Three 1980 presidential candidates openly claimed evangelical Christian identity

Evidence

Although Newsweek had christened 1976 “The Year of the Evangelical,” that declaration may have been four years premature. As the 1980 presidential election approached, not one or two but three candidates contended for the White House as evangelical Christians. Jimmy Carter, the Democratic incumbent, had established his credentials as a “born-again” Christian during his run for the presidency four years earlier. John B. Anderson, Republican member of Congress from Illinois, competed for the Republican nomination and then mounted a third-party bid; Anderson was a longtime member of First Evangelical Free Church in Rockford, Illinois. On the face of it, Ronald Reagan, a divorced and remarried former actor in Hollywood, a province not known to evangelicals for its piety, may have had the weakest claim on evangelical credentials. But when James Robison, a televangelist from Dallas, Texas, asked Reagan about his faith, Reagan told the preacher that Jesus was more real to him than his own mother. — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith, 134

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: White evangelicals in 1980 chose image over co-religionist Carter and backed Reagan — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne: How White…, 244; Campaigns modestly increased public awareness of candidate policy differences in 1980.

Related

• White evangelicals in 1980 chose image over co-religionist Carter and backed Reagan (similarity 0.87)
• Evangelicals conspired against Carter’s reelection secretly (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• White evangelicals in 1980 chose image over co-religionist Carter and backed Reagan #corroborates (0.85) — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 244
• Campaigns modestly increased public awareness of candidate policy differences in 1980. #expands (0.75)