This document discusses the Christian Right movement in American politics. It explores why people support or join the movement, examining personality and group membership explanations. While the movement aims to defend conservative Christian values, opponents argue it seeks to impose its interpretation of biblical law on others. The document also analyzes the Christian Right agenda on issues like abortion, education, gay rights, and whether the US is a Christian nation. It considers arguments that the movement both enhances and undermines American democracy.

1. Chapter 4
Assessing the Christian Right
Onward Christian Soldiers?
The Religious Right in American Politics

2. Controversy
 The Christian Right is a deeply controversial element of
American politics.
 Its activists depict a movement that seeks to defend the rights
of conservative Christians to freely exercise their religious
beliefs.
 Opponents describe a movement of moral censors who
would impose their interpretation of biblical law on all
Americans.

3. Why Do People Support or Join the
Christian Right?
 Opponents of the Christian Right view its members as
irrational and suffering from a variety of social and even
psychological deficits.
 Rank and file Christian Right members may also strike
nonsupporters as irrational.
 Most studies of membership in other movements suggest that
the individuals support groups that promote their values.

4. Personality Explanations
 In the 1960s it was claimed that support for the Right came
from individuals with distinctive, distorted personalities.
 The most prominent charge was that supporters of the Right
had authoritarian personalities.
 The Christian Right also offers a straightforward portrait of a
struggle between the forces of darkness and light, symbolism
that has strong appeal to those who dislike ambiguity.

5. Personality Characteristics
 Research data suggests that the Christian Right attracts some
individuals with a predisposition to defer to strong leaders.
 Similarly, data confirmed that Christian Right activists may
see political issues as having one side and political conflicts as
a battle between good and evil.
 What is striking about Christian Right activists is the extent
of their fear of their political opponents.

6. Group Membership as a Rational
Choice
 The most parsimonious explanation for why people join the
Christian Right is that the organizations of the movement
represent their political and religious views.
 In this way, the Christian Right is like all social movements,
mobilizing a group of people with shared identities,
ideologies, and grievances.
 However, well-adjusted, rational citizens are capable of
limiting the civil liberties of others.

7. The Christian Right and American
Democracy
 Critics of the Christian Right charge that it is a dangerous
movement that would undermine basic civil liberties and
possibly impose a right-wing theocracy onAmerica.
 Supporters of the movement claim that the Christian Right
enhances democracy by mobilizing previously apolitical
Christians into active citizenship.

8. Democratic Participation
 The Christian Right may have had a positive impact on
democracy if it provided a voice for a previously
disenfranchised community.
 Evangelicals, pentecostals, and especially fundamentalists
have traditionally been less likely to participate in politics
than other citizens.
 However, it is not clear that the increase in voter turnout
among evangelicals is primarily because of the Christian
Right.

9. The Christian Right and Democratic
Values
 Critics charge that the Christian Right has mobilized a horde
of uncompromising activists whose intolerant activities pose
a danger to democracy.
 Studies have shown that Christian Right activists are more
likely than other political elites to express certainty about the
truth of their views.

10. Democratic Values
 According to data collected from Republican presidential
donors in 2000, Christian Right members are not universally
uncompromising and intolerant.
 Yet, Christian Right activists are less supportive of
democratic values than other GOP donors.

11. Educational Issues
 Christian Right activists show surprising levels of intolerance
when it comes to teaching in public schools.
 One reason that Christian Right activists are so intolerant on
educational issues is that they perceive public schools as
hostile to their values.

12. Intolerance to Liberal Groups
 One large study of religious activists found that Christian
Right members most often identified liberal groups as being
the most dangerous to the country.
 In contrast, although religious liberal activists frequently
named the Christian Right as the greatest threat, they were
far more willing to accord its adherents basic civil rights.

13. Mobilizing a Constituency
 The Christian Right seeks to mobilize a constituency that enters
politics with a deficit in civic virtues.
 Studies have shown that fundamentalists and Pentecostals in
general are less tolerant than other Americans.
 This suggests that Christian Right activists are less willing to
deliberate and compromise and that the Christian Right has
increased their civic virtues.

