AHC: Prevent the rise of the Christian Right in US Politics

Just what it says on the tin. How might we avoid the rise of the Christian Right, eg no Moral Majority, no Jerry Falwell, no Pat Robertson, etc?
 
1. Ronald Reagan never goes into politics.

2. Jimmy Carter never leaves Georgia.

3. No Iranian Revolution.

4. Phyllis Schlafly keeps out of the public eye; ERA passes.

Etc...

-AYC
 
Have Row vs Wade outlaw all abortions.

Agreed. 100%.

Abortion is the ultimate underlying issue for Christians in the field of politics.

That's not really even possible; the most "pro-life" result you could get from reworking OTL's Roe v. Wade would be the status quo, which is that states can regulate abortions as they see fit. That would channel the pro-life movement towards more state-level organizing, but ultimately those folks are still going to be an attractive political bloc worth courting.

Moreover, even if you could handwave away abortion as a political issue, you're still going to have clashes over school prayer, creationism, etc.
 
Personally, I think you guys are all looking at things the wrong way. Then again, it depends on how one interprets the "Christian Right" if one interprets the Christian Right to mean strictly "the moral majority, Pat Robertson, Jimmy Falwell etc." then this is doable. However if one takes a more broader interpretation, namely all Christians, it becomes harder.

If we take the first interpretation, the easiest way to eliminate the rise of the Christian "Right" is to keep the "New Democrats" from taking control of the Democratic party. As a whole this will mean that America's political spectrum will be further right than OTL, but the "Christian Right" will be far less dominant as the Christian vote will be split more evenly between Democrats and Republicans.
 
Personally, I think you guys are all looking at things the wrong way. Then again, it depends on how one interprets the "Christian Right" if one interprets the Christian Right to mean strictly "the moral majority, Pat Robertson, Jimmy Falwell etc." then this is doable. However if one takes a more broader interpretation, namely all Christians, it becomes harder.

If we take the first interpretation, the easiest way to eliminate the rise of the Christian "Right" is to keep the "New Democrats" from taking control of the Democratic party. As a whole this will mean that America's political spectrum will be further right than OTL, but the "Christian Right" will be far less dominant as the Christian vote will be split more evenly between Democrats and Republicans.
This.

Also, a different Roe, though that would be ASB if we keep all the OTL Presidents.
 
I think the key is in theological developments in right wing evangelicalism, not national and world events. Before Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Pope John Paul, fundamentalists, conservative evangelicals and Catholics were pretty isolationist when it came to politics. They were content to keep the spheres of the City of God and City of Man more separate. Before the late 70's there wasn't really a concept of Christian politics. You were just a Christian who happened to be a politician. You might be a left-wing Democrat, or a right-wing Republican, or the whole spectrum in between but there wasn't this one-size-fits-all Christian right cookie cutter political agenda. I recall that in the early seventies there were many conservative evangelicals who were pro-choice and it wasn't until Francis Schaffer wrote his books that the consensus started changing. Don't forget the development of postmillenial reconstructionism. So stop these theological developments, mainly the idea that there is this monolithic concept called Christian politics, but rather just Christians living out their faith peacefully in a society that has already agreed to keep church and state separate, then I think you have stopped the rise of the Christian right. Although you might instead see a Christian left..... hmmmm.... good alternate history scenario.
 
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Yeah, from my understanding Roe v. Wade was what led to the whole thing. As the decision was decided 7-2, your best bet is to just butterfly the case away.

However...you may very well have abortion reach the Supreme Court later on. But by butterflying away Roe v. Wade you can definitely give America a couple decades to become a bit more comfortable with the idea of abortion being legal. So by the time Woe v. Rade is decided on in the '90s or whenever, there isn't as much of a fit.
 
There's other factors. Sex education, busing, school prayer.
A number of fundamentalists were backing segregation or the John Birch Society before Roe vs. Wade.
 
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5502785

While abortion no doubt had SOME part in causing the formation of the Christian right, the big issue that caused uproar was the federal government threatening to revoke the tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University and numerous other Christian private schools which at the time were no better than white's only segregation academies. The federal government involving themselves in these schools pissed off a lot of Southern conservatives. The issue of abortion was used by the leaders of the Christian right to galvanize a coalition between white southern evangelicals and Catholics.
 
Yeah, from my understanding Roe v. Wade was what led to the whole thing. As the decision was decided 7-2, your best bet is to just butterfly the case away.

However...you may very well have abortion reach the Supreme Court later on. But by butterflying away Roe v. Wade you can definitely give America a couple decades to become a bit more comfortable with the idea of abortion being legal. So by the time Woe v. Rade is decided on in the '90s or whenever, there isn't as much of a fit.

A couple more decades could firmly establish it as a state issue so it might never be seen by SCOTUS at a latter point because they would throw it back down as a state issue. Probably see a red state- blue state divide on abortion. It was already legal in NY before Roe IOTL. You'd probably see a process of various liberal states legalizing first, moderate states then legalizing it and the most conservative states either legalizing it under heavy regulation or keeping it banned.
 
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5502785

While abortion no doubt had SOME part in causing the formation of the Christian right, the big issue that caused uproar was the federal government threatening to revoke the tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University and numerous other Christian private schools which at the time were no better than white's only segregation academies. The federal government involving themselves in these schools pissed off a lot of Southern conservatives. The issue of abortion was used by the leaders of the Christian right to galvanize a coalition between white southern evangelicals and Catholics.

I don't think that would create a lasting religious right though. The segregation issue was already dying by the mid '70s. The more general issue of government involvement in religion could keep them going but without a touchstone like Roe vs Wade you have a one issue group which fades away with that issue. It also decreases their potential power since pro-life has lasting, widespread support across various parts of the country and demographics which segregated schools doesn't have.
I think you need that combining of Evangelicals and Catholics to make the religious right the power it is.
 
Yeah. Without abortion, the Religious Right lives and dies in the South. No self-respecting Catholic clergyman would fight for racial segregation in universities. It's important, yes, but of the same importance as Griswold v. Connecticut for conservative Catholics - useful for getting them pissed off, but not enough to become a national movement.

Or, if you somehow butterfly out Schaffer and his ilk, you might do it. There will be religious politics, especially with abortion, but the pro-life movement will remain predominantly Catholic, and most importantly of all, bipartisan (remember for the first part of the 80s Ted Kennedy was pro-life, and even in California much of the Democratic leadership was, too, up to the early 90's). Of course, the same alliance could still happen, but later, over gay marriage.

I wonder what our politics today would look like if the Religious Right rises twenty years later than it did.
 
You need to prevent the things that cause reaction- i.e. the excesses of the cultural Left. A surviving MLK and black assimilationism, a lack of abortion politics and the elimination of the excesses by the cultural Left that led to Christian reaction. Keep prayer in schools, and have a distinct lack of government involvement in faith through judicial activism, and the Christians have much less to go on crusade about.
 

karikon

Banned
Then the christian right would be about keeping the status quo and overrating when that status quo is challenged. Honestly that is like preventing the raise of American Independendt party by keeping segregation from being challenged.

 
You need to prevent the things that cause reaction- i.e. the excesses of the cultural Left. A surviving MLK and black assimilationism, a lack of abortion politics and the elimination of the excesses by the cultural Left that led to Christian reaction. Keep prayer in schools, and have a distinct lack of government involvement in faith through judicial activism, and the Christians have much less to go on crusade about.

And in this scenario, you don't need to have a complete rightward shift of the whole spectrum.

YOu could still have a healthy very near OTL left.

Sounds good.
 
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