Evangelicals have always been drawn to the halls of political power, even when that has meant partnering with strange allies. This has led to governmental influence, but it has also corroded what Roger Williams called the “separation between the garden of the church in the wilderness of the world.”
Part One: Evangelical History In A Quadrilateral Nutshell
Part Two: Quadrilateral"isms" (Racism, Fundamentalism, Pentecostalism, Neo-Evangelicalism)
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BILLY GRAHAM’S POLITICAL LEGACY
A major turning point for American evangelicals came in 1951 when Billy Graham urged Dwight Eisenhower to run for president. Eisenhower had grown up in a Christian family (he was named after Dwight Moody). He had no particular religious commitment, but he felt that the Judeo-Christian tradition was essential to the health of the American republic. Graham liked Eisenhower's strong anti-communist views,[1] and Eisenhower invited Graham to help him inject spirituality into his speeches.
Eisenhower and Graham became the modern architects of an American Civil religion that combined spirituality and patriotism. This trend accelerated during the 1980s, when many evangelicals began to conflate political power and access to Republican leaders with the advancement of God's Kingdom.[2]
In 1979, Paul Weyrich, a Catholic Republican who founded the Heritage Foundation, convinced Jerry Falwell that there was a “moral majority” of Americans who still believed in the Judeo-Christian principles of the Ten Commandments. Whoever organized these people could secure political power through the Republican party in the name of traditional morality.
This had been simmering for a while. Republicans and Democrats both shared an anti-communism fervor during the Korean and Vietnam Wars, but for evangelicals, fear of communism and nuclear war took on an apocalyptic cast and fueled interest in End Times theology.[3] An evangelicalism once skeptical of the of the military found a new admiration for men in uniform. Those fighting for Communism must conversely be fighting for Christians values, right?[4](This support would only increase post-9/11. The enemy was different, but the fight was the same.)
Republicans cultivated evangelical support by presenting themselves as tough on communism. Communism was anti-God, anti-American, anti-family, and anti-God given rights.[5] Nixon made this a defining issue. The spiritualization of anti-communism helped to make the privately profane Nixon, a lapsed Quaker, a favorite of white evangelicals.[6] (Nixon was already preferable to Kennedy because of enduring Protestant hostility toward Catholics.) Billy Graham, the NAE, and the SBC all preferred Nixon over Kennedy.[7]
