Religious Right leaders reframed racism as religious freedom to mask self-interest

Evidence

Weyrich and other founders of the Religious Right cannily sought to shift the justification for their political activism away from a defense of racial segregation and toward a putative defense of religious freedom, all the while ignoring the fact that religious institutions were free to pursue whatever racial policies they chose—so long as they surrendered their tax exemptions. Indeed, the most obvious, commonsense reading of the Religious Right is that conservative evangelicals were mobilizing in defense of racial segregation. Weyrich’s sleight of hand brilliantly shifted perceptions of the movement away from racism toward a more high-minded defense of religious freedom. (The Religious Right’s later opposition to abortion further burnished its image as a movement crusading against moral evil.) — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith, 110

Categorization

• recurring: this claim recurs 2 times within its source
• XREF: connects to: Bob Jones University barred unmarried African Americans to prevent interracial dating — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the…, 111; Christian conservatives now justify discrimination via rights language rather than morality — Philip S. Gorski and Samuel L. Perry, The Flag and the Cross: White Christian…, 292; Racism was integral but rendered invisible in the Christian Right’s origins — Andrew L. Whitehead, American Idolatry, 533 (+5 more)

Related

• The Religious Right’s religious-freedom framing masked its defense of segregation (similarity 0.90)
• Racism was integral but rendered invisible in the Christian Right’s origins (similarity 0.85)
• The Religious Right needed a rallying issue besides racial segregation (similarity 0.84)
• The Religious Right’s foundation is racial exclusion, not abortion opposition. (similarity 0.84)
• The Religious Right began as reaction to IRS desegregation of Christian schools. (similarity 0.84)
• The IRS’s challenge to segregated schools, not abortion, birthed the Religious Right (similarity 0.83)
• Forced desegregation of Christian schools, not abortion, sparked the Christian Right (similarity 0.82)
• Religious Right leaders cultivated fear to sustain their own political success (similarity 0.82)
• The 1978 ‘insignificant number of minority students’ IRS rule was Weyrich’s rallying issue (similarity 0.82)
• The Religious Right’s origins lay in defending racial segregation, not opposing abortion (similarity 0.81)
• Segregationist schools’ tax-exemption fight catalyzed the New Right movement (similarity 0.80)
• Weyrich himself asserted abortion was irrelevant to the Religious Right’s rise (similarity 0.80)
• Christian conservatives now justify discrimination via rights language rather than morality (similarity 0.80)
• The Religious Right adopted abortion only after racial segregation failed to rally voters (similarity 0.80)
• Religious Right leaders forfeited their prophetic voice by abandoning social reform. (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• The Religious Right needed a rallying issue besides racial segregation #corroborates (0.92) — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith, 119
• Mainstream defenses of religious freedom masked the racism and imperial logic behind Islamophobia #corroborates (0.88) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 657
• Religious Right leaders cultivated fear to sustain their own political success #expands (0.75) — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 568