Focus on the fetus: The evangelical ethic, anti-environmentalism, and the spirit of neoliberalism

Abstract

An ascendent economic philosophy and a new conservative Christian political movement came to dominate politics in the late 1970s United States. Here, I argue that this new economic paradigm and religious movement are entwined. The Christian Right political theology, particularly its unique version of pro-life politics, provides neoliberalism its own ethic, similarly to how Weber argues Protestantism provided the emergence of capitalism with an ethic. The Christian Right pro-life position is linked to a celebration of unfettered capitalism. This means that anything that challenges the free market—from pandemic lockdowns to climate change—is subject to criticism, even when it threatens life, including fetal life. Through analyzing the controversy around pro-environmental evangelicals' efforts to expand pro-life politics to include care for the environment, I argue that the dominant evangelical pro-life stance is part of a reproductive righteousness project that both reveres free-market capitalism and defines the state as righteous based on its relationship to abortion. This framing allows for the harms of capitalism to be dismissed and deemed irrelevant through refocusing on the fetus and abortion as the central ethical concern of the righteous state.