plastering billboards that said ’impeach Earl Warren !’.[14] It was this impetus that helped the Barry Goldwater campaign win over Evangelicals – with many like Morton Blackwell working to integrate them into the electoral effort.[15]
Whilst these 3 factors helped spur the Evangelicals into organising politically, they didn’t immediately jump into the Republican camp. Billy Graham (arguably the most famous Evangelical preacher) was extremely close and had backed the Nixon campaign in the 1960 election. Being a shrewd politician, Nixon was eager to appeal to the Evangelical community – whilst also courting Catholic groups, in order to create his ‘silent majority’ – he succeeded in fostering the increasing anti-governmental attitude, one member of this ‘silent majority’ wrote to Nixon – saying that it was time that ‘the law abiding, tax paying white middle class started looking to the federal government for something besides oppression’.[16] Yet Graham’s support of Nixon would come crashing down as scandal rocked the Nixon Whitehouse thanks to Watergate and his resignation, something that led to Graham arguing against organising the Evangelicals as a political block. Yet others disagreed, saying that Graham’s problem was that he had backed the wrong candidate.[17] A high point for Evangelicals came when George Gallup reported that as many as fifty million Americans classed themselves as Evangelical: Newsweek would dub 1976 as ’the year of the Evangelical’. Evangelicals felt giddy – they felt that they were coming into their own, and with Democratic Candidate Jimmy Carter openly discussing his faith, Evangelicals seemed to find their candidate and felt on top of the world.[18] Yet support for the Democrats would erode, firstly they did not integrate Evangelicals into their party structure, but the main thing that torpedoed their support was an explosive Playboy magazine interview in which Carter admitted he lusted for other women whilst married to his wife.[19] Jerry Falwell summed up the evangelical view after that: ’I am quite disillusioned. Four months ago, the majority of people I knew were pro-Carter. Today that has totally reversed’.[20] Whilst Evangelicals suffered a colossal setback, it wasn’t all bad news- their newfound attention had allowed numerous figures to gain the media spotlight, including one Pat Robertson, who on the Christian Broadcasting Network’s flagship program, the 700 Club, stated he believed that ’in the next five years we have an unprecedented opportunity for America to fulfil the dream of the early settlers who came right here to Virginia in 1607, that this land would be used to glorify god’.[21]
President Reagan meeting with Jerry Falwell in the Oval Office in March 1983.
Despite the disappointment of Carter, Evangelicals would soon find their next hero, Ronald Reagan. Armed with his easy grin, a sunny disposition and various anecdotes trumpeting traditional American values, Reagan’s conservatism with a smile united various disparate constituencies unhappy with the direction the nation had travelled: Evangelicals, blue collar Catholics, Southerners, Libertarians and neoconservatives all found something within Reagan.[22] In 1979, Jerry Falwell would form the Moral Majority, drawing upon the resources and staff of the school debate, which would play a key role in Reagan’s race for the Republican presidential nomination.[23] Reagan would be the only major presidential candidate to visit the Religious Round-table’s National Affairs meeting, that attracted 15,000 Evangelicals to Dallas, telling the pious horde, ’I know you can’t endorse me … I want you to know that I endorse you.[24] Evangelical organisations and other think-tanks such as the Moral Majority helped provide the ’intellectual ballast’ for the Reagan campaign, Reagan would denounce research on ‘Polish Bisexual frogs’ thanks to information from the National Taxpayers Union, whilst Reagan presented himself as the embodiment of wholesome family values despite being a divorcee.[25] Yet despite Reagan’s landslide victory in 1980,it can be argued that the election was more anti-Carter than pro-Reagan, as conservative ideology motivated only one Reagan voter in 10, with many Americans remaining supportive of abortion, the ERA and the welfare state – sure they wanted the government to have fewer regulations, but they still viewed an important role for it.[26] Reagan talked directly to Evangelicals, and played on the themes of morality, his opposition to abortion and his love of family values, and to the Evangelicals – who had felt like they were on the backfoot for much of the decade – they seemed to find not only a leader who understood them, but a political home, as Reagan showed them that politics was no vice, and allowed the Republicans to appeal to working class Evangelicals.[27]
Comparing Trump to Reagan isn’t ideal, yet when it comes to mustering Evangelical support, there is no denying they have common links. They both speak directly to Evangelicals, stating that they agree with them when it comes to abortion, gay rights and family values. Evangelicals failed to take over the Republican party: the closest they ever got was Pat Robertson in 1988.[28] But they have made their mark on the party, showing that Republican politics will continued to be influenced by a small, but loud minority.
[1] Peter Smith, “White evangelical voters show steadfast support for Donald Trump’s presidency”, Associated Press, 7 November 2024, https://apnews.com/article/white-evangelical-voters-support-donald-trump-president-dbfd2b4fe5b2ea27968876f19ee20c84. See commentary on this at https://baptistnews.com/article/the-sacrilegious-singing-of-how-great-thou-art/.
