For God and Country: The Religious Right, the Reagan Administration, and the Cold War
In the late 1970s, a number of prominent evangelical ministers decided to become actively involved in American politics. Dubbed the New Christian Right by some, the Religious Right or the Christian Right by others, these figures immediately became very vocal about the need to restore morality to American society and to insure that the United States retained its position as a preeminent military power in the world. This dissertation examines the Religious Right’s activism in matters of American foreign policy from the late 1970s through the end of the Cold War. It illuminates the underlying theological and political beliefs that characterized the Religious Right’s politics, and explains how the Religious Right became politicized. It also demonstrates that foreign affairs played a more prominent role in the activism of the Religious Right than many historians have realized.The heart of this dissertation is its portrait of the political marriage between the Reagan administration and the Religious Right. By examining this relationship in terms of national defense policy, one can see not only that the Reagan administration relied on the Religious Right to gets its message out on sensitive issues like the nuclear freeze movement, but also that the Religious Right was eager to gain access to the seat of national power. In seeking to maintain access to the White House, however, agents of the Religious Right sacrificed theirs ability to maintain independent judgments about matters of foreign policy. As this dissertation demonstrates, prominent evangelicals like Jerry Falwell became loyal foot soldiers for the Reagan administration as the 1980s wore on, but gained very little in return for their loyalty. Indeed the Religious Right’s credibility as political commentators suffered as a result of its engagement in debates about Central America, South Africa, and the Philippines. Public embarrassments in these areas, coupled with the televangelist scandals of the late 1980s, cost the Religious Right in terms of its public credibility.This dissertation ultimately presents a fresh examination of evangelicals’ involvement in debates about foreign affairs in the late stages of the Cold War. It demonstrates that evangelicals at large were more ambivalent than adamant about national defense issues in the Reagan years. Along the way, this project also explains how theology shaped the Religious Right’s view of world affairs. By studying these matters more closely, this dissertation challenges students of modern American history to re-examine evangelicals as actors in American politics.
American History, Religious History, Biographies, Religious Right, Jerry Falwell, Moral Majority, Billy Graham, Ronald Reagan, Pat Robertson, Cold War, Nuclear Freeze, Strategic Defense Initiative, Hal Lindsey, Armageddon, National Association of Evangelicals, Soviet Union, Iran-Contra, Vietnam War
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations