Know Your Enemy
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How They Did It, Pt. 2: The Christian Right and Roe
🕑 Added 2022-06-17 14:33:05 +0000 UTCAt long last, Matt and Sam dive into the origins of the Christian right—a complicated tale often flattened by contemporary debates. What was the history of Christian anti-abortion activism before Roe, and how soon after the landmark Supreme Court decision did conservative Christians coalesce around the abortion—and other issues—to become the political force we know today? What did it take to get Catholics and evangelicals to join forces, and what were the barriers to them coming together, especially given the history of anti-Catholicism in the United States? And how did all this help reshape the GOP into a vehicle for anti-abortion politics, given that such a scenario was not fated on the eve of Roe? Your hosts take up these questions and more, stopping in the early 1990s—when they'll pick up with the story in the third and final episode in the series.
Sources and Citations:
Randall Balmer, "The Religious Right and the Abortion Myth," Politico Magazine, May 10, 2022
Neil J. Young and Gillian Frank, "What Everyone Gets Wrong about Evangelicals and Abortion," Washington Post, May 16, 2022
Neil J. Young, We Gather Together: The Religious Right and the Problem of Interfaith Politics (Oxford University Press, 2015)
Kristen Luker, Abortion & the Politics of Motherhood, (University of California Press, 1985)
Mary Ziegler, After Roe: The Lost History of the Abortion Debate, (Harvard University Press, 2015)
Ilyse Hogue and Ellie Langford, The Lie That Binds (Strong Arm Press, 2020)
Rick Perlstein, Reaganland: America's Right Turn 1976-80 (Simon & Schuster, 2020)
Daniel K. Williams, Defenders of the Unborn: The Pro-Life Movement Before Roe v. Wade (Oxford University Press, 2016)
Joshua Wilson, The Street Politics of Abortion: Speech, Violence, and America's Culture Wars, (Stanford University Press, 2013)
David L. Chappell, A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow (UNC Press, 2005)
"Killing Abortionists: A Symposium," First Things, December 1994
Comments
Sam Murphy
Somewhat tangentially related... RE: Bodies & Politics I heard a great 2 part history of the formation of the 504, later ADA. Death Panel pod's breakdown reminded me of something you both, and the audience would be into.
Mark K
Thought experiment: social media exists in the 1980s, so when Reagan can’t ban abortion then QAnon starts 30 years early. You guys didn’t say it, but is the implication that clinic violence declined in the 1990s because the elites stopped winking at the fringe and actually disciplined them?
Schuyler Pals
I thought the apocalyptic tone in Francis Schaeffer was interesting, and it made me think about the book American Apocalypse by Matthew Avery Sutton (https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674975439), who argues that core to the development of evangelicals as we know them to day was their apocalypticism. It was this apocalypticism that created a very particular ideology and form of cultural engagement.
Bill Spater
More on Jerry Falwell from the New Yorker A Disciplined, Charging Army By Frances FitzGerald
History Chick
Great episode! Abortion as an issue has galvanized the right for some time, so what happens after Roe? What other issue can bind them together other than racial anxieties?
Dan Anderson
Another great episode. Although I kept thinking I wish they would say 'anti-choice' more often, and 'pro-life' and 'anti-abortion' less often, for reasons I'd be happy to get into. Of course I don't want to nitpick, I'm a huge huge fan, been listening since your first episode. So, just a thought.
Allen
Oh god, Francis Schaeffer.
