J. BROOKS FLIPPEN. Jimmy Carter, the Politics of Family, and the Rise of the Religious Right.

Abstract

One of the most significant transformations of American political culture in the last forty years was the energizing of Christian conservatives. While evangelical Christians went to the polls in greater numbers in the 1970s and pulled the lever for the GOP, the Democratic Party was losing its strong working-class base. Religious, political, and intellectual historians are now zeroing in on the 1970s as never before. The decade marks a major turning point in political and religious culture, so observe scholars like Kimberly Phillips-Fein, Daniel Rodgers, Bruce Schulman, Daniel Williams, and Darren Dochuk. And while many of the seeds of religious political involvement lie in earlier eras, it was in the 1970s that figures like Jerry Falwell, Paul Weyrich, and Pat Robertson came to the fore to lead a movement of conservative Christians. With great pomp Newsweek magazine dubbed 1976 “the year of the evangelical.” Indeed, America's first “born-again” president attracted widespread national attention when he ran for and captured the executive office in that bicentennial year.