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The Christian Right, is a broad label applied to a number of political and religious movements with particularly conservative and right wing views. While such elements are found in many nations, this term is most commonly applied to groups within the United States. Sometimes the term Christian Right is used interchangeably with the term "Religious Right," although some argue for a distinction. (See the discussion on the Religious Right page).
Christian Right groups consist of conservative Christians who join in coalitions around issues of shared concern. While the Christian Right is often perceived as fundamentalist by outsiders, Evangelical, Pentecostal and other conservative Protestants and Roman Catholics also are involved.
Most elements of the Christian Right sympathize with, support, and sometimes influence the United States Republican Party. For example, such support provided considerable backing for the campaigns of U.S. Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.
Issues
Issues which the Christian Right is (or is thought to be) primarily concerned with include:
- Banning or heavily restricting abortion.
- Banning some applications of bio-technology, particularly human cloning and stem cell research with human embryos : bio-ethics.
- Opposition to the gay rights movement and the upholding of traditional family values.
- Support for the presence of Christianity in the public sphere, such as with prayer in school.
- Ending government funding restrictions against religious charities and schools, and similar matters.
- Opposition to U.S. court decisions widening the separation of church and state beyond historical tradition.
- Homeschooling, and private schooling, although a wide range of parents across the political spectrum engage in these practices, and Catholics have long maintained parochial schools in larger towns. The Christian Right generally supports vouchers. In their opinion, using tax monies to teach children beliefs that are contrary to the parents' belief is wrong, and vouchers are seen as a way to correct this.
- "Traditional Moral Values," especially generally empowering parents to protect children from books, music, television programs, films, etc. that they view as indecent (especially pornography) through rating systems and protest and boycott campaigns to protect the television broadcast spectrum. At times, some have gone so far as burning, and/or supporting the banning of books and media considered inappropriate.
Historically, the Christian Right supported teaching creationism and has participated in broader campaigns for prohibition, abolitionism, and civil rights. Southern U.S. Christian Right groups generally advocated and practiced racial segregation. This is not advocated by the Christian right in general, but is the de facto practice in many areas.
Criticism
Some critics claim the Christian Right is a Trojan horse for Dominionism; or even Dominion Theology and Christian Reconstructionism, related philosophies that imply a dissolution of democracy and personal freedoms and a push toward a theocratic or theonomic form of government that regards the Bible as the only valid reference on a variety of civic subjects. Major opposition groups with this point of view include the Freedom From Religion Foundation and Americans United For Separation of Church and State.
The Christian Identity movement shares the Christian Right's fears of abuse from an unconstrained central government; however the Identity movement's overtly white supremacist and antisemitic theology is not shared by groups normally counted among the Christian Right. Identity is regularly denounced by Protestant and Catholic leaders.
U.S. Foreign Policy and Christian Zionism
Many in the Christian Right refer to apocalyptic and other Biblical prophecy in their support of Israel, and support of Israel is often seen as a matter of biblical doctrine. The school of interpretation of Biblical prophecy in which Israel figures most prominently is called premillennial dispensationalism. This has created a movement called Christian Zionism.
According to Ribuffo, the Old Christian Right was generally isolationist, while Diamond notes the Christian Right since the 1950s has tended to support U.S. military intervention and covert action(see references below). After the September 11, 2001 attacks, many leaders in the Christian Right joined with neoconservatives in strongly supporting the War on Terror in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Expressing profound sympathy for Israel, some have gone so far as to advocate the "transfer" of the Palestinian population from the West Bank to another Arabic nation (Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt or Saudi Arabia) as the only viable long-term solution to the ongoing turmoil in the Middle East. The Reverend Franklin Graham, in particular, has been noted for his strident views, drawing secular criticism for his harsh remarks directed at Islam and for his travelling to Baghdad to conduct an open-air Good Friday service primarily for persecuted Assyrian Christians (http://uscis.gov/graphics/services/asylum/ric/documentation/IRQ00001.htm) and Chaldean Christians (http://www.chaldeansonline.net/chaldeanews/attack.html) on April 18, 2003, nine days after the city had fallen to American troops. Citing these and other statements and actions, some critics have taken to characterizing the post-9/11 foreign policy of the George W. Bush administration and its most visible supporters as the Tenth Crusade.
Notable members of the Christian Right
It should be noted that more extreme figures such as Fred Phelps have never had a significant following, and others, such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, who once had built coalitions, made extreme statements that cost the loss of their previously broad base of support.
See Also
Contrast: Christian left
External Links
References
Diamond, Sara. 1995. Roads to Dominion: Right-Wing Movements and Political Power in the United States. New York: Guilford.
Martin, William. 1996. With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America, New York: Broadway Books.
Ribuffo, Leo P. 1983. The Old Christian Right: The Protestant Far Right from the Great Depression to the Cold War. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
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