Abstract
THE ELECTION OF RONALD REAGAN IN 1980 signaled a sea change for Christian evangelicals and other socially conservative forces. After decades of political marginalization, they believed that their issues would finally move to the top of the policy agenda. Imagine their disappointment when President Reagan seemed to betray them on the issue that first motivated many evangelicals to enter into politics: tax exemption for religious schools. Reagan initially reversed the Jimmy Carter administration's withdrawal of tax exemption for some religious colleges; but a public firestorm over Bob Jones University's interracial dating ban forced Reagan to ask Congress to reinstate the policy.1 Bob Billings, Jr., the son of prominent evangelical organizer Robert Billings, noted social conservatives' reaction at the time to Reagan's shift: We all booed. … It was almost like [Reagan] put the racial monkey on our back. Now we're being branded racists, which couldn't be farther from the truth. We feel he has a moral obligation to reframe the issue. If he doesn't, he will lose the support of the religious right.2
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