[2] Mattea Bubalo and Robin Levinson King “Who is Stormy Daniels, and what happened with Donald Trump”, BBC News, 21 May 2024, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-64920037 ; Smith, “White evangelical voters”.
[3] William Martin, With God on our side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America. (Broadway Books, 1996), 47-48 .
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid., 75.
[6] Ibid., 100.
[7] Ibid., 102.
[8] Ibid., 114.
[9] Ibid., 205.
[10] Rick Perlstein, The Invisible Bridge, the Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan. (Simon and Schuster, 2014), 7.
[11] Martin, With God on our side, 164-165.
[12] Ibid., 41.
[13] Ibid., 77.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Ibid., 88.
[16] Ibid., 98; Bruce J. Schulman, The Seventies, the great shift in American culture, society and politics (Dacap Press 2001), 193.
[17] Martin, With God on our side, 153.
[18] Ibid., 154, 156.
[19] Ibid., 153.
[20] Ibid., 157-158.
[21] Ibid., 157.
[22] Gil Troy, Morning in America. (Princeton University Press 2005), 11, 37.
[23] Schulman, The Seventies, 202.
[24] Ibid., 216.
[25] Perlstein, The Invisible Bridge, 454-455, 542.
[26] Troy, Morning in America, 49.
[27] Martin, With God on our side, 208-209; Nathan Glazer, “The ‘Social’ Agenda”. In Perspectives on the Reagan Years. ed. John L. Palmer. (The Urban Institute, 1986), 28
[28] John C. Caiazza, The Disunity of American Culture, Science, Religion, Technology and the Secular State. (Transaction Publishers, 2013), 54.
The core issue with this article is that it presents the evolution of the Christian Right as purely reactionary rather than as the logical fulfilment of trends far preceding the 1960s.
First of all, Carter was not that popular among Evangelicals in the first place, and opposition was far deeper and far more organised than disillusionment with his comments to Playboy. I will not dwell any further on this particular issue. Secondly, it seems odd not to mention that even before the 1960s, a realignment of the political map had already been underway. For context, Evangelicals had originally been aligned with the left-wing Populist party, as well as the Greenbacks and other progressive movements. In the Gilded & Progressive ages, Mainliners were predominantly associated with McKinley and Taft’s Conservatism to such an extent that a mainline Methodist like McKinley came to be considered a traditional American Christian while Evangelical Protestants were the progressive outsiders. Even before this point Evangelicals had largely been associated with abolitionism (e.g John Brown). The Great Awakenings were also predominantly associated with rural liberalism, with the Populists and Greenbacks relying heavily on the rhetoric of the Great Awakenings (like the Cross of Gold speech).
Evangelicalism grew alongside two trends: firstly, the “Constantine” political Christianity of Northern and Western Conservatism, and secondly the “Dignity” character-bound Christianity of Southern and Midwestern Populism. The former was the practise of favouring Christianity without really being Christian. Someone like Alexander Hamilton represented this attitude, a lapsed Presbyterian whose interest in Christianity only grew insofar as Conservative politics guided him towards it. The Federalists had put Unitarians like John Adams and John Quincy Adams into office. Likewise, the Know Nothings had elevated the apathetic Fillmore as their presidential candidate, and later on Lincoln, who was most likely a Deist if not an outright agnostic, was the first president to popularize Christian rhetoric in the White House. “Dignity” Christianity, meanwhile was instead focused on rights and character rather than rhetoric and political gains, with Jacksonian Democracy becoming the first maiden of the great awakenings as it triumphed liberalism and egalitarianism, but at the same time collective responsibility and action against vice and corruption. Additionally, the focus of the Awakenings on social gospel meant that common cause could be made with (by contemporary standards) moderate liberals (indeed, even atheists) in the name of a broader social good. “Dignity” Christianity was also strongly supportive of using the law to uphold Christian morals without explicitly writing God into the constitution like Hamilton had intended to. Essentially, their position of law was an accomodationism with moral atheists, without ceding their own ground and occasionally extending into the fray (such as with Prohibition). Jefferson had misunderstood this accomodationism as a commitment to full-on secularism and was disgusted to find himself boo’d out of Southern Universities for his vocal opposition to Christian common law precedents.
Realignment began after the death of William Jennings Bryan as the Populists in the South developed into the Dixiecrats (a term I will use to refer to the Southern pro-segregationist and White Supremacist Democrats). Even during Bryan’s own tenure as a leading figure of the Democrats, he refrained from criticising the Klan and the Populist political machine had little explicit interest in the fortunes of ethnic minorities. Southern Evangelicals had always been supportive or indifferent towards Jim Crow. Bryan was also opposed to Chinese immigration and other immigration from “Godless” countries, not to mention the influx of Catholic immigrants from Europe into North Eastern Cities. This didn’t necessarily mean that the “Dignity” camp would sell out their votes to anti-immigrationists, but that they weren’t wholly opposed to institutional politics, nor were they wholly “Leftists” in the way that we understand the term today. Evangelicals had already began to fall out of love with the Democrats as early as the 1930s as reactions to the New Deal were mixed and many rumoured it to be the coming of the antichrist, do-gooder socialism ushering in Sinful practises and societal dissolution under the guise of social gospel.
