Ronald Reagan and the Splintering of the Christian Right

Abstract

In the years since the Republicans took control of Congress in 1994, they have named buildings, airports, and even a freeway after their hero Ronald Reagan. Conservatives hail him as the father of modern Republican pontics. The Christian Right celebrates Reagan's hero status more passionately than any other group. He is their champion, the man who brought them out of the political wilderness and into the halls of power. At the annual Christian Coalition meetings, politicians appear and hope to win the votes of religious conservatives by claiming a link to the former president. Reagan's image and ideas permeate the politics of the Christian Right to the point that he has become their patron saint. But while this cult of hero worship is public, in private, many Christian Right leaders lament that Reagan actually did little for them. The earliest and still popular conception of the Reagan era marks it as the high water mark for the Christian Right and they went into decline after 1988; however the opposite is true. It is best to view the Reagan administration as a period of growth in which the Christian Right enjoyed a high profile, but had little tangible success in politics. While the president spoke of his personal dislike of abortion and the need for prayer in public schools, ne was unwilling to expend any of his considerable political capital to move those issues forward. Many Christian Right leaders realized that being granted a meeting with the president was no substitute for having their agenda made into law. As one anonymous Reagan administration official put it, We want to keep the Moral Majority types so close to us they can't move their arms.' For religious conservatives, the Reagan era was time of photo opportunities, kind words, and little else.