Operatives treated the 1978 election as a test of abortion’s mobilizing power

Evidence

In the course of my research in Falwell’s archives at Liberty University and Weyrich’s papers at the University of Wyoming, it became very clear that the 1978 election represented a formative step toward galvanizing everyday evangelical voters. Correspondence between Weyrich and evangelical leaders fairly crackles with excitement. In a letter to fellow conservative Daniel B. Hales, Weyrich characterized the triumph of pro-life candidates as “true cause for celebration.” Billings, a cobelligerent who had urged opposition to gay rights as the “emotionally charged issue to stir up” evangelical voters, now predicted that opposition to abortion would “pull together many of our ‘fringe’ Christian friends.” By this time, Roe v. Wade had been law for more than five years. — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith, 128

Categorization

• XREF: Billings’ phrase ‘pull together many of our fringe Christian friends’ echoes the earlier claim that Religious Right leaders treated evangelicals instrumentally as a voting bloc rather than from conviction. — connects to: The Religious Right’s abortion politics predate Roe and were chosen for strategic reasons — Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the…, 222; Few evangelical voices spoke against abortion through most of the 1970s — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the…, 122; Evangelical opposition to abortion was initially uncertain and politically constructed — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne: How White…, 160 (+3 more)

Related

• Internal Religious Right correspondence celebrated abortion as an effective organizing issue (similarity 0.90)
• 1978 pro-life upsets convinced Weyrich abortion could mobilize evangelical voters (similarity 0.88)
• Abortion was not a key evangelical voting issue before 1979. (similarity 0.87)
• The Religious Right’s abortion politics predate Roe and were chosen for strategic reasons (similarity 0.85)
• Few evangelical voices spoke against abortion through most of the 1970s (similarity 0.85)
• Evangelicals adopted anti-abortion politics six years after Roe for political gain (similarity 0.85)
• Conservatives commandeered the once-diverse antiabortion movement (similarity 0.84)
• The Religious Right strategists first favored gay rights over abortion as a mobilizing issue (similarity 0.84)
• Proposed rallying issues for the Religious Right included gay rights before abortion (similarity 0.84)
• Early Moral Majority insiders confirm abortion was not its founding issue (similarity 0.84)
• Abortion failed for years to mobilize evangelicals before the IRS ruling (similarity 0.83)
• Politics, abortion, and school prayer failed for two decades to rouse evangelicals (similarity 0.83)
• The Religious Right adopted abortion only after racial segregation failed to rally voters (similarity 0.83)
• The abortion myth obscures the segregationist origins of evangelical activism. (similarity 0.82)
• The religious right’s founding coalition was initially indifferent to abortion. (similarity 0.82)

Broader Connections

• Evangelical opposition to abortion was initially uncertain and politically constructed #complicates (0.75) — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 160
• An ideology can outlive and outspread the demographic group that created it #exemplifies (0.72) — Andrew L. Whitehead, Samuel L. Perry, and Joseph O. Baker, Make America Christian Again, 142