The Religious Right began as reaction to IRS desegregation of Christian schools.
Evidence
As Douglass points out, white Americans’ claims to be preserving Christian order, America’s Christian heritage, or even “religious freedom” have long served as coverings for what has amounted to the exclusion of nonwhite and especially black Americans. In fact, historians like Randall Balmer trace the very birth of the Religious Right and its brand of Christian nationalism to a reaction to federal efforts to restrict the ability of conservative Christian schools to racially discriminate. During the early 1970s, when the IRS revoked Bob Jones University’s tax-exempt status due to their racially discriminatory policies (like forbidding interracial dating), conservative Christian leaders interpreted this as an encroachment on their right to lead their religious academies as they saw fit. Thus, it is no overstatement to suggest that much of the Christian nationalist rhetoric born out of the Religious Right finds its roots in the desire to create boundaries of group membership around race and the right of white Americans to segregate themselves from minorities. — Andrew L. Whitehead; Samuel L. Perry, Taking America Back for God, 312
Categorization
- SEED: Angle: an essay on how the ‘religious freedom’ frame was invented as cover for racial segregation, tracing the genealogy of a contemporary slogan.
- XREF: connects to: Evangelical women’s gender identity fueled the grassroots Religious Right activism. — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne: How White…, 154; Forced desegregation of Christian schools, not abortion, sparked the Christian Right — Andrew L. Whitehead, American Idolatry, 530; The Religious Right’s abortion politics predate Roe and were chosen for strategic reasons — Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the…, 222 (+14 more)
Broader Connections
- Evangelical women’s gender identity fueled the grassroots Religious Right activism.
#expands(0.80) — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 154