Religious Right

{{bronze}}{{uspolitics}}
{{cquote|See, big business is kind of [[Communist]]: they want a powerful state organizing things in their long-term interests. And the guys that came into power with [[Newt Gingrich]] in 1994 are a somewhat different breed… they're people who want money tomorrow, they don't care what happens to the world two inches down the road, they're deeply [[irrational]]. And they're [[totalitarian]]: despite [[Libertarianism|what they say]], they in fact want a very powerful state, but only to order people around and tell them how to live, and to lock them up if they step the wrong way, and so on, a national security state, basically.|||[[Noam Chomsky]]<ref>Chomsky, ''Understanding Power'' p. 392, The New York Press (2002).</ref>}}

The "'''Religious Right'''" (derogatorily — yet accurately — referred to as the "religious wrong") comprises voting blocs of religiously motivated right-wing [[conservative]]s such as [[United States|American]] [[conservative]] [[Christian]] voters or similar movements in [[Europe]]. 

In the US, the term is often used interchangeably with "the [[evangelical]] vote", but many "evangelical" voters are actually [[Roman Catholic]] and not all evangelical [[Protestant]]s vote with the Religious Right.<ref>[http://www.publiceye.org/magazine/v17n2/evangelical-demographics.html Religion and Politics in the United States: Nuances You Should Know]</ref> The religious right helped propel [[George W. Bush]] to victory in the [[2000 U.S. Presidential Election|2000]] and [[2004 U.S. Presidential Election|2004]] presidential campaigns. Fears that Bush might lose the support of the religious right hung over his administration; these fears led to Bush creating the [[faith-based initiative]]. By 2004, Bush was the unofficial leader of Christianity for U.S. Christians<ref>Alan Cooperman and Thomas B. Edsall, [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32793-2004Nov7.html "Evangelicals Say They Led Charge For the GOP"], [[WaPo]] 11.8.4; Page A01.</ref> (and a fitting one at that, seeing as how he was infamously gullible and unable to tell fact from fiction). [[John McCain|McCain]] and [[Mitt Romney|Romney]] never were able to claim that mantle.<ref>Brody, Ben, [http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-03-23/ted-cruz-says-obama-won-because-evangelicals-stayed-home-is-that-true- "Ted Cruz Says Obama Won Because Evangelicals Stayed Home. Is That True?"], Bloomberg (3/23/15, 9:53 AM PDT).</ref>

Since its support for Bush, the Religious Right continues to play an important role in the U.S. [[Republican Party]]. Many Republican politicians, such as former Senator [[Rick Santorum]], have explicitly identified themselves as religious conservatives. Indeed, the modern Republican Party is a coalition between religious and [[business]] conservatives, in roughly equal parts. However, this political power has proven highly — potentially ''fatally'' — damaging to Christianity as a whole, especially after the election of [[Donald Trump]], as it's causing [[Fundamentalist Christianity|the more judgmental and fascistic side of Christianity]] to increasingly define the religion, resulting in a marked decline in church-attendance and religious belief since younger, less conservative generations are increasingly associating the religion with [[hypocrisy]], [[bigotry]], and other flat-out ''evil'' values.<ref name="illing">[https://www.vox.com/22188646/trump-evangelical-christianity-david-french "The Trump presidency was a catastrophe for American Christianity"] by Sean Illing, Vox, 2021 February 3</ref><ref name="gabbatt23">[https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/22/us-churches-closing-religion-covid-christianity Losing their religion: why US churches are on the decline], Adam Gabbatt, ''The Guardian'', 22 Jan 2023</ref>

In India, the religious right is mainly concentrated around the [[Bharatiya Janata Party]] (BJP), which can be considered a more extreme social conservative — but (sadly) far more popular version of the Republican Party.

Many members of the {{wpl|Christian right}} do not follow the beliefs of [[the Bible]], instead cherry-picking verses from [[Leviticus]] that [[Argument from authority|"prove"]] their points. Some members full-on reject the more perceived "[[liberal]]" aspects of [[Jesus]] and the Bible, and make their own, convoluted version of the Bible.<ref>{{cite news |last=Otten |first=Tori |url= https://newrepublic.com/post/174950/christianity-today-editor-evangelicals-call-jesus-liberal-weak |title=Christianity Today Editor: Evangelicals Call Jesus 'Liberal' and 'Weak' |work= {{wpl|The New Republic}} |date= 2023-8--10 |accessdate=2023-09-15 }}</ref>

==Give me that old time religion==
Religious outfits which have historically achieved power, influence, understanding, and integration with [[secular]] authorities often help to uphold existing structures and [[morality|moralities]] in a conservative fashion, particularly because they themselves have become "part of the old".

Think [[established religion|established churches]] in ''ancien-régime'' Europe, or [[theocracy|theocratic]] [[Buddhism]] in olde-time [[Tibet]], or mythically righteous pilgrims in colonial [[Massachusetts]].<ref group=note>Not that things ''must'' go that way — witness early [[Islam]]'s warpath, disrupting [[Middle Eastern]] society, or {{wpl|William Wilberforce}} and [[liberation theology]] fomenting social [[progress]] in [[Latin America]].</ref>

But [[American Revolution|when]] [[French Revolution|things]] [[Russian Revolution|change]], the remnants of the old [[faith]]s may start [[Good old days|looking back to]] an alleged [[golden age]] when everyone feared the [[gods]] (or at least feared [[Inquisition|the faithful]]) and 
exercised self-[[censorship]]
 behaved themselves accordingly.<ref group=note>Those who didn't were [[Capital punishment|not permitted to remain around]] to spread their unwholesome [[skepticism]] for long.</ref>

==Fast-forward to today==
The Religious Right in the United States of America in the 21<sup>st</sup> century represents, to a large extent, a reaction to several different [[Supreme Court of the United States|Supreme Court]] decisions regarding the [[right to privacy]] and the [[separation of church and state]]. Two stand out in particular:
 
*The Court’s extending the right to privacy to include [[abortion]] in ''[[Roe v. Wade]]'' (1973). Before ''Roe v. Wade'', the religious groups that now form the Religious Right were often [[liberal]] on abortion.<ref>[http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5502785 Religious Right Has Distorted the Faith], NPR</ref>  
*The banning of school-mandated [[prayer]] in ''[[School prayer#God banned from school?|Engel v. Vitale]]'' (1962). 

These two issues, along with the issue of [[government]] posting of the [[Ten Commandments]], have come back to the courts repeatedly, with mixed results: adding a few restrictions to abortion, a complete absence of sponsored prayer in schools, and taking down all new Ten Commandments monuments. This has led to a certain amount of hostility to the judiciary among many in the Religious Right &mdash; witness events like "{{wpl|Justice Sunday}}" (2005-2006) and its sequel, where federal judges were denounced as anti-[[Christian]]. 

It is disputed whether or not these cases were actually the cause of the rise of the religious right. Some point out that the 1971 [[Southern Baptist Convention]] ''endorsed'' abortion rights and repeated this support after ''Roe v. Wade''.<ref>{{cite web |url= https://goplifer.com/2014/03/29/how-protestant-evangelicals-shifted-their-abortion-stance/ |title= How Protestant Evangelicals shifted their abortion stance |date= March 29, 2014 |author= goplifer}}</ref> In fact, Evangelical Christians had been fairly liberal on the issue, whereas conservative Northern Catholics had been the main opponents of it. 

However, that changed when the [[Jimmy Carter|Carter administration]] (1977-1981) pushed to end the last vestiges of [[segregation]] at private schools by having any private (most of them Southern Christian) schools that had expanded under segregation to prove it was non-discriminatory in its practices to maintain its tax-exempt status. As many [[Baptist]] leaders had been some of the last influential defenders of explicit [[white supremacy]], partly thanks to their relative independence from the larger political system because they only have to answer to their own congregation and partly thanks to the fact that Baptist churches were one of the few Southern institutions that [[Separation of church and state|weren't pressured to desegregate]], this energized Southern Evangelicals into aligning with conservative Northern Catholics in the name of opposing an "[[Code word|Anti-Christian]]" government.<ref>{{cite web 
|url= https://goplifer.com/2015/01/31/evangelicals-and-white-supremacy/ 
|title= Evangelicals and White Supremacy 
|date= January 31, 2015 |author= goplifer}}</ref> Abortion, [[porn]], and other weird pet peeves of the religious right were taken up later as issues to align two religious groups who had not before hated each other.