14. Compromise Within the Christian Right
 Studies show that Christian Right members who have been
active the longest are most willing to compromise.
 Those who have been newly mobilized are far more likely to
reject the necessity of political compromise.

15. Bonding and Bridging
 Bonding capital refers to social trust and reciprocity among
those who share a common identity.
 Bridging capital extends those bonds to those who are in
some way outside of the social group.

16. The Christian Right Agenda: Radical or
Mainstream?
 The Christian Right, like all social movements, is
characterized by decentralization and has competing leaders
and social movement organizations, each with somewhat
different complaints and policy solutions.
 Nevertheless, it is possible to describe in general the shared
agenda and to consider the range of positions that movement
organizations and activists take.

17. Abortion
 Almost all Christian Right activists believe that abortion is murder,
and they ardently seek to ban most or all abortions.
 It is a measure of how strong the pro-life consensus is in the
Christian Right when some activists will only voice their
reservations on the issue off the record.
 Movement leaders are divided on their approach to the abortion
issue: either banning abortion or imposing modest procedural
restrictions.

18. Education
 At the heart of the Christian Right criticism ofAmerican
education is the charge that it promotes anti-Christian values
and threatens the ability of conservative Christians to
inculcate their values in their own children.

19. Criticisms of Public Schooling
 The schools are promoting a religion called secular
humanism.
 Multi-cultural curricula promotes tolerance of non-Christian
lifestyles.
 Inviting students to clarify their values may lead them to
reject their orthodox Christian views.
 School psychologists “brainwash” students away from their
Christian values.
 The absence of prayer and religious content.

20. Altering Curriculum
 Christian conservatives have pushed to alter public school
curriculum.
 Some pushed to teach “intelligent design” as an acceptable
scientific alternative to evolution.
 Others seek to teach creationism instead of evolution.
 Some attempt to excuse their children from reading certain
books.
 Most seek to include prayer in public schools.

21. Opposition to Gay and Lesbian Rights
 For the past twenty-five years Christian Right groups have made
opposition to gay and lesbian rights a central part of their policy
agenda.
 The intensity of Christian Right opposition to gay and lesbian
rights strikes many outside of the movement as unusual.
 Christian Right organizations also condemn any national, state, or
local laws that prohibit discrimination against gays and lesbians in
housing and employment.

22. Traditional Families
 Christian Right leaders prefer to refer to their organizations
as “pro-family” while advocating policies that promote
“traditional” families.
 Right activists charge that current government policy
encourages women to work.
 Christian conservatives also object to any government
interference in how they raise their children, including
matters of discipline.

23. Pornography
 The Christian Right today wants to restrict the distribution
and possession of “pornography.”
 However, Christian Right activists are divided as to what
constitutes pornography.
 Therefore, they advocate differing policies on these matters.
 Interestingly, the pornography issue is one on which the
Christian Right finds common ground with many feminists.

24. A Christian Nation
 Christian Right activists believe that the United States is a
Christian nation, and that its laws should reflect God’s will.
 Activists seek to restore a more public role for religion in
general and Christianity in particular inAmerican life.
 Opponents charge that the Christian Right seeks to
marginalize religious minorities.

25. An Economic Agenda?
 Many Christian Right leaders since the 1980s have staked
neoliberal positions on economic issues including:
 Endorsing subminimum wages
 A return to the gold standard
 Protectionist trade policies
 Privatizing the welfare system
 Cuts in Medicaid and other social spending
 A flat income tax
 An end to the estate tax.

26. Economic Focus
 Surveys show that white evangelicals have a mixed reaction
to the economic agenda of the Christian Right.
 Even those who take conservative positions on eliminating
welfare and scaling back other poverty programs do not see
these issues as essentially religious questions.

27. The Agenda as Defensive Action
 Christian Right leaders argue that the core of their agenda is
a defensive action against the rapid social change of the past
several decades.
 Policies on the Right agenda will be advocated by both
movement moderates and extreme activists.
 The extreme positions and statements of the fringe elements
of the movement are not unusual, for all groups have
members with varied ideologies.