HomeWHICHWhich Political Candidate Was Supported By The Religious Right

Which Political Candidate Was Supported By The Religious Right

Since the Supreme Court invalidated mandatory public prayer and devotional Bible reading in schools in Engel v. Vitale (1962) and Abington School District v. Schempp (1963) and expanded abortion rights in Roe v. Wade (1973), religious right groups have criticized federal judges for ousting God from public schools and undermining traditional morality. They have advocated limiting the power of the federal courts to rule on church-state issues.

Religious right groups often clash with the American Civil Liberties Union, which advocates stricter separation of church and state. However, in 1993 many members of the religious right joined more liberal forces in supporting the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

More recent issues of concern to America’s religious right include, most notably, the prospect of same-sex marriage. Dobson, one of the religious right’s most politically powerful voices, has waged an especially tireless campaign against same-sex marriage. Indeed, Dobson was joined by Falwell, Robertson, and Perkins in calling for a constitutional amendment that would prohibit same-sex marriage.

Religious right continues to influence elections, policies

During the 2004 presidential election, Dobson endorsed President George W. Bush’s reelection bid and campaigned for state ballot initiatives outlawing same-sex marriage. After the election, some Republican Party insiders credited Dobson’s work with propelling Bush and other Republicans to victory. Richard A. Viguerie, a renowned Republican Party fund-raiser, praised Dobson’s political work, telling U.S. News and World Report, “I can’t think of anybody who had more impact [on the 2004 election outcomes] than Dr. Dobson. He was the 800-pound gorilla.”

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All the groups have spent large sums of money on lobbying Congress to further the goals of the religious right. In addition to opposing same-sex marriage and challenging the popular culture, the religious right’s goals include staffing the federal courts with judges who will interpret the First Amendment to be more accommodating of religious expression and who will modify existing interpretations of the right to privacy to give greater weight to fetal protection.

The influence of the religious right has waxed and waned throughout U.S. history, and its modern movements are no exception. Today’s religious right movement may have reached its pinnacle shortly after the 2004 elections, when the Republicans retained control of the White House and both chambers of Congress.

In the spring of 2005, Congress’s top Republican leaders met in a private session with Dobson, Perkins, and other religious right activists to promise they would push the religious right’s agenda. Senate majority leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., assured movement leaders that Congress would work to curb the power of “activist judges” and to pass a constitutional amendment outlawing same-sex marriage.

The religious right was unable to rally around a single Republican candidate for the presidential nomination in 2007 and 2008, and the most clearly evangelical candidate — former governor and Southern Baptist preacher Mike Huckabee of Arkansas — was ultimately defeated in the Republican nominating contests by Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who had in the past criticized leaders of the religious right.

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In the 2008 Democratic race, Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York and the eventual nominee Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois participated in April 2008 in a televised “Compassion Forum” at Messiah College, where questions from the audience revealed that evangelicals had expanded their concerns to issues as diverse as global warming, aid for the poor, and foreign policy concerns.

This article, written by Jeremy Leaming, was originally published in 2009.

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