A Passage from India

In his book Bland Fanatics, Pankaj Mishra reveals that in his thoughts on British imperialism, he is, of course, very much a made member of the moral majority. Whatever British policy, British imperialism was, Mishra believes, evil in its consequences. But reviewer David Berlinski argues that the truth about the British Empire is, as one might expect, very large.

Conclusion

Paradoxically, the failure of the first generation of Christian Reconstructionists to cohere, either personally or ideologically, has worked in the movement’s favor, creating an internal marketplace of ideas by means of which competing groupings within political and religious conservatism have been able to appropriate and adopt their central arguments. Recognizing that a “moral majority” does not exist, and therefore abandoning the top-down political strategies of earlier evangelicals, the believers who participate in the migration to the Pacific Northwest work to build communities that will expand organically and over time to renew America and to replace the supposed neutrality of its legislative base. The project is working. But it is not clear whether the integrity of these ideas will continue as their audience base grows. Mass culture routinizes what was once regarded as radical, with effects that may not easily be predicted at the “end of white, Christian America.”

A direita cristã nos Estados Unidos: usos do passado e projetos políticos (1980)

O presente artigo tem o objetivo de analisar os principais elementos do pensamento da Direita Cristã norte-americana no final dos anos 1970 e início dos 1980. Para tal, investigaremos duas importantes obras escritas por destacadas lideranças da Moral Majority: Listen, America: the conservative blueprint for America´s moral rebirth (1980), de Jerry Falwell, e The Battle for the Mind: a subtle warfare (1980), de Tim LaHaye. Levando em conta a trajetória dos autores e o contexto de publicação e circulação das obras, procuraremos demonstrar como a articulação entre interpretações fundamentalistas dos textos bíblicos, concepções políticas conservadoras e uma perspectiva moral da história dos Estados Unidos estruturou a agenda política e as ações no espaço público de grupos religiosos conservadores naquele país, inaugurando uma aliança pragmática com o partido Republicano que permanece até os dias atuais.

The Only Thing Right Left in a Wrong World

This chapter explores the music of the Winans, the Clark Sisters, and Commissioned. These Detroit-born artists pushed the sonic, theological, and political boundaries of urban contemporary gospel more aggressively than any of their peers. Embracing the rhythms of the secular and sacred worlds of black music, they forged a captivating sound with strong emphasis on craft mastery and innovative production techniques. Their bold approach was not limited to the sonic realm. On their recordings, strong critiques of racism and economic inequality intermingled with Moral Majority–influenced narratives attributing society’s decline to the breakdown of the nuclear, heterosexual family. Their music reflected the energy of a generation in the throes of social change along with the coexistence of liberal and conservative viewpoints within the black church.

Conclusion

The deregulation of the airwaves by the Jimmy Carter administration, combined with the advent of cable broadcasting, allowed the resurgence of politically conservative radio in the late 1970s and 1980s. A new generation of religious broadcasters—including Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson—used radio and television to become household names. Indeed, it was while organizing to protect broadcasters from the Fairness Doctrine that the idea to create the “Moral Majority” came to Falwell. Also, radio broadcasting was the preferred way that former California Governor Ronald Reagan kept up his political brand as he prepared to run for president in 1976 and 1980. In the four decades since, right-wing talk radio has profoundly influenced national politics, but those tempted to call for a return to Fairness Doctrine–style regulation would do well to bear in mind Donald Trump’s expressed desire to challenge broadcasting licenses for critical journalistic outlets like NBC News.

Exiles

This chapter explores how white evangelicals cast themselves as outsiders from political and cultural power in the United States, despite the lingering legacy of white Christian hegemony. Their sense of alienation depends on their concomitant sense that they ought not to be outsiders at all, based on their claims about the nation’s Christian heritage. But casting themselves as exiles is a savvy political move. Americans tend to romanticize outsiders, assuming they possess a novel perspective and moral clarity that insiders lack. This chapter examines how Christian tourists in D.C. depict themselves as exiles, despite the material culture they encounter at the Washington Monument, U.S. Capitol, and other sites. Phrases such as “In God We Trust” as well as biblical inscriptions and statues of Christian leaders demonstrate continued Christian power. It also looks at how this exile role was constructed by the Moral Majority and Christian Coalition in the late twentieth century. Finally, it considers the political benefits of the exile role in a nation that reveres tradition yet cheers for underdogs. Together, the roles of founders and exiles allow white evangelicals to maximize their political power by claiming the most expedient role in a given situation.

Protests Against Controversial Art As a Political Strategy

The article discusses the phenomenon of politically motivated public outrage around art in Russia. The history of protests against art in Russia is relatively short but intense. Since 90’s there occurred a number of attacks on art, the majority of which were protests against art that in some way expressed criticism of current state policy or Russian Orthodox Church. It may seem that in Russia the moral majority decides the fate of controversial artistic events, but as this article argues, that conflicts around art are frequently used by religious fundamentalists and nationalist right-wing groups to pursue their own political agendas and gain popularity in the media. Keywords: hate spin, contemporary art, public censorship, offense, Russia, religious fundamentalism, SERB, vandalism

Moral Majority redivivus

John de Gruchy’s 1995 work Christianity and Democracy: Theology for a Just World Order was published at a heady time, not only in society but in the ecumenical churches, who were prominent as “midwives of democracy.” While the changes in Eastern Europe and South Africa were in the foreground, the book also covered emerging movements for democracy in sub-Saharan Africa outside South Africa. Sadly, De Gruchy’s optimism was not borne out in the decades that followed. Partly, this was due to internal problems within the movements themselves; partly, it was a transformation in the identity of Christianity away from the role of an enabling midwife to that theocratic master. A new kind of Christian politics asserted itself, modelled on and enabled by conservative Christianity in the United States. Moreover, it asserted itself in rivalry to a new “other”: fundamentalist Islam, which succeeded communism as America’s global enemy. This article traces the emergence of this new assertive religious politics, criticizing both its theologically problematic “Christian nationalism” and its lack of concern for sustaining the human rights gains of the early 1990s.

“Our time has come! It’s time for the church to govern”: evangelicals in Brazilian politics and in our ethnographies

This article analyzes how religious values, around which the campaign of Jair Bolsonaro was organized and which continue to be used to maintain the fidelity of the religious bases of his government, originate from the actions of the Evangelical Parliamentary Front in the National Congress, which since its establishment has demanded that the values of “the moral majority” be observed by the state. To achieve this, members of the Front instrumentalize legal principles, while also evoking moral panic. These steps, allied to support for other conservative proposals, form the political agenda of a new right that has acted effectively in Brazilian politics and become the political base of a government for which a moral agenda is the backbone of a new state that is “terribly Christian”, extremist and conservative. Given this challenging situation, what are the impacts of this sole truth becoming state policy for social diversities, and on our anthropological reflections about the imbrications between religion and politics?

Accessorizing the Cross

This chapter examines how Christianity’s dominant symbol, the cross, emerged as one of the earliest and most popular instances of religion moving into fashion, in the form of cross jewelry. The fashionability of cross jewelry is an important step in understanding how God got on a dress. The first part of the chapter highlights the genesis of the cross in modern fashion through the work of Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel. The chapter then analyzes how cross jewelry became a fashion trend in the late 1960s that reflected and shaped existing religious trends. Lastly, the chapter examines the culture wars controversy that accompanied the cross jewelry trend in the 1980s, with Madonna’s popularity and the rise of the Moral Majority.