Consider the case of Judge [[Roy Moore]] of [[Alabama]]. After a few failed bids for a judgeship, he was appointed to a local judicial position in 1992. He began every court session with a prayer and placed a small plaque of the Ten Commandments in his courtroom. In 1994, the [[ACLU]] threatened to sue, until they saw that the issue was [[Streisand effect|increasing Moore's popularity across Alabama]]. They did eventually sue, but the case was thrown out "[[Bullshit|on a technicality]]". In 1999, Moore entered as a long-shot candidate for Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, with the backing of the Christian Family Association. With the publicity of his former suit, he beat a sitting justice for the position. 

On 1 July 2001, Moore used his power as Chief Justice to install a three-ton monument to the Ten Commandments (specifically the Protestant version of them, of course) in the lobby of his courtroom. Shortly thereafter, a lawsuit was brought to remove it. Though thirty-four justices ruled against Moore, and not a single one for him, he has become more popular in Alabama than ever. The rest of the Alabama Supreme Court had him removed from the Court, and because of his new-found popularity, he ran for Governor of Alabama in 2010. He came in fourth place. He again ran for the Chief Justice position and won the election in January 2013. He was thrown out again in 2016 for refusing to grant same-sex marriage licenses, after which he tried to run for Senate and lost in Alabama, of all places.

==The Worm Turns==
Legislating morality has been the primary GOP platform ever since [[Karl Rove]] became a campaign manager for [[George W. Bush|Dubya]] in the [[Texas]] gubernatorial race of 1994. Rove's great vision was that of a country evenly divided between conservative and liberal, so that [[Wedge issue|any marginal advantage]] he could get would equal a win. He chose to ally with the religious right to get that advantage. The slight boost they gave the Republicans allowed them to sweep into Texas and then into the presidency. The problem is that the religious right expected results.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20150909230228/https://www.au.org/church-state/march-2005-church-state/people-events/bush-adviser-rove-tells-religious-right-that Americans United For Separation of Church and State], "Bush Adviser Rove Tells Religious Right That Agenda Will Be Reality"</ref> Because the fiscal conservatives who ruled the Republican party were not really interested in legislating on social concerns &mdash; because they knew the religious right were on the losing side, electorally speaking &mdash; that led to the creation of [[Tea Party|factions within the party]] who demanded complete adherence to both fiscal and social conservatism, and so on to [[Ted Cruz]].

==Social movement or collection of interest groups?==
It is difficult to study this phenomenon because it is difficult to determine what constitutes a “religious right”, and whether it is a [[social]] movement or a collection of interest groups. Most material does not address this question; however, Catherine Lugg argues that “The Christian Right” does not totally belong to either category.<ref name=lugg>Catherine A. Lugg, [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249680725_The_Christian_Right_A_Cultivated_Collection_of_Interest_Groups The Christian Right: A Cultivated Collection of Interest Groups]. ''Educational Policy'' 15(1):41-57, January 2001.</ref> She argues that “social movements” are made up of people kept outside of the political process, whereas the Religious Right is made up of people who are full citizens, and are in fact courted into the political process from the beginning. At the same time, they engage in behaviors which are more similar to that of a social movement than interest groups, which are famous for being non-disruptive. The Religious Right has a long history of disruptive demonstrations, at abortion clinics and Republican meetings. She says that, in the end, the best way to describe the religious right is as a “cultivated collection of interest groups”, that occasionally compete with each other, but generally collaborate. While Clifton often refers to the Religious right as a social movement, he agrees that it is more useful to study it in terms of a group of related interest groups.<ref name=clifton />

Interest groups that make up the religious right can be defined by two important criteria. One is that these groups have an explicit connection to conservative religion or “religious values”. The second, more important condition is that these groups promote government intervention to enforce or legitimize these values. This is usually done by lobbying for anti-abortion legislation, the posting of religious documents in public, and lobbying against pro-“[[LGBT rights|gay rights]]” legislation.

==Power of the religious right==
Overall analyses of the political power of the Christian right organizations are hard to find. Even analyses of particular facets or organizations are difficult to come by. The few works collected here have all taken different facets of the religious right, either different strategies used by them or different areas of policy of importance, and studied those. In the end, they show a slightly contradictory image, one of both power on some levels, and complete powerlessness on others. In particular, Lugg and Clifton found areas of Christian right strength,<ref name=lugg /><ref name=clifton /> while Wald and Corey below (and to a lesser extent Clifton) found areas of Christian Right weakness.<ref name=wald />

Lugg’s work is useful for showing one area where the Christian Right has long had most of its victories: [[education]]. Lugg’s conclusion is that the Christian Right has great influence in this field, and even their judicial losses turn into “minor moral victories” and have helped train activists for bigger fights. 

