The Religious Right needed a rallying issue besides racial segregation

Evidence

How did abortion finally become part of the Religious Right’s agenda? After mobilizing in opposition to the Internal Revenue Service, Paul Weyrich and leaders of the nascent Religious Right were savvy enough to recognize that they needed another issue besides defense of racial segregation to rally rank-and-file evangelicals to the voting booth. Opposition to abortion, however, was by no means the logical alternative. — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith, 119

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Politics, abortion, and school prayer failed for two decades to rouse evangelicals — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the…, 104; Proposed rallying issues for the Religious Right included gay rights before abortion — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the…, 120; The 1978 ‘insignificant number of minority students’ IRS rule was Weyrich’s rallying issue (+16 more)

Related

• The Religious Right adopted abortion only after racial segregation failed to rally voters (similarity 0.91)
• The IRS’s challenge to segregated schools, not abortion, birthed the Religious Right (similarity 0.91)
• Proposed rallying issues for the Religious Right included gay rights before abortion (similarity 0.90)
• The 1978 ‘insignificant number of minority students’ IRS rule was Weyrich’s rallying issue (similarity 0.89)
• Forced desegregation of Christian schools, not abortion, sparked the Christian Right (similarity 0.87)
• Abortion failed for years to mobilize evangelicals before the IRS ruling (similarity 0.87)
• The Religious Right’s foundation is racial exclusion, not abortion opposition. (similarity 0.87)
• The Religious Right’s origins lay in defending racial segregation, not opposing abortion (similarity 0.86)
• Politics, abortion, and school prayer failed for two decades to rouse evangelicals (similarity 0.85)
• The Religious Right strategists first favored gay rights over abortion as a mobilizing issue (similarity 0.85)
• Religious Right leaders reframed racism as religious freedom to mask self-interest (similarity 0.84)
• The IRS’s Bob Jones revocation supplied Weyrich’s racial organizing issue (similarity 0.84)
• The Religious Right’s abortion politics predate Roe and were chosen for strategic reasons (similarity 0.83)
• The Religious Right began as reaction to IRS desegregation of Christian schools. (similarity 0.83)
• The Religious Right’s religious-freedom framing masked its defense of segregation (similarity 0.83)

Broader Connections

• Racism was integral but rendered invisible in the Christian Right’s origins #expands (0.90) — Andrew L. Whitehead, American Idolatry, 533
• The Religious Right began as reaction to IRS desegregation of Christian schools. #corroborates (0.85) — Andrew L. Whitehead; Samuel L. Perry, Taking America Back for God, 312