Christian Right

The U.S. Christian Right is an umbrella term describing a political and social movement comprised largely of Protestant evangelicals and fundamentalists, who are deeply conservative in their political orientation. Some of the most important social and political issues for the Christian Right are their strong opposition to abortion, sexuality education, and unrestricted access to birth control; women's rights; racial desegregation and the African American civil rights movement; the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered civil rights movement; evolution in public school science curricula; and any limits on religious expression and practice in public schools. By contrast, Christian Right adherents have been very vocal in their support for unrestricted public [Page 325]monies for private religious schools (both direct aid, such as federal and state grants, and indirect aid, such as tax deductions), unrestricted home schooling, unrestricted religious proselytization through public schools, criminalization of abortion and the doctors who perform the medical procedure, and the maintenance of criminal statutes that bar all forms of non-pro-creative sexual expression.

While the roots of the U.S. Christian Right can be found in the early decades of the 20th century, it gathered as a political force largely in reaction to several social and political liberation movements, including the African American civil rights movement, the women's movement, and the gay and lesbian rights movement. However, perhaps the most important motivational trigger was the U.S. Supreme Court's 1973 landmark decision in Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion across the United States. Both conservative Protestants and Catholics were horrified by the decision, viewing it as akin to legalized infanticide and emblematic of a permissive sexual cultural ethos that had pervaded the United States. Although each side had long viewed each other with more than a measure of antipathy and loathing, these diverse (and divergent) religious adherents began to subsume generations of religious animosity to work together toward the common goal of overturning Roe.

Two major intellectual developments, Christian Recontructionism and dominion theology, spurred the entry of conservative Protestants into the Christian Right, particularly Christian fundamentalists, regardless of individual denomination. Prior to the 1970s, many fundamentalists had shunned involvement with politics out of religious conviction. Adherents were to stay focused on the return of Christ and not involve themselves with worldly affairs, particularly those of government, which was seen as both morally corrupt and corrupting. Consequently, not only were fundamentalists largely apolitical, but many did not vote—out of religious conviction.

However, several activists urged that this apolitical stance be reconsidered. Claiming that Christ would not return until “His kingdom” was established on this earth, Christian Right activists grounded in Christian Reconstructionism stated that the United States had been founded on “Godly principles” and needed to reflect these. Reconstructionists advocated that activists work to establish an Old Testament–style theocracy, where only avowed Christians (i.e., Reconstructionists) would lead or even have basic citizenship rights. Only when the United States was truly a “Christian Nation” would Jesus Christ return to reign for 1,000 years.

A central political focus for Reconstructionism is its utter hostility toward legalized abortion, which they equate with murder. Reconstructionists have provided both the political and the legal firepower in attacking the right to abortion in the United States. A few Reconstructionists have gone farther, targeting women's clinics with aggressive picketing. And others—whether actual Reconstructionists or not, but inspired by Reconstructionist writings—have targeted for assassination doctors and medical staff who provide abortions. Given their radicalism and appetite for violence (both physical and rhetorical), Reconstructionists tend to operate beneath the political surface.

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