Family Values and the Rise of the Christian Right

Family Values and the Rise of the Christian Right PDF Author: Seth Dowland
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812291913
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
During the last three decades of the twentieth century, evangelical leaders and conservative politicians developed a political agenda that thrust "family values" onto the nation's consciousness. Ministers, legislators, and laypeople came together to fight abortion, gay rights, and major feminist objectives. They supported private Christian schools, home schooling, and a strong military. Family values leaders like Jerry Falwell, Phyllis Schlafly, Anita Bryant, and James Dobson became increasingly supportive of the Republican Party, which accommodated the language of family values in its platforms and campaigns. The family values agenda created a bond between evangelicalism and political conservatism. Family Values and the Rise of the Christian Right chronicles how the family values agenda became so powerful in American political life and why it appealed to conservative evangelical Christians. Conservative evangelicals saw traditional gender norms as crucial in cultivating morality. They thought these gender norms would reaffirm the importance of clear lines of authority that the social revolutions of the 1960s had undermined. In the 1970s and 1980s, then, evangelicals founded Christian academies and developed homeschooling curricula that put conservative ideas about gender and authority front and center. Campaigns against abortion and feminism coalesced around a belief that God created women as wives and mothers—a belief that conservative evangelicals thought feminists and pro-choice advocates threatened. Likewise, Christian right leaders championed a particular vision of masculinity in their campaigns against gay rights and nuclear disarmament. Movements like the Promise Keepers called men to take responsibility for leading their families. Christian right political campaigns and pro-family organizations drew on conservative evangelical beliefs about men, women, children, and authority. These beliefs—known collectively as family values—became the most important religious agenda in late twentieth-century American politics.

Family Values and the Rise of the Christian Right

Family Values and the Rise of the Christian Right PDF Author: Seth Dowland
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812247604
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
Family Values and the Rise of the Christian Right chronicles how the family values agenda became so powerful in American political life and why it appealed to conservative evangelical Christians.

Globalizing Family Values

Globalizing Family Values PDF Author: Doris Buss
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 9780816642083
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
With little fanfare and profound effect, "family values" have gone global, and the influence of the Christian Right is increasingly felt internationally. This is the first comprehensive study of the Christian Right's global reach and its impact on international law and politics. Doris Buss and Didi Herman explore tensions, contradictions, victories, and defeats for the Christian Right's global project, particularly in the United Nations. The authors consult Christian Right materials, from pamphlets to novels; conduct interviews with people in the movement; and provide a firsthand account of the World Congress of Families II in 1999, a key event in formulating Christian Right global policy and strategy. The result is a detailed look at a new global player--its campaigns against women's rights, population policy, and gay and lesbian rights; its efforts to build an alliance of orthodox faiths with non-Christians; and the tensions and strains as it seeks to negotiate a role for conservative Christianity in a changing global order.

The Power Worshippers

The Power Worshippers PDF Author: Katherine Stewart
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1635573459
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
The inspiration for the documentary God & Country For readers of Democracy in Chains and Dark Money, a revelatory investigation of the Religious Right's rise to political power. For too long the Religious Right has masqueraded as a social movement preoccupied with a number of cultural issues, such as abortion and same-sex marriage. In her deeply reported investigation, Katherine Stewart reveals a disturbing truth: this is a political movement that seeks to gain power and to impose its vision on all of society. America's religious nationalists aren't just fighting a culture war, they are waging a political war on the norms and institutions of American democracy. Stewart pulls back the curtain on the inner workings and leading personalities of a movement that has turned religion into a tool for domination. She exposes a dense network of think tanks, advocacy groups, and pastoral organizations embedded in a rapidly expanding community of international alliances and united not by any central command but by a shared, anti-democratic vision and a common will to power. She follows the money that fuels this movement, tracing much of it to a cadre of super-wealthy, ultraconservative donors and family foundations. She shows that today's Christian nationalism is the fruit of a longstanding antidemocratic, reactionary strain of American thought that draws on some of the most troubling episodes in America's past. It forms common cause with a globe-spanning movement that seeks to destroy liberal democracy and replace it with nationalist, theocratic and autocratic forms of government around the world. Religious nationalism is far more organized and better funded than most people realize. It seeks to control all aspects of government and society. Its successes have been stunning, and its influence now extends to every aspect of American life, from the White House to state capitols, from our schools to our hospitals. The Power Worshippers is a brilliantly reported book of warning and a wake-up call. Stewart's probing examination demands that Christian nationalism be taken seriously as a significant threat to the American republic and our democratic freedoms.