To continue, the national Democratic party began to part ways with the Dixiecrats under FDR and eventually under Nixon the Dixiecrats were mostly brought into the Republican camp, as well as the might of the Southern Evangelical voter-base. There was also a failure to organise Evangelicals into a separate Marxian Socialist camp, as Socialism became the watchword of foreign terrorists and foreign interests (in Oklahoma, 1 out of every 4 votes used to go to the Socialists, but they permanently dropped in popularity due to their opposition to WW1 and were subsequently replaced by the Dixiecrats until the Southern Strategy.) Either way, the Evangelical “turn to the right” was more-so the natural parting of a pragmatic alliance rather than a full scale 180. It was the divorce of Jacksonian Democracy and the Great Awakening.
Whether Evangelicals consciously knew it or not, someone like Carter seemed to be a return to the “Dignity” politics of Bryan, a figure who was not necessarily looking to Christianize America through laws but by leadership and conduct. However, something that had characterised “Dignity” evangelicalism was that it never directly attacked orthodox Christian morals in the state in the way that Carter did with his legal support of LGBT issues and other New Left initiatives. Carter symbolised the impossibility of Evangelical socialism in a political system strongly divided between the modern Right and Left. Evangelical “Dignity” types who favoured Christian Democracy now understood that they would find better company among more authoritarian right figures rather than other egalitarians, thus paving the way for the triumph of “Constantine” politics, witnessed in the devotion to Trump despite the common knowledge among Evangelicals that Trump is a womanizer and most likely an insincere Christian.
The core reason for the Evangelical swing to the right during the 60s was not hidebound Conservatism, as Evangelicals had supported many of the progressive changes prior (Coolidge’s liberal Conservatism was one of the high points of Evangelical politics), but rather the collapse of the egalitarian alliance, the growing imbedded contradiction between (lower s) “socialism” and moral conservatism in American politics. Even Bryan, a Populist, had strong views against homosexuality, alcoholism, idleness and all other “vices” which eventually triumphed in the revolutions of the 60s. In a way, the Evangelicals had stuck to the line of Abolitionism and Prohibitionism while the mainstream left had elevated New Left social policy above everything else. The reason Evangelicals turned right was the triumph of “Constantine” politics under Nixon, the end of “Dignity” politics under Carter and the natural parting of Evangelicalism and left-wing populism/egalitarianism due to moral disagreements. Ultimately it became impossible to hold a progressive alliance together as the Christian Right was the unification of all Evangelicals in America with a plan to reform both America’s characters and its laws simultaneously. This alliance, just like the last, is ultimately pragmatic.
It’s also worth mentioning that lots of the ideas of the Christian Right are drawn from Christian Reconstructionism, men like R.J Rushdoony and organizations like the John Birch Society. Neither Rushdoony nor the Birchers were “reactionaries” in the way some characterise the secular Right Wing elements of the modern Republican party, but rather advocated for a political Conservatism alongside an internal moral reform of individuals, embodied by homeschooling. This was essentially the detachment of Great Awakening ideology from “socialism” and its convergence into something more akin to a Covenant of Conservative believers against everyone else. This was the philosophical groundwork that consolidated the Chrisitan Right more than the political overtures of politicians did, as Evangelicals were and are an upright and principled camp in of themselves, not just the putty of Conservative politicians (which the author shamefully refers to as “exploiting” earlier on in this article).
Anyways, the ideas of the Reconstructionists eventually cycled directly into mainstream Evangelicalism via churches like the CREC, which Trump’s Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth devoutly belongs to. R.C Sproul also had links to men like Gary North. “Christian Nationalism” is also downstream from this, with William Jennings Bryan as its proverbial grandmother.
Evangelicals did not come out of nowhere in the 1960s as a political force, they were highly active and philosophically robust before then and it is difficult to fully understand their pragmatic support for Nixon, Reagan and Trump without understanding this prior context. This article also does not clarify that Evangelicals did not “join with Conservatives”, but had rather always been morally Conservative, even if they were not politically Conservative until quite recently. The rise of the Christian Right was a result of the aforementioned great divorce between Jacksonian Democracy (the inheritance of Clinton and Obama) and the Great Awakening. If the secular egalitarians (Jacksonians) had not thrown their weight in with the New Left then the Christian Right would likely never have arisen, as it has not arisen in Western countries where Christian Democracy and Conservative centre-right socialism still exists.
My issue with this article is not so much what it says, but what it purposefully does not say. Evangelicals were not bought or swindled by Reagan, but rather willingly joined with him, fully understanding what they were signing up for.