These victories all come in from lobbying local leaders, in this case school boards, to change curricula. This particular study is a case study of one county’s decision to include a class on the [[Bible]] as history, using a curriculum and text developed by a Christian right organization, the National Council on Bible Curriculum in the Public Schools. The school board had a majority of members who belonged to the Christian Coalition. When the ACLU sued, [[Pat Robertson]]'s [[American Center for Law and Justice]] gave representation to the school board. A compromise was reached by the judge, but in the end the school board ended up having to give up more than the outraged parents. Overall, though, the Christian right won a victory, because the “Bible as history” courses were soon adopted in 67 other school districts in [[Florida]]. This shows that they are much more successful with strategies involving grassroots organizing than with legal strategies.

This is, overall, consistent with Brett Clifton's analysis.<ref name=clifton>Brett M. Clifton, [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249731355_Romancing_the_Gop_Assessing_the_Strategies_Used_by_the_Christian_Coalition_to_Influence_the_Republican_Party Romancing the GOP: Assessing the Strategies Used by the Christian Coalition to Influence the Republican Party]. ''Party Politics'' 10(5):475-498, September 2004.</ref> He sees three possible means by which the Christian Coalition could influence the Republican Party, and he seeks to find out how well they do so. His research is devoted to policy expertise (which corresponds to an informational strategy), financial clout, and electoral mobilization (which both correspond to the “grassroots” strategy). To test strength in a given area, he surveyed local Republican Party heads and Christian Coalition heads, and did some in-depth interviews. These surveys and interviews focused both on overall influence and influence based on his three areas. His findings are that, because of both expertise and mobilization, the Christian Coalition has clout within the Republican Party, but that their fundraising is less important.  

Somewhat disagreeing with this assessment are the findings of Kenneth Wald and Jeffrey Corey, who have found that the policy expertise quality is not so influential when Christian right activists are put into a place to actually create policy.<ref>Kenneth Wald and Jeffrey Corey, ''The Christian Right and Public Policy: Testing the Second Generation Thesis''. Gainesville, Florida: Department of
Political Science at the University of Florida, 2000.</ref><ref>Jason Deramo, [https://archive.ph/1Z5ep ''Secular America: Why Religion Still Matters in Shaping the Debate'']. Archived from Methodist University, June 2022.</ref><ref name=wald>Kenneth D. Wald and Allison Calhoun-Brown, ''Religion and Politics in the United States''. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2018. {{isbn|9781538105122}}.</ref> This is a case study, where several Christian right activists were put onto the 1997-98 Florida Constitutional Revision Committee.  He found that, despite the fact that they made up roughly one-fourth of the delegates, they experienced the least satisfaction and had the most of their recommendations rejected. (The commission was made up of, roughly, half Democrats and half Republicans, with the Republicans split in half between moderates and Christian Right activists.)  

These studies are all very useful for helping show where the Christian right is strong. It seems pretty obvious that it is most strong in the mobilization and fielding of local candidates (for example, school boards), and not so strong at making policy decisions. However, none of these works studied changes in strength over time, nor are any of the methods applicable to studying it. Moreover, other than Clifton’s study, none of these were very rigorous. They are also, again excluding Clifton’s study, very focused in space and scope. If we are seeking a broader picture of the religious right, these studies contribute very little.

