Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the Religious Right

by Randall Balmer

Publisher:

Eerdmans

, 2021

Overview

A surprising and disturbing origin story.

There is a commonly accepted story about the rise of the Religious Right in the United States. It goes like this: with righteous fury, American evangelicals entered the political arena as a unified front to fight the legality of abortion after the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.

The problem is this story simply isn’t true.

Largely ambivalent about abortion until the late 1970s, evangelical leaders were first mobilized not by Roe v. Wade but by Green v. Connally, a lesser-known court decision in 1971 that threatened the tax-exempt status of racially discriminatory institutions—of which there were several in the world of Christian education at the time. When the most notorious of these schools, Bob Jones University, had its tax-exempt status revoked in 1976, evangelicalism was galvanized as a political force and brought into the fold of the Republican Party. Only later, when a more palatable issue was needed to cover for what was becoming an increasingly unpopular position following the civil rights era, was the moral crusade against abortion made the central issue of the movement now known as the Religious Right.

In this greatly expanded argument from his 2014 Politico article “The Real Origins of the Religious Right,” Randall Balmer guides the reader along the convoluted historical trajectory that began with American evangelicalism as a progressive force opposed to slavery, then later an isolated apolitical movement in the mid-twentieth century, all the way through the 2016 election in which 81 percent of white evangelicals coalesced around Donald Trump for president. The pivotal point, Balmer shows, was the period in the late 1970s when American evangelicals turned against Jimmy Carter—despite his being one of their own, a professed “born-again” Christian—in favor of the Republican Party, which found it could win their loyalty through the espousal of a single issue. With the implications of this alliance still unfolding, Balmer’s account uncovers the roots of evangelical watchwords like “religious freedom” and “family values” while getting to the truth of how this movement began—explaining, in part, what it has become.

Contents

Part One: Evangelicalism before the Religious Right

• The Emergence of Progressive Evangelicalism
• The Diversion of Dispensationalism
• The Making of the Evangelical Subculture
• The Chicago Declaration and Jimmy Carter

Part Two: The Abortion Myth and the Rise of the Religious Right

• The Abortion Myth
• What Really Happened
• What about Abortion?

Part Three: So What?

• The 1980 Presidential Election
• Why the Abortion Myth Matters

Praise for the Print Edition

Bad Faith is a fantastic primer on one of the most potent and controversial political forces of the past half century—the Religious Right. Bad Faith upends the tidy narrative that protesting abortion was the issue that rallied evangelicals in the political realm. Randall Balmer’s historical research helps restore the true and infuriating story, that racism, once again, played a central role in shaping the political and religious landscape of the nation. Before you read another headline or write another social media post about religion, race, or politics, read this book.

—Jemar Tisby

Forget whatever you’ve always heard about the beginnings of the Religious Right. Balmer’s highly engaging and provocative book pulls back the curtain to reveal how race, not abortion, was the key issue in the birth of what has become a powerful and disturbing alliance.

—The Most Rev. Michael B. Curry

This brilliant, readable detective story demonstrates that the Religious Right, far from speaking for all evangelicals, has masked its recent—and deviant—origin among groups advocating white supremacy. Here Randall Balmer, our most influential historian of American evangelical Christianity, sets forth the evidence and calls for evangelical Christians to return to their actual sources—the teachings of Jesus.

—Elaine Pagels

Product Details

• Title: Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the Religious Right
• Author: Randall Balmer
• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Print Publication Date: 2021
• Logos Release Date: 2022
• Pages: 120
• Era: era:contemporary
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Reader Edition
• Subjects: Religious right › United States--History; Evangelicalism › Political aspects--United States--History; Abortion › Political aspects--United States--History; Racism › United States--Religious aspects
• ISBNs: 9780802879349, 0802879349
• Resource ID: LLS:BDFTHRCRLGSRGHT
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-29T22:10:01Z

About Randall Balmer

Randall Balmer is Mandel Family Professor of Arts and Sciences and Chair of the Department of Religion, Dartmouth College. A prolific and highly esteemed writer, he is the author of Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America, God in the White House: How Faith Shaped the Presidency from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush, and Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: A Journey into the Evangelical Subculture in America.