Not Roe v. Wade but Race Segregation…

One of the big myths about the evangelical right-wing in the USA is that they were provoked into backing the Republican party by the Roe v Wade case that introduced the right to abortion across the USA. In his excellent book ‘Bad Faith – Race and the Rise of the Religious Right’, Randall Balmer sets out the real steps that led the religious right to dominate USA politics and bring Donald Trump to power.

Evangelicals were not uniformly anti-abortion in the 1960’s, they tended to consider abortion an issue for Catholics. In 1968 the flagship evangelical magazine Christianity Today convened a conference to discuss the ethics of abortion and after several days of discussion, issued a statement admitting that there was no common agreement, but that in some circumstances to protect the mother’s welfare abortion could be necessary. In 1970 the United Methodist Church general conference called for the repeal of laws restricting abortion.

Even after Roe v Wade in 1973, evangelicals were divided and uncertain. The Evangelical Christianity Today magazine published an editorial that, while acknowledging the complexity of the issue, expressed concern about the decision’s potential to undermine the value of human life, but also noted that some Christians, particularly within the Baptist tradition, saw the decision as a positive step in defining the boundaries between religious and secular authority. The magazine acknowledged that the Bible is silent on abortion. As late as 1977, Walter Martin, a prominent Baptist minister argued that abortion should be allowed in cases of rape and incest or to protect the health of the mother. Jerry Falwell did not preach his first anti-abortion sermon until February 1978, more than five years after Roe v Wade.

A completely different issue would set fire to the ambition of the evangelical Christian right.

In the USA (as in the UK) churches and church-run schools had long been exempt from tax under rule 501(c)(3) but several restrictions were placed on organisations in return for this tax-exempt status. One of the rules introduced in 1970 was that schools which used racial discrimination as part of their intake policy would not retain tax free status.

The evangelical right were shocked when Bob Jones University (yes, the one from which Ian Paisley senior received his honorary doctorate in 1966) was told in 1970 that it would lose its tax-free status because it still refused to admit black students. This was seen as an outrageous attack on religious freedom and shook the evangelicals out of their political complacency.

In May 1969, the parents of some Mississippi black children (Green v. Connally) had brought suit to revoke tax-exemption status for three new ‘whites-only’ academies on the grounds of their racial segregation preventing them being ‘charitable institutions’. The black parents were successful and by 1971 (under President Nixon) the court upheld the policy that racially discriminatory schools were not charitable institutions and that donations to them were not ‘tax deductible’. The implications, both financial and political, were huge.

A political activist from the Republican Party, Mr Paul Weyrich (one of the founders of the Heritage Foundation, which itself produced Project 2025) believed that the large number of evangelicals in the USA had the potential to dramatically affect the elections but that to ensure this ‘moral majority’ would turn out they needed a standard around which to rally. Mr Weyrich admitted to the author Randall Balmer in 1990, that he’d been trying for years to interest evangelicals in politics. Nothing caught their attention, he insisted – school prayer, pornography, equal rights for women, abortion – until the IRS began to challenge the tax exemption of Bob Jones University and other whites-only segregation academies.

The church-run schools were very proud of their complete independence from government, accepting no government help apart from their tax-exempt status. Paul Weyrich and Gerry Falwell were successful in getting evangelicals to fight the new government rules on the grounds of freedom of religion from government interference.

Today, admitting that it was an effort to protect whites-only schools that kick started the evangelical right movement would be damaging, and so the myth that it was abortion that spurred on the evangelical right is used to provide cover.

Evangelical Support for Donald Trump

In 1981, the evangelical movement ensured that Ronald Reagan – a divorced former actor, adept at racist dog whistles – was able to defeat the genuinely Christian President Jimmy Carter, and in recent years they have thrown their support behind a twice divorced, serial adulterer and convicted felon called Donald Trump.

Some would argue that it is irrelevant that the desire to protect whites-only schools started the link between evangelicals and the republican right, that opposing abortion has become the glue, the single issue that binds them together.

However, single issue politics introduces a major weakness into the evangelical movement, leading supposedly Christian people to vote for politicians with compromised morals, who on so many issues have anti-Christian policies. People who call themselves Christians are voting to remove medical care from the poor, and to reduce the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) that provides food benefits to low-income families.

Constantine and Christian Nationalists

In the late 3^rd Century, Christianity was a persecuted sect within the Roman Empire, with many differing interpretations and practices being followed. The Emperor Constantine (272 –337) is famous for decriminalising Christianity in Rome and allowing it to spread across the Roman Empire, as well as for calling the Council of Nicaea to develop Christian doctrine and practice. But despite his role in spreading Christianity, he was a truly corrupt man who, among other sins, had his own wife and his son executed.

Christian Nationalists (also called Dominionists) believe in finding a modern-day Constantine who will get Christianity take control of all aspects of society—government, media, education, business, etc—and run them according to ‘biblical principles’. As with Constantine, they believe the end justifies the means.

We in N. Ireland should be watchful; there are many within our own evangelical movement who both admire Trump and seek to follow the example of the USA evangelical movement. While the USA Evangelicals were focussed on building walls and keeping aliens out, they invited corruption into their churches. Let’s be careful that corruption does not spread to our churches or political institutions.