Religious Right

The Religious Right is a term used to describe a general coalition of organized conservative political activist groups that use religious (usually Christian) premises and rhetoric. This coalition's political power increased substantially in the United States during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, and it remains a significant force in US politics today.

The term is more commonly used by outsiders than members of this group. It also is used to denote political conservatism, rather than religious or theological conservatism (Many in the Religious Right are also religiously conservative, but the latter does not imply the former.)

Use of common enemy rhetoric to rally support for their cause is common among groups in the religious right, where the common enemies in question include secularists, liberals, homosexuals, and in past years, godless Communists. Similarly some liberal groups use the religious right itself as a common enemy to rally support for their causes.

David Sinclair, editor of the website "The American Religious Right" has described the Religious Right as "Christian political extremists in the US [which] are only a small minority of the population, but [that] are well-organized and wield political power far beyond their numbers." [1] Sinclair also claims that they run the Republican Party, but in recent years it has not always been clear who has been controlling whom. One author of this article saw a voter's guide distributed by the Christian Coalition in the mid-1990s that had more items mentioning Republican party planks than items that mentioned explicitly Christian issues. There are also significant portions of the Republican Party that do not share the religious agenda of the religious right, and the party as a whole has often put its own political power over the agenda of the religious right. For instance, while the religious right is firmly pro-life, pro-choice Republican candidates have been known to get significant support from the national Republican party, arguably more than pro-life Democrat candidates have gotten from the national Democratic party.

Resources

Related SourceWatch articles

• Alliance Defense Fund
• American Family Association
• Americans United for Separation of Church and State
• Arthur S. DeMoss Foundation
• Battle Cry
• Beverly LaHaye
• Center for Democracy Studies
• Christian Broadcasting Network
• Christian Coalition of America
• civil liberties
• communitarianism
• Compassionate Conservatism
• Concerned Women for America
• Don Eberly
• Eagle Forum
• evil
• Focus on the Family
• Forgotten Americans Coalition
• Free Congress Foundation
• Gary Bauer
• James Dobson
• Jerry Falwell
• Justice Sunday
• Moral Majority
• moral values
• Pat Robertson
• Patricia P. Brister
• Paul M. Weyrich
• Presidential Prayer Team
• Promise Keepers
• religion and empire
• Religious Left
• Tim LaHaye
• traditional family values
• values voters
• Don Wildmon

External articles

• "Religious Right", St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture.
• I Hate Pat Robertson
• Religious Right Quotes.
• Collected Quotes: The Religious Right, July 27, 2003.
• Right Wing Watch, People for the American Way.
• Dan Junas, Report on the Religious Right in Washington State, American Civil Liberties Union, Section 3 (1995); Appendix.
• The Radical Religious Right.
• The American Religious Right.
• Albert R. Hunt, The Religious Right Is About Politics, Not Faith, Wall Street Journal, August 20, 1998.
• Brian Knowlten, McCain Takes Aim At Religious Right. Republican Says Bush Panders To the 'Agents of Intolerance', International Herald Tribune, February 29, 2000.
• Judy Keen, Religious right has firm bond with Bush, USA Today, July 26, 2000.
• Anthony B. Robinson, 'Christian' not same as 'Religious Right', Seattle Post-Intelligencer, August 11, 2000.
• John C. Green, Bush's religious-right challenge, Christian Science Monitor, July 23, 2001.
• Bill Berkowitz, Religious Right on the Ropes, AlterNet, October 31, 2001.
• Dana Milbank, Religious Right Finds Its Center in Oval Office. Bush Emerges as Movement's Leader After Robertson Leaves Christian Coalition, Washington Post, December 24, 2001.
• Rich Tucker, "'Ganging up on the 'religious right'", Townhall.com, January 15, 2002.
• George F. Will, "Who Isn't A 'Values Voter'?" Washington Post, May 18, 2006.
• Evan Derkacz, "Foley, Gays and the Religious Right: Is This the Nail in the GOP Coffin?" AlterNet, October 3, 2006. re Mark Foley
• Alan Cooperman, "GOP's Hold on Evangelicals Weakening. Party's Showing in Midterm Elections May Be Hurt as Polls Indicate Support Dropping in Base," Washington Post, October 6, 2006.
• John Aravosis, "Tucker Carlson: The Republicans hate evangelicals," AMERICAblog, October 10, 2006.
• Jonathan Larsen, "Exclusive: Book says Bush just using Christians. 'Tempting Faith' author David Kuo worked for Bush from 2001 to 2003," MSNBC, October 11, 2006.
• John Amato, "Olbermann Exclusive: Dissecting new Book: Tempting Faith," Crooks and Liars, October 11, 2006. (WMV and QT formats).
• John Amato, "Tempting Faith: Christian Conservatives Duped by BushCo. Part II," Crooks and Liars, October 12, 2006. (WMV and QT formats).
• Max Blumenthal, "The Coming Gay Republican Purge," The Nation, October 12, 2006.
• Matt Taibbi, "'Christian' Game Leaves Behind A Pile of Corpses," Rolling Stone (AlterNet), December 20, 2006.