Weyrich’s conservatism centered on anticommunism and economics, not religion

Evidence

Weyrich was “the man perhaps with the broadest vision,” according to his fellow conservative activist Richard Viguerie. “I can think of no one who better symbolizes or is more important to the conservative movement.” In matters of religion, Weyrich was personally conservative: he abandoned the Roman Catholic Church, which he believed had become too liberal, for the Melkite Greek Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council. But his politics weren’t necessarily centered on religion. He formed his political creed as a twenty-something in the Barry Goldwater uprising of 1964, and it consisted of visceral anticommunism, economic libertarianism, and a distrust of the civil rights movement. — Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers, 235

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader thesis in this book that the religious right’s key architects were motivated more by secular conservatism than by piety. — connects to: Weyrich himself asserted abortion was irrelevant to the Religious Right’s rise — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the…, 22

Broader Connections

• Weyrich himself asserted abortion was irrelevant to the Religious Right’s rise #corroborates (0.95) — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith, 22