Politics, abortion, and school prayer failed for two decades to rouse evangelicals

Evidence

For nearly two decades, Weyrich, by his own account, had been trying out different issues, hoping one might pique evangelical interest: pornography, prayer in schools, the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution, even abortion. “I was trying to get these people interested in those issues and I utterly failed,” Weyrich recalled in 1990. — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith, 104

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The Religious Right needed a rallying issue besides racial segregation — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the…, 119; Mid-century evangelicals boycotted voting as politics belonged to Satan — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the…, 70; Few evangelical voices spoke against abortion through most of the 1970s — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the…, 122 (+3 more)

Related

• Abortion failed for years to mobilize evangelicals before the IRS ruling (similarity 0.88)
• The Religious Right adopted abortion only after racial segregation failed to rally voters (similarity 0.86)
• The Religious Right needed a rallying issue besides racial segregation (similarity 0.85)
• 1978 pro-life upsets convinced Weyrich abortion could mobilize evangelical voters (similarity 0.85)
• Abortion was not a key evangelical voting issue before 1979. (similarity 0.84)
• Proposed rallying issues for the Religious Right included gay rights before abortion (similarity 0.84)
• Operatives treated the 1978 election as a test of abortion’s mobilizing power (similarity 0.83)
• The abortion myth obscures the segregationist origins of evangelical activism. (similarity 0.82)
• Weyrich himself asserted abortion was irrelevant to the Religious Right’s rise (similarity 0.82)
• Few evangelical voices spoke against abortion through most of the 1970s (similarity 0.82)
• Premillennial belief made evangelicals refuse even to vote for decades. (similarity 0.82)
• The IRS’s challenge to segregated schools, not abortion, birthed the Religious Right (similarity 0.82)
• Early Moral Majority insiders confirm abortion was not its founding issue (similarity 0.81)
• Internal Religious Right correspondence celebrated abortion as an effective organizing issue (similarity 0.81)
• Evangelicals adopted anti-abortion politics six years after Roe for political gain (similarity 0.81)

Broader Connections

• Abortion was not a key evangelical voting issue before 1979. #corroborates (0.95) — Andrew L. Whitehead; Samuel L. Perry, Taking America Back for God, 246
• Few evangelical voices spoke against abortion through most of the 1970s #corroborates (0.92) — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith, 122