No Fear

No Fear PDF Author: Tony Perkins
Publisher: WaterBrook
ISBN: 1601427433
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
This book heralds a new generation of Christians who are more than bold…they are fearless! No Fear draws you inside the stories of young, ordinary believers who, despite incredible opposition, courageously stand up for God’s truth. Tony Perkins pairs each story with a biblical example and gives practical ideas for building a “no fear” perspective every day. Today, followers of Jesus Christ face more opposition to their beliefs than any generation in American history. Yet even in such a hostile cultural and political environment, it is an exciting time to stand firm in the faith. You have been chosen to live in this important hour, and reading these stories will inspire you to the same kind of courage. So what are you waiting for? “Tony Perkins has discovered a new generation of young people who love following God more than the crowd...You will discover there is still hope for America and the world after reading their stories in No Fear!” —Todd Starnes, Fox News Channel “No Fear...is a must-read book that will inspire a courageous heart in tomorrow’s movers and shakers. —Dana Loesch, nationally syndicated radio host, author, host BlazeTV “As the world continues to spiral into an anti-Christian age, it’s important to empower our young people with the strength and conviction to hold fast to the teachings of Christ, and No Fear does just that.” —Dr. Jack Graham, Senior Pastor, Prestonwood Baptist Church Includes discussion questions after each chapter.

Family Values

Family Values PDF Author: Melinda Cooper
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 194213004X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 449

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Book Description
Why was the discourse of family values so pivotal to the conservative and free-market revolution of the 1980s and why has it continued to exert such a profound influence on American political life? Why have free-market neoliberals so often made common cause with social conservatives on the question of family, despite their differences on all other issues? In this book, Melinda Cooper challenges the idea that neoliberalism privileges atomized individualism over familial solidarities, and contractual freedom over inherited status. Delving into the history of the American poor laws, she shows how the liberal ethos of personal responsibility was always undergirded by a wider imperative of family responsibility and how this investment in kinship obligations recurrently facilitated the working relationship between free-market liberals and social conservatives. Neoliberalism, she argues, must be understood as an effort to revive and extend the poor law tradition in the contemporary idiom of household debt. As neoliberal policymakers imposed cuts to health, education, and welfare budgets, they simultaneously identified the family as a wholesale alternative to the twentieth-century welfare state. And as the responsibility for deficit spending shifted from the state to the household, the private debt obligations of family were defined as foundational to socio-economic order. Despite their differences, neoliberals and social conservatives were in agreement that the bonds of family needed to be encouraged — and at the limit enforced — as a necessary counterpart to market freedom. In a series of case studies ranging from Clinton’s welfare reform to the AIDS epidemic, and from same-sex marriage to the student loan crisis, Cooper explores the key policy contributions made by neoliberal economists and legal theorists. Only by restoring the question of family to its central place in the neoliberal project, she argues, can we make sense of the defining political alliance of our times, that between free-market economics and social conservatism.

Believe Me

Believe Me PDF Author: John Fea
Publisher: Eerdmans
ISBN: 9780802877420
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"Believe me" may be the most commonly used phrase in Donald Trump's lexicon. Whether about building a wall or protecting the Christian heritage, the refrain is constant. And to the surprise of many, about 80% percent of white evangelicals have believed Trump-at least enough to help propel him into the White House. Historian John Fea is not surprised-and in Believe Me he explains how we have arrived at this unprecedented moment in American politics. An evangelical Christian himself, Fea argues that the embrace of Donald Trump is the logical outcome of a long-standing evangelical approach to public life defined by the politics of fear, the pursuit of worldly power, and a nostalgic longing for an American past. In the process, Fea challenges his fellow believers to replace fear with hope, the pursuit of power with humility, and nostalgia with history

The Rights Turn in Conservative Christian Politics

The Rights Turn in Conservative Christian Politics PDF Author: Andrew R. Lewis
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108417701
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Book Description
Explains how abortion politics influenced a fundamental shift in conservative Christian politics, teaching conservatives to embrace rights arguments.

American Fascists

American Fascists PDF Author: Chris Hedges
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0743284461
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
From the celebrated author of "War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning" comes a startling expos of the political ambitions of the Christian Right--a clarion call for everyone who cares about freedom.

God's Own Party

God's Own Party PDF Author: Daniel K. Williams
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199929068
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
In God's Own Party, Daniel K. Williams presents the first comprehensive history of the Christian Right, uncovering how evangelicals came to see the Republican Party as the vehicle through which they could reclaim America as a Christian nation.