Moral Majority. The televangelist Jerry Falwell (1933– ) established the Moral Majority, the first prominent manifestation of a resurgent Religious Right, in 1979.A “pro‐life, pro‐family, pro‐moral, and pro‐America” political organization, the Moral Majority mobilized grassroots Americans to oppose pornography,
abortion, the
gay and lesbian rights movement, and the welfare state; to support increased defense spending, the death penalty, and the free‐enterprise system; and to elect candidates who shared these goals. Targeting Protestant fundamentalists, who traditionally had been politically inactive, Falwell's organization used direct mailings to fundamentalist churches and an estimated four million individuals to spread the word on candidates and issues.
While interested in electing conservatives at all levels of government, Falwell and the Moral Majority especially focused on electing Ronald
Reagan as president. The organization played a visibly active role in the 1980 campaign, and Reagan's stunning victory ensured that it would enjoy a high public profile in the early 1980s.
Despite the publicity, the Moral Majority was in reality an amateurish organization. Lacking both long‐term plans and a grassroots organizational base, it had little success at putting substantive political pressure on the Reagan administration. By the mid‐1980s the Moral Majority was in serious decline, and it officially disbanded in 1989. Numerous pundits saw the collapse of the Moral Majority as an indication of the Religious Right's imminent demise, but in reality it opened the way for much more sophisticated forms of fundamentalist politics.
See also
Christian Coalition;
Conservatism;
Fundamentalist Movement;
Protestantism;
Religion;
Televangelism.
Bibliography
Frances Fitzgerald , Cities on a Hill, 1981.
William Martin , With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America, 1996.
William Vance Trollinger Jr.
