Moral Majority

In the aftermath of Watergate and the resignation of President Richard Nixon in 1974, millions of evangelical Christians voted for Jimmy Carter for president in 1976, contributing importantly to his narrow victory over Gerald Ford. In that same year, George Gallup reported that as many as fifty million Americans could be described as evangelicals, and Newsweek ran a cover story in which it dubbed 1976 "The Year of the Evangelical." Though disappointed by Carter's presidency, particularly his support of the Equal Rights Amendment, his grudging acceptance of abortion, and his belief that homosexuals should not be discriminated against because of their sexual orientation, conservative Protestants began looking for ways to use their newfound political muscle to push the country in a more rightward direction. At the same time, a tightly knit group of conservative political operatives, associated with such organizations as the Heritage Foundation and the Free Congress Foundation and calling themselves New Right or "movement conservatives," were actively seeking ways to enlist this evangelical army into their movement.

By the end of the 1970s, Jerry Falwell, pastor of the fundamentalist Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia, was beginning to use his broadcast ministry—a half-hour daily radio program aired on approximately 250 stations, and a weekly television program that could be seen on more than 330 stations throughout the nation—to speak against gay rights, abortion, and other issues he traced to the influence of "secular humanism." In 1979, with the encouragement and assistance of New Right leaders, Falwell founded Moral Majority, declaring that it would be "prolife, profamily, promoral, and pro-American." Its stated aims included registering evangelical Christians to vote, informing members about what was going on in Washington and in state legislatures, lobbying to defeat leftist legislation, and pushing for legislation that would protect and advance a conservative social agenda.

Throughout the 1980 election campaign and for several years afterward, Falwell traveled extensively throughout the nation, telling pastors, mostly fundamentalist Independent Baptists, that their duty was "getting people saved, baptized, and registered to vote" and helping them organize chapters of Moral Majority. At the same time, an organization called Religious Roundtable worked to mobilize southern Baptists, and Christian Voice played a comparable role among charismatic and Pentecostal Christians. Because of Falwell's attention-getting message and style and his ubiquitous presence on television and in the press, Moral Majority became the best-known representative and symbol of the movement that came to be called the Christian New Right or, more simply, the Religious Right.

Moral Majority and its allied organizations helped elect Ronald Reagan and a Republican-majority Senate in 1980, but the Religious Right still lacked the political clout and organizational savvy to win significant White House or congressional support for its conservative social agenda. Falwell remained loyal to Reagan, but financial problems with his television ministry and a rapidly expanding Liberty University, of which he was founder and chancellor, demanded his increased attention. In 1986 he quietly disbanded Moral Majority, clearing the way for the appearance of more sophisticated and effective grassroots organizations.

See alsoChristian Coalition; Evangelical Christianity; Falwell, Jerry; Fundamentalist Christianity; Religious Right; Televangelism.

Bibliography

D'Souza, Dinesh. Falwell, Before the Millennium. 1984.

Falwell, Jerry. Listen, America! 1980.

Martin, William. With God on Our Side: TheRiseof theReligious Right in America. 1996.

William Martin