Moral Majority


The Moral Majority was an American political organization and movement associated with the Christian right and the Republican Party in the United States. It was founded in 1979 by Baptist minister Jerry Falwell Sr. and associates, and dissolved in the late 1980s. It played a key role in the mobilization of conservative Christians as a political force and particularly in Republican presidential victories throughout the 1980s.

History

Before establishment

The origins of the Moral Majority can be traced to 1976 when Baptist minister Jerry Falwell Sr. embarked on a series of "I Love America" rallies across the country to raise awareness of social issues important to him. These rallies were an extension of Falwell's decision to go against the traditional Baptist principle of separating religion and politics, a change of heart Falwell says he had when he perceived what he described as the decay of the nation's morality. Through hosting these rallies, Falwell was able to gauge national support for a formal organization and also raise his profile as a leader. Having already been a part of a well-established network of ministers and ministries, within a few years Falwell was favorably positioned to launch the Moral Majority.
The impetus for the Moral Majority was the struggle for control of an American conservative Christian advocacy group known as Christian Voice during 1978. Robert Grant, Christian Voice's president, said in a news conference that the religious right was a "sham... controlled by three Catholics and a Jew." Following this, Paul Weyrich, Terry Dolan, Richard Viguerie and Howard Phillips left Christian Voice.
During a 1979 meeting, they urged televangelist Jerry Falwell Sr. to found the Moral Majority. This was the period when the New Christian Right arose. Joining Falwell in the Moral Majority was Ed McAteer, who the same year, founded the Religious Roundtable in Memphis, Tennessee. Falwell also brought in Tim LaHaye, leader of a clergy group opposed to gay rights and John Birch Society figure, as an organizer.

Establishment and organizational activity

Falwell and Weyrich founded the Moral Majority in June 1979. According to former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, who was Texas evangelist James Robison's communications director at the time, Robison's "Freedom Rally" at the Dallas Convention Center was the genesis of the Moral Majority.
The Moral Majority was predominately a Southern-oriented organization of the Christian Right, although its state chapters and political activity extended beyond the South. The number of state chapters grew quickly, with organizations in eighteen states by 1980. The variety of resources available to the Moral Majority at its founding facilitated this rapid expansion, and included Falwell's mailing list from his program, Old Time Gospel Hour. In addition, the Moral Majority took control of the Old Time Gospel Hour publication, Journal Champion, which had been distributed to the show's donors. Through the 1980s, Falwell was the organization's best-known spokesperson. By 1982, Moral Majority surpassed Christian Voice in size and influence.
The Moral Majority's headquarters were in Lynchburg, Virginia, where Falwell was the presiding minister of the nation's largest independent Baptist church, Thomas Road Baptist Church. Virginia has been a seat of Christian Right politics, being the state where the Christian Coalition's first headquarters were established. Falwell was at the head of the Moral Majority and maintained an advisory board, constituting the organization's primary leadership. This leadership was drawn mostly from Falwell's fellow members of the Baptist Bible Fellowship. Falwell insisted the Moral Majority leadership also include Catholics and Jews, although not all members of the leadership approved of this inclusion.
The Moral Majority was an organization made up of conservative Christian political action committees which campaigned on issues its personnel believed were important to maintaining its Christian conception of moral law. They believed this represented the opinions of the majority of Americans. With a membership of millions, the Moral Majority became one of the largest conservative lobby groups in the United States and at its height, it claimed more than four million members and over two million donors. These members were spread among about twenty state organizations, of which Washington State's was the largest. The Moral Majority was incorporated into the Liberty Federation in 1985, remaining a distinct entity but falling under the Liberty Federation's larger jurisdiction. In 1987, Falwell retired as the formal head of the Moral Majority, and was succeeded by Jerry Nims, although he maintained an active and visible role within the organization. The same year, a major effort which Falwell made to bring scandal-ridden Jim Bakker's PTL ministries out of financial trouble proved unsuccessful.

Dissolution

By the end of Ronald Reagan's presidential administration, Christian Right organizations were generally in a phase of decline. After Reagan's two terms in office, donations were decreasing, because after eight years of Christian Right-supported leadership, the nation was no longer seen as in the same state of supposed moral peril as it was when Reagan first took office. The Moral Majority's financial base seriously eroded by the time it became part of the Liberty Federation; its financial difficulties ultimately were a major factor in the decision to disband the organization. Falwell offered an optimistic public opinion about the Moral Majority's dissolution. Disbanding the Moral Majority in 1989 in Las Vegas, Falwell declared, "Our goal has been achieved... The religious right is solidly in place and religious conservatives in America are now in for the duration."

Organizational goals and composition

The Moral Majority sought to mobilize conservative Americans to become politically active on issues they thought were important. A variety of tactics were used to garner support. These tactics included direct-mail campaigns, telephone hotlines, rallies, and religious television broadcasts. Although the Moral Majority operated for only a decade, it rapidly became a visible political force and was relatively effective in its mobilization goals. According to Robert Liebman and Robert Wuthnow, common explanations for this success include:
  • The Moral Majority was founded with strong financial backing already in place.
  • Its leaders frequently communicated with its constituents, enabling consistent messages to resonate throughout all levels.
  • Its leaders generally had previous organizational and management experience.
  • The general public was amenable to the issues the Moral Majority emphasized.
Scholar Carmen Celestini argues that the culture war issues, conspiratorialism, apocalypticism, and fear emphasized in the John Birch Society were key aspects in the successful mobilization of the Moral Majority, particularly through Tim LaHaye, a Moral Majority figure and John Birch Society member and speaker.
Some issues for which the Moral Majority campaigned included:
The Moral Majority successfully campaigned to create an integrated social platform that appealed to most conservative Christians by packaging a variety of previously disparate issues under the banner of "traditional family values". The Moral Majority portrayed issues such as abortion, divorce, feminism, gay and lesbian rights, and the Equal Rights Amendment as attacks on the traditional concept and values of American families and tapped into a sense of societal moral decay that resonated with many evangelicals. They also campaigned for the inclusion of prayer in schools and tax incentives for married couples as protection for the traditional family structure. Under this pro-family agenda, they mobilized a large base of supporters with issue-centric dialogue that they proliferated in their network of preachers and mailings.

Gay rights issues

In particular, the anti-homosexual rhetoric that they publicized through fundraising letters and Christian broadcasting had higher contribution rates than other topics. While not explicitly anti-gay in their public platforms during the 1970s, their internal mobilization as "shared anti-gay sentiment aided in solidifying a collective set of grievances and ideologies, in establishing a collective identity of constituents, and in constructing a hostile enemy against which the conservative Christian activists were to fight". The Moral Majority refrained from directly speaking out against gays, feminists, and pro-abortion parties and instead used "pro-family" rhetoric to articulate their point. For example, instead of coming out directly against homosexuality and gay families, leaders of the Moral Majority defined a family as "two heterosexual parents", which appealed to many conservatives.
Later, as the organization gained more influence in the 1980s, their rhetoric became more explicit in their stance on gay rights as they characterized the movement as an attack on the American family. Jerry Falwell Sr. expressed that because gay people were rejected by most of society, they had no choice but to prey on the young and were therefore a threat to children and families. Various Moral Majority members also expressed more extreme opinions, such as Moral Majority commentator Charlie Judd, who argued that "There are absolutes in this world. Just as jumping off a building will kill a person, so will the spread of homosexuality bring about the demise of American culture as we know it".