Reagan largely failed to deliver the Religious Right’s domestic agenda.

Evidence

Once in office, however, Reagan’s loyalty to the Religious Right wasn’t what its members had hoped for. They’d expected Reagan to do away with abortion, bring back prayer in schools, and usher in a spiritual and moral renewal. They also expected some plum assignments in the new administration. On all these counts they were disappointed. Reagan did not prioritize the domestic family values agenda he had championed during the campaign, abortion rights remained the law of the land, and there was little evidence of moral revival. When Reagan failed to back Bob Jones University in the IRS’s civil rights case against them, Bob Jones III denounced him as a “traitor to God’s people.” Falwell, too, was disenchanted. A year in, he griped that he had expected more “with one of our ‘own’ in the White House.” — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 254

Categorization

• XREF: Establishes the precedent of evangelical disappointment that complicates the superficially simple ‘evangelicals own Trump’ narrative — there is precedent for transactional unhappiness with an allied president. — connects to: The Religious Right includes more than fundamentalists — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the…, 36