Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Progressive Christian
The culture war has always been about race

The culture war has always been about race

Last updated on: August 27, 2015 at 7:33 pm by Fred Clark

The culture war has always been about race 2015-08-27T19:33:02-04:00 Fred Clark

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

On Tuesday here, we talked about how the 1980 presidential election was far more shaped by the Cold War than by anything like the contemporary culture war issues that later came to the fore during and after Ronald Reagan’s presidency.

Reagan was overwhelmingly popular with the white evangelical voting bloc that today is preoccupied with the “social issues” that they promote as the proper concern of “values voters” — abortion, homosexuality, abortion, birth control, abortion, prayer in schools, and religious liberty (i.e., the liberty to define one’s religion as opposition to abortion and homosexuality). But culture-war concerns were far down the list of reasons why those white evangelical voters supported Reagan in 1980. In 1980, “values voters” were still mainly Cold Warriors — far more concerned with the Russians than with the gays or the baby-killers.

Sen. Jesse Helms accepts the “Proudly Pro-Life” award from the National Right to Life Educational Trust Fund in 1998.

Abortion and homosexuality came later. They were products of Reaganism, not the other way around.

But Reagan’s 1980 campaign was not exclusively about the Cold War. As a candidate, and subsequently as president, Reagan did make one culture-war issue a major theme and subtext of his agenda. He made that clear in an infamous campaign speech in which he, for the first time, declared his support for “states rights” at the Neshoba County Fair, outside of Philadelphia, Mississippi.

That just so happens to be where the Klan murdered civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Mickey Schwerner during the “Freedom Summer” of 1964. Those murders were investigated by the FBI, not by local or state law enforcement. The Neshoba County sheriff was actually arrested and accused as part of the murder conspiracy. He was acquitted by an all-white jury in the 1967 trial which was perceived, by many white Mississippi residents, as an insulting instance of federal meddling in what should have been a state and local matter.

So it was not a coincidence that Reagan just happened to visit Neshoba County a dozen years after that trial to deliver a speech endorsing “states’ rights.” Nor was he unaware of the history and enduring use of that euphemism and all that it meant from Calhoun to George Wallace.

Here’s Emory University historian Joseph Crespino discussing that speech in the larger context of the Republican Party’s successful “Southern Strategy” to convert Dixiecrats into Republicans:

The national GOP was trying to strengthen its southern state parties and win support from southern white Democrats. Consider a letter that Michael Retzer, the Mississippi national committeeman, wrote in December 1979 to the Republican national committee. Well before the Republicans had nominated Reagan, the national committee was polling state leaders to line up venues where the Republican nominee might speak. Retzer pointed to the Neshoba County Fair as ideal for winning what he called the “George Wallace inclined voters.”

This Republican leader knew that the segregationist Alabama governor was the symbol of southern white resentment against the civil rights struggle. Richard Nixon had angled to win these voters in 1968 and 1972. Mississippi Republicans knew that a successful Republican candidate in 1980 would have to continue the effort.

On July 31st, just days before Reagan went to Neshoba County, the New York Times reported that the Ku Klux Klan had endorsed Reagan. In its newspaper, the Klan said that the Republican platform “reads as if it were written by a Klansman.” Reagan rejected the endorsement, but only after a Carter cabinet official brought it up in a campaign speech. The dubious connection did not stop Reagan from using segregationist language in Neshoba County.

It was clear from other episodes in that campaign that Reagan was content to let southern Republicans link him to segregationist politics in the South’s recent past. Reagan’s states rights line was prepared beforehand and reporters covering the event could not recall him using the term before the Neshoba County appearance. John Bell Williams, an arch-segregationist former governor who had crossed party lines in 1964 to endorse Barry Goldwater, joined Reagan on stage at another campaign stop in Mississippi. Reagan’s campaign chair in the state, Trent Lott, praised Strom Thurmond, the former segregationist Dixiecrat candidate in 1948, at a Reagan rally, saying that if Thurmond had been elected president “we wouldn’t be in the mess we are today.”

