AHC: Prevent the rise of the religious right

You do know that voucher programs frequently provide minority student access to better schools, right?

The problem with right-wing talking points (lies) like this one is that they seldom meet up with reality. Painting a program conceived to resegregate public schools that way is like a bigot saying can't be racist because they have a black friend.
 
The problem with right-wing talking points (lies) like this one is that they seldom meet up with reality. Painting a program conceived to resegregate public schools that way is like a bigot saying can't be racist because they have a black friend.
In what way do these programs do what you suggest. Are you familiar with the voucher experiment in Washington, DC?
 
You do know that voucher programs frequently provide minority student access to better schools, right?

In theory. Locally the 'voucher' school catering to low income, at risk children went out of business in a few years (4?). Those catering to middle class WASPS lasted longer or are still in business after several decades. The latter pay lip service to assisting the at risk children, but the number allowed in is very low.
 
As has been said, it depends on what you mean by the Religious Right. The first stage of that movement was largely concerned with government attempts to desegregate evangelical institutions (Fr. Deacon Weyrich, as pointed out, tried to broaden the base by moving away from de facto segregationist issues to school prayer, abortion and women's lib, but the conditions weren't right, and even what we would call conservative Protestant churches were liberalish on sex issues.)

Roe v. Wade was its own, largely Catholic, thing; in any case, much if not most of the pro-life movement till the 1980s were liberals on most other issues.

With that in mind, the white backlash that initially started the Protestant phase of the RR is hard to get rid off, your POD would have to be before WWI. You can change the nature of the backlash, though, into something less religiously tinged. Something like the Trumpist movement today.
 
In theory. Locally the 'voucher' school catering to low income, at risk children went out of business in a few years (4?). Those catering to middle class WASPS lasted longer or are still in business after several decades. The latter pay lip service to assisting the at risk children, but the number allowed in is very low.
Under pressure from the unions no doubt...
 
It involved the segregation academies, where "private" schools were set up entirely to break the law by disregarding court rulings involving segregation, school prayer and a number of other things while being paid for with tax payer dollars.
And because the local Protestant churches (flush off a Great Awakening in the 1950s) tended to reflect the tastes of their communities, a lot of them got into covering for the seg academies.

The big flashpoint, though, was Bob Jones University. IIRC, while admissions were theoretically race-blind, they had practices that would create a hostile environment for black students, especially with policies against miscegenation, even in wedlock.
 
In theory. Locally the 'voucher' school catering to low income, at risk children went out of business in a few years (4?). Those catering to middle class WASPS lasted longer or are still in business after several decades. The latter pay lip service to assisting the at risk children, but the number allowed in is very low.
I think a large part of it is that there is some cover given by the Catholic parts of the voucher movement (who mostly advocate for it as a way to do end rounds against the Blaine Amendments of many states, and allow for state aid to parochial schools).
 
Are the evangelical churches in the Southern US different from those in the North? I am only familiar with the latter.
The main split between Baptist churches in the US occurred over the issue of slavery, forging the Southern Baptist Convention as a pro-slavery splinter in 1845. At the risk of this thread become more at home in PolChat, I think that legacy echoes today, like it or not. I'm not saying that all Evangelicals are racist, in the sense of being bigoted on the basis of race, in fact I'd guess that most aren't or at least try not to be. But the figures that mobilized them politically in the 1970s were, and that's the foundation of the Religious Right as a voting bloc.
To avoid the creation of that voting bloc, to avoid the political mobilization of Evangelicals, you have to prevent huge milestones of American history that had significant momentum behind them.
 
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Under pressure from the unions no doubt...

Unions don't carry much weight in Indiana anymore. The school aiming at low income & at risk students was never adaquately funded. It appears the vouchers we're not enough to cover considerable start up costs. Another I'm told was a for profit operation. It was aimed at local middle and upper income who wanted a cheap private school. They got what they paid for.

Locally the Catholics, Lutheran's run traditional parochial schools. Those still lean on tuition fees & the considerable wealth those churches have. I'm told they pay above Union scale on the average as they aim for the better teachers. Checking around I found there are some other small church affiliated elementary schools, who's funding I know nothing of.
 

Geon

Donor
Speaking as a conservative evangelical who according to some definitions would be "right wing", I'd like to offer my take on the rise of the "religious right".

First some history is in order. The evangelical/fundamentalist church (I'll use evangelical to describe both for convenience and the rest of this posting) was active in the political movement as far back as the late 19th century. Two of the major issues that predominated in that period were temperance and the rise of Darwin's teaching in the public schools.

The temperance movement grew out of the teachings of a number of mid to late 19th century theologians and teachers most notably men like Charles Finney.

And there were many equally opposed to Darwinian theories fearing that such theories would lead to a denial of the Bible and atheism (see below)

descent-modernists-fundamentalist-movement.jpg


In addition at this time the rise of the "higher critical" school of interpreting Scripture became popular in many American seminaries. This prompted greater and greater fears among the pastors and teachers in evangelicalism that the basic doctrines of Christianity were being undermined.

Things came to a head in the early part of the 20th century when the religious "right" of the day led by preachers such as Rev. Billy Sunday preached against the evils both of alcohol and of Darwinism. The result in the case of the former was the adoption of Prohibition. In the case of the latter we had the infamous Scopes Trials.

Prohibition was an unmitigated disaster as noted by many historians. And the Scopes Trial left the general public with the impression that evangelicals were anti-intellectual and ignorant.

These two defeats more then anything else caused evangelicalism to turn inward for the next several decades. It was felt any form of social activism was useless in a world that seemed literally "hell-bent" on its own destruction.

Then in the early to late 50's things began to change. There were many factors in the "reawakening" of evangelicals to social issues. I'll list them briefly below.

  1. The rise of communism in Europe and Asia, especially after World War II
  2. An increasingly liberal bend being taken by the mainline denominations.
  3. The rise of new music in the form of rock and roll.
  4. The banning of prayer in public schools by the Supreme Court (Engel vs. Vitale).
  5. The rise of the drug culture in the 60's and 70's.
  6. The rise of feminism.
  7. The rise of gay rights.
  8. The legalization of abortion (Roe v. Wade).
The last of these 8 issues was the proverbial "straw the broke the camel's back." Many evangelicals got into the public arena fearful that their very freedoms were at stake. Roe v. Wade was the trigger for over two decades of perceived moral decline in the U.S. Pastors such as Jerry Falwell, D. James Kennedy, and Pat Robertson feared that if nothing was done that evangelicals would soon lose their religious freedom. This was the beginning of the Moral Majority and other organizations known as the "religious right"

It was not one single cause, there were several that brought this about.
 
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