While abortion is often cited as the
reason evangelical Christians became
politically active in the 1970s...
...Unborn babies who by the hundreds...
...historian Randall Balmer points to another important moment.
One that started with
the conservative political strategist
named Paul Weyrich.
We will truly see a moral majority in America.
Weyrich had been trying to mobilize evangelical
voters and has said in many occasions
including to me personally he said I
tried everything to get them involved in
politics.
I tried the abortion issue.
I tried the women's rights issue.
I tried pornography.
Nothing got their attention.
That is the attention of evangelical
leaders until the IRS began to pursue
the tax exemption of racially segregated
schools.
Many of those schools were
private Christian schools created as a
response to integration and some schools
and colleges still barred black students
or interracial dating.
After courts ruled that schools that discriminate weren't entitled to tax exemptions,
the IRS began to investigate.
The Internal Revenue Service proposed to make private schools
prove they are not practicing racial
discrimination or lose their tax-exempt status.
It was only then according to
Weyrich that evangelicals became
interested in mobilizing politically.
The schools called the IRS rules too broad
and said they interfered with religious
autonomy.
The Internal Revenue Service has begun hearings in Washington...
...religious and conservative groups had
been mobilized to the point where 200
speakers demanded to be heard.
These men do not have the rightful authority to tell us how to run our schools, our homes
and our churches.
That got the attention
of people like Jerry Falwell and others
and they used that as a catalyst for
their
political activism in the late 1970s.
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