Revisionist memory: White evangelicals have always been at war with abortion

[salvorhardin]

Ah, so it was Nixon (big surprise) who first attempted to use abortion as politics, except he was trying to woo Catholics away from Democrats. That didn't work, but Paul Weyrich and Richard Viguerie took note, and then used it on evangelicals in Iowa in 1978. Prior to then, evangelicals didn't care about abortion much either way and the biggest anti-abortion proponent was Edward Kennedy (Catholic). Falwell then ran with it when he founded the Moral Majority in 1979, and the rest is history. Now nobody remembers a time when evangelicals weren't anti-choice, or when prominent Republicans were pro-choice.

Excellent post from Fred Clark. Some of the comments there are good too.

People like Lewis Smedes and Carl F.H. Henry remain revered figures in evangelical history, but if they were saying publicly today what they said publicly about abortion in their lifetimes, they would be excommunicated and shunned as heretics.

The speed and totality of evangelicals’ sea-change on abortion is remarkable. But what’s really astonishing is that such a huge theological, political and cultural change occurred within evangelical Protestantism and no one talks about it. No one acknowledges that this huge change was, in fact, a huge change.

...

And here is Randall Balmer with “A Pastor’s Son Notes When Politics Came to the Pulpit“:

When I lived in Iowa in the 1970s, my father was pastor of one of the largest evangelical congregations in the state. Although he remained a Republican to his death, my father was resolutely apolitical in the pulpit. Things began to change for Iowa evangelicals — and for politically conservative evangelicals elsewhere — in the late 1970s.

Iowa, in fact, served as the proving ground for abortion as a political issue. Until 1978, evangelicals in Iowa were overwhelmingly indifferent about abortion as a political matter. Even after the Roe v. Wade decision of 1973, most evangelicals considered abortion a “Catholic issue.” The Iowa race for U.S. Senate in 1978 pitted Dick Clark, the incumbent Democrat, against a Republican challenger, Roger Jepsen. All of the polling and the pundits viewed the election an easy win for Clark, who had walked across the state six years earlier in his successful effort to unseat Republican Jack Miller. In the final weekend of the 1978 campaign, however, pro-lifers (predominantly Catholic) leafleted church parking lots all over the state. Two days later, in an election with a very low turnout, Jepsen narrowly defeated Clark, thereby persuading Paul Weyrich and other architects of the Religious Right that abortion would work for them as a political issue.

Full post: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2012/10/29/revisionist-memory-white-evangelicals-have-always-been-at-war-with-abortion

[s-cubed]

1. Frank Schaeffer's book "Crazy for God"

Also sheds light on how this change came about. Also the Catholic church hasn't always been opposed.

[salvorhardin]

2. I'll have to check that out

I keep telling my younger progressive friends that we used to live in a very different world. I don't think they believe me.

[okwmember]

3. Here's a recent post about the same topic.

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/10/30/my-take-when-evangelicals-were-pro-choice/?hpt=hp_t3