Coalitions, Cues, Strategic Politics, and the Staying Power of the Religious Right, or Why Political Scientists Ought to Pay Attention to Cultural Politics

Abstract

The decade of the 1980s began with a former naval officer and Southern peanut farmer, a deeply religious, Sunday-school teaching president being unseated by a former sportscaster and union leader, a divorced and remarried Hollywood movie star-turned-politician. The religious right claimed credit for the defeat of that born-again Baptist, convinced that Ronald Reagan and his Republican party would restore the social and moral values that had crumbled, especially under liberal Democratic administrations. It was a heady period for evangelical leaders, quiescent on the public scene, some say since the 1920s, others say the 1950s. They were concerned again not simply with the salvation of souls but the transformation of society. Mastering the new instruments of television and direct marketing appeals, evangelical leaders had money, organizational moxie, and mass followings. They put their moral agenda into the national legislative arena—and came up with few victories.The decade ended as ironically as it began. First, “The Fall”: televangelists Bakker and Swaggart were discredited for their moral peccadillos; faith-healer Oral Roberts, for his lack of business acumen. Televangelist Pat Robertson tried for the presidency but discovered that he could not even gain the support of evangelical leaders. Jerry Falwell, who endorsed George Bush rather than pentecostalist Robertson, chose to disband his Moral Majority and emerged with a much weaker, seldom noticed organization.