The Christian Right

The Christian Right/New Right Coalition

These two groups came together in the late 1970s when Weyrich, Phillips, and Viguerie asked Falwell to organize conservative evangelicals through an organization called the Moral Majority. Falwell [Page 178]agreed, and several of the evangelical ministers who joined the Moral Majority later formed their own organizations.

During the scandal involving evangelist Jim Bakker in 1987, Jerry Falwell (third from right) leads the new PTL (Praise the Lord) board of directors in prayer.

Bettmann/Corbis; used with permission.

The Christian Right/New Right coalition was characterized by two different kinds of leadership that, by the end of the 1980s, would be synthesized by the Christian Right into an effective leadership strategy that coordinated grassroots politics with national appeals. The first kind of leadership reflected the leaders' common experience as evangelical ministers. The second kind of leadership reflected the New Right experience as a political force contending with an entrenched two-party system of government.

The leadership of evangelical ministers emphasized entrepreneurial spirit and aggressiveness. Evangelical church-building is based on an entrepreneurial model wherein each minister starts his own church (sometimes in his living room) and growth comes from his ability to attract and keep a congregation. Building a congregation large enough and committed enough to pay a salary and maintain church buildings fosters the development of a set of skills and abilities—rhetorical and leadership skills, the ability to establish community boundaries, charisma—that are easily transferred to social movement mobilizing. Sharing similar professional backgrounds contributed to the consensus among the early leadership that rank-and-file members had little to do with governance decisions. Their vision assumed that financial resources would flow upward while organizational and tactical decisions would be made at the top.

The second leadership style, based in the political experience of the New Right, emphasized building networks of powerful politicians, selecting hot issues, and building stable funding bases through foundations, think tanks, and political action committees. New Right strategists established groups that met regularly to discuss agendas and strategy, and these groups gradually became durable networks connecting the New Right to a wider set of receptive political figures. Library Court and the Kingston Group were two such groups. Both were little known outside of New Right circles and were rarely mentioned in the press. Library Court began meeting in 1979 and took its name from the Capitol Hill location of its regular meetings. Connie Marshner, then director of the Family Policy Division of the Free Congress Foundation (a think tank headed by Paul Weyrich), led the group and also included Christian Right leaders in strategy meetings.

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