American evangelicalism was politically reformist long before it aligned with the right

Evidence

The alliance between white evangelicals and the far-right precincts of the Republican Party over the past forty-plus years has been so unwavering that most Americans would be forgiven for believing that evangelicalism has always listed to the right of the political spectrum. That, however, is not the case. Over the course of the nineteenth and well into the twentieth century, evangelicals were engaged in a broad spectrum of social reform efforts, many of them directed toward those on the margins of society. — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith, 41

Categorization

• SEED: Good anchor for an essay/series premise: the political Right’s claim on evangelicalism is historically recent, undercutting the assumption that the alignment is natural.
• XREF: connects to: Evangelical social concern in 1973 explicitly included women’s equality and anti-racism. — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the…, 78; Antebellum evangelicals campaigned for causes the modern Religious Right opposes — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the…, 47; Early evangelical responses to civil rights were divided along left and fundamentalist lines — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne: How White…, 88 (+9 more)

Related

• Antebellum evangelicals campaigned for causes the modern Religious Right opposes (similarity 0.84)
• Evangelicals reached the political mainstream and allied with Republicans by the 1950s (similarity 0.84)
• Early evangelical responses to civil rights were divided along left and fundamentalist lines (similarity 0.84)
• The Religious Right includes more than fundamentalists (similarity 0.83)
• Progressive evangelicalism peaked in the mid-1970s with Carter’s election (similarity 0.82)
• Evangelicals abandoned social reform for individual conversion as proto-liberals embraced it (similarity 0.82)
• Antebellum evangelicals pursued education, prison reform, women’s rights, and even gun control (similarity 0.81)
• Confronting the abortion myth could reorient the whole evangelical agenda (similarity 0.80)
• The Christian Right’s lasting achievement was locking evangelicals to the GOP (similarity 0.80)
• Northern evangelicals of the era backed antislavery and immigrant public schooling (similarity 0.80)
• Religious Right leaders forfeited their prophetic voice by abandoning social reform. (similarity 0.80)
• The abortion myth obscures the segregationist origins of evangelical activism. (similarity 0.80)
• A viable evangelical Left existed in 1973 but lost to conservatives (similarity 0.80)
• Some evangelicals sincerely oppose abortion regardless of their movement’s origins (similarity 0.79)
• Unorganized evangelicals voted for Carter before the Religious Right existed (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Evangelicals reached the political mainstream and allied with Republicans by the 1950s #contradicts (0.80) — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 85
• Evangelicals abandoned social reform for individual conversion as proto-liberals embraced it #corroborates (0.80)
• Early evangelicals championed women’s rights until reactionary fundamentalism displaced egalitarianism #corroborates (0.78) — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 64
• Early evangelical responses to civil rights were divided along left and fundamentalist lines #corroborates (0.72) — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 88
• American evangelicalism’s core traits trace to three eighteenth-century religious streams #responds-to (0.72) — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith, 28
• Unorganized evangelicals voted for Carter before the Religious Right existed #corroborates (0.72) — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith, 83
• A viable evangelical Left existed in 1973 but lost to conservatives #corroborates (0.70) — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 120