==Repelling young and liberal Americans from church==
{{cquote|Church, people have watched you be the last, hateful holdout in matters of gender equality, racial diversity, and sexuality; lagging behind almost everyone in the world in the kind of goodness you say you aspire to—and they are rightly leaving.|||John Pavlovitz<ref>[https://twitter.com/johnpavlovitz/status/1613938954209837056?s=61&t=n5k_uDiXcpC5ti9une6WiQ John Pavlovitz, 13 Jan 2023 Tweet]</ref>}}
{{cquote|The vices traditionally associated with Satan ''are'' driving [[Satanism|his rise in popularity]] today, and this ''is'' a reason to panic. We ''should'' be concerned that such a massive portion of Christian culture has grown so corrupt that ''the Devil'' is becoming a symbol of virtue. To those who'd like to see young people put down their pentagrams, realize that Christian culture must first rediscover what it means to pick up your cross. Until and unless Christ ceases to represent greed, corruption, ignorance, violence, and hatred, many will continue to think it better to serve in Hell than reign in Heaven.|||Drew "Genetically Modified Skeptic" McCoy<ref name="geneticallymodifiedskeptic">[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mARjR52T0Yk Satan Is Becoming More Popular Than God. Here's Why] by Genetically Modified Skeptic</ref>}}
{{cquote|It's been said before, but it's so true for me: I left Christianity because of the people who stayed.|||mjrdedhed, featured in a [[DarkMatter2525]] video<ref name="darkmatter2525">''[https://youtu.be/2AhsUmFOULQ Politics is Destroying Christianity]'', [[DarkMatter2525]]</ref>}}
In the second half of the 2010s, the religious right were frequently spotlighted for their unwavering support for [[Donald Trump]]. Trump's character was such (twice-divorced, accused many times of sexual misconduct) that in theory a "[[Moral Majority|moral values]]" voter would reject a candidate like him instantaneously.<ref name="cbstrump">[https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-white-evangelical-support-policies/ "White evangelical support for Trump goes beyond his policies, supporters and historians say"] by Shayna Freisleben, CBS News, 2020 November 2</ref> But Trump won the Religious Right over by emphasizing the "[[culture war]]" and positioning himself as a muscular strongman against the "liberal values" the Religious Right despised. Consequently, white [[evangelicalism|evangelicals]] not only overlooked Trump's flaws, but enthusiastically embraced him — Trump won the vote of almost 81 percent of white evangelicals in the [[2016 U.S. presidential election]].<ref name="cbstrump"/><ref name="stonetrump">[https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/christian-right-worships-donald-trump-915381/ "False Idol — Why the Christian Right Worships Donald Trump"] by Alex Morris, Rolling Stone, 2019 December 2</ref>{{efn|Ironically, Trump privately despised the Religious Right. Though he felt some kinship with the most obvious hucksters, such as [[Prosperity Gospel]] preachers.<ref>[https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/09/trump-secretly-mocks-his-christian-supporters/616522/ "Trump Secretly Mocks His Christian Supporters"] by McKay Coppins, Atlantic, 2020 September 29</ref>}} Moral transgressions such as Trump's extramarital liasons with adult film actress {{wpl|Stormy Daniels}} were dismissed as [[fake news]] by evangelical preachers such as [[Franklin Graham]].<ref name="stonetrump"/> 

Trump's presidency culminated in the [[2021 U.S. Capitol riot]], where a group of ragtag right-wing protesters stormed the Capitol building on January 6, 2021, in order to stop [[Joe Biden]] (the vote-winner of the [[2020 U.S. presidential election]], and ironically arguably the most religiously observant president since [[Jimmy Carter]]<ref>[https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/23/us/biden-catholic-christian.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytimes "In Biden’s Catholic Faith, an Ascendant Liberal Christianity"] by Elizabeth Dias, New York Times, 2021 January 23</ref>) from being certified as president. Many evangelical preachers echoed Trump's [[bullshit]] that the election was fraudulent. Some evangelical preachers were even espousing violent rhetoric that sounded more akin to the rhetoric of the [[militia movement]] than the rhetoric of [[Jesus Christ]].<ref>[https://prospect.org/politics/religious-right-rhetoric-fueled-the-capitol-insurrection/ "The Religious Right’s Rhetoric Fueled the Insurrection"] by Peter Montgomery, American Prospect, 2021 February 8</ref> Christian imagery such as crosses and {{wpl|ichthys}} symbols were omnipresent at the riot, displayed alongside [[Confederate flags]] and [[Trump]] [[MAGA]] iconography.<ref>[https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55578096 "Trump's Christian supporters and the march on the Capitol"] by Harry Farley, BBC News, 2021 January 15</ref> In many ways, Christianity in America was, more than ever, less looking like a vehicle to preach the biblical virtues of the [[Gospel]], and more like a [[masochist]], [[militant]] vehicle to preach [[Republican]] political issues,<ref>[https://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/opinion-christian-conservative-support-donald-trump-1.5776988 "Trump's conservative Christian support flows from a specific perspective on issues of church and state"] by Michael Coren, CBC News, 2020 October 27</ref><ref name="illing"/> or even distasteful [[heretical]] concepts such as [[racism]], militant [[white nationalism]],<ref>[https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/american-christianitys-white-supremacy-problem "American Christianity's White Supremacy Problem"] by Michael Luo, New Yorker, 2020 September 2</ref> and apocalyptic holier-than-thou conspiracies (from the [[Rapture]] to [[QAnon]]) where the ideology was less "[[Golden Rule|love thy neighbor]]" and more "[[us vs. them]]".<ref name="stonetrump"/> In short, at a time when houses of worship needed to lure their congregations back because [[COVID-19 pandemic|COVID restrictions]] had broken attendance habits, the church's values looked completely and utterly anathema — and worse, stubbornly so – to both those it professed and, more damagingly, those of American youth, a demographic already likely to drop out of church upon flying the nest either because it clashes with work or because they moved away for college.<ref name="gabbatt23"/> The result predictably appears to be a demographic that the church desperately needs to attract increasingly feeling unwelcome and gaining the impression that equality, intelligence, democratic values, and even basic human decency are considered un-Christian.