So, yeah, that happened. The Southern Strategy worked. Throughout the South, the party of Lincoln and Thaddeus Stevens switched places with the party of Calhoun and Andrew Johnson.

And that same Southern Strategy also created the space for the religious right — the large, now uniformly partisan white evangelical voting bloc. Those white evangelical voters today — not just in the South, but throughout the country — are overwhelmingly Republican. Ask them why and they’ll tell you, honestly and accurately, that it’s mainly because of the current roster of culture-war issues — abortion, homosexuality, abortion, etc.

Those issues have now replaced the original “states’ rights” issues that initially won over so many of those same voters a generation ago, before the genital-based culture war had arisen to political significance. Back then, in the years leading up to the 1980 election, the leaders of the nascent religious right were people like Jerry Falwell. And in 1980, Falwell wasn’t yet a culture warrior. He was, rather, someone better described by Retzer’s cautious phrase, a “George Wallace inclined voter.”

Here’s political scientist Daniel Schlozman summarizing how “The Christian Right changed how we talked about race“:

The Christian Right emerged from school desegregation — and forged a movement around taxes and religious freedom. In 1978, the Internal Revenue Service sought to revoke tax exemptions for schools formed as white-flight havens from the public schools. The backlash was overwhelming. The IRS received more than a quarter of a million letters against the proposed rules. Congressional hearings reframed the issue from an attack on segregation to an attack on religion by meddlesome bureaucrats. As Newt Gingrich, then a freshman representative, explained, “The IRS should collect taxes — not enforce social policy.”

Early in 1979, Jerry Falwell formed Moral Majority, the premier organization for the new Christian Right. Falwell ran a segregated academy that would almost certainly have run afoul of the IRS guidelines. In 1967, the same year the local public schools desegregated, Lynchburg Christian Academy opened its doors. As of the fall of 1979, it had an all-white faculty, and only five African-Americans among the 1,147 students.

In August 1979, Congress inserted riders into the appropriations bill for the Treasury Department to prevent the IRS from implementing the proposed regulations. A fight over desegregation had galvanized white evangelicals to oppose meddlesome bureaucrats, and the movement was born.

Today, “religious liberty” is a euphemism arguing for the right of white Christian bakers to refuse service to gay couples seeking wedding cakes. Back then, “religious liberty” was a euphemism for the right of white Christian schools to refuse to accept black students.

Reagan was elected president in 1980 thanks in no small measure to white Christian voters who supported him due to what Crespino delicately describes as his willingness to be linked “to segregationist politics in the South’s recent past.” But by the end of Reagan’s second term, he and his party enjoyed the overwhelming support of white evangelicals, including many who held little conscious regard for that old-style segregationist politics. They didn’t, en masse, become Republicans because the GOP had embraced the politics of the old segregationists. They became Republicans, en masse, because of abortion and (later) gay rights.

The anti-feminist genital-focused culture war issues seemed to have completely replaced the earlier anti-civil-rights race-focused culture war issues.

But what does “replaced” mean there? Sometimes we replace something by getting rid of it altogether and then putting something new in its place. Other times, we replace something with a stand-in, like the way golfers replace their ball on the green with a coin. That marker occupies the same place as the ball it re-placed, but it does so in order to signify the continuing presence and existence of the prior thing.

Which kind of replacing happened here? Are the sex-obsessed culture wars of the post-Reagan years a substitute for the race-obsessed culture wars of the pre-Reagan years? Or are they a proxy for that same old argument?

Previous Post

August 27, 2015

That time Jimmy Carter walked into a nuclear reactor

Next Post

August 28, 2015 Left Behind Classic Fridays, No. 48: 'Holy Spirits'

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category class warfare evangelicals Iraq Left Behind Mammon music Uncategorized

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What does "Capernaum" mean?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Port of peace Place of water City of trade Village of comfort