While this self-inflicted toxic image predates the Capitol riot and even the Trump administration, it's undeniable that Trump exacerbated it, and its consequences were apparent even while he was in office. Since the 1940s up to the early 2000s, {{wpl|Gallup (company)|Gallup}} surveys typically reported that roughly 2 in 3 Americans belonged to a house of worship.<ref name="gallupsurvey">[https://news.gallup.com/poll/341963/church-membership-falls-below-majority-first-time.aspx "U.S. Church Membership Falls Below Majority for First Time"] by Jeffrey M. Jones, Gallup, 2021 March 29</ref> On March 29, 2021, a Gallup survey showed that only 47% of US adults belonged to a house of worship — a decline of more than 20 points from 2000.<ref name="gallupsurvey"/> Research determined that one of the reasons for the decline, especially among younger people, was "an allergic reaction to the religious right" and its political conservatism. By heavily pushing politics, the religious right, and its wholehearted embrace of Trump, was pushing more and more people (particularly those with liberal political ideologies) into the "religiously unaffiliated" category.<ref>[https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-christian-right-is-helping-drive-liberals-away-from-religion/ "The Christian Right Is Helping Drive Liberals Away From Religion"] by Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux and Daniel Cox, Fivethirtyeight.com, 2019 September 18</ref><ref>[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/05/americans-religion-rightwing-politics-decline "'Allergic reaction to US religious right' fueling decline of religion, experts say"] by Adam Gabbatt, Guardian, 2021 April 5</ref><ref name="gabbatt23"/> As one pastor put it: "There are many reasons why young people are turning away from the Church, but my observation is, Trump has vastly accelerated that trend. He’s put it into hyperdrive."<ref>[https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/white-evangelicals-gambled-and-lost/613999/ "The Cost of the Evangelical Betrayal"] by Peter Wehner, Atlantic, 2020 July 10</ref>

The Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) regularly reports on how Americans identify with respect to religious affiliation. Their 2020 reports a dramatic decline in the number of Americans who identify as "white evangelical protestants". Since 2006, the number of evangelical respondents has decreased from 23 percent in 2006 to 14.5 percent in 2020. The reports also notes that the evangelicals are dying off and losing younger members, reducing their influence to that of just another subculture.<ref>Michelle Goldberg, [https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/09/opinion/religious-right-america.html The Christian Right Is in Decline, and It’s Taking America With It]. The New York Times, 9 July 2021.</ref><ref>Diana Butler Bass, [https://web.archive.org/web/20210711015656/https://lite.cnn.com/en/article/h_4be5803d9d85607db7a9bef8fc991148 America is no longer as evangelical as it was -- and here's why]. CNN, 12 July 2021.</ref>

Globally, women are slightly more likely to be religiously affiliated than men, particularly among Christians.<ref>[https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2016/03/22/the-gender-gap-in-religion-around-the-world/ "The Gender Gap in Religion Around the World"], Pew Research, 22 March 2016</ref> Unusually, however (and a flip of convention), in a 2022 report, for younger demographics in America, more young women actually classified themselves as religiously unaffiliated than young men. Additionally, women born after 1973 were less likely to regularly attend church than men.<ref>[https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2022/july/young-women-not-more-religious-than-men-gender-gap-gen-z.html "With Gen Z, Women Are No Longer More Religious than Men"] by Ryan P. Burge, Christianity Today, 2022 July 26</ref> Although there are multiple reasons for this decline, certain aspects of American Christian culture that are particularly associated with the Religious Right — intolerance, black and white thinking, associations with extremist politics, hateful rhetoric, and [[reactionary]] positions on [[abortion]] and the role of women in society — played a significant factor in turning young women away from the church, particularly after the entwining of the evangelical identity with the politics of [[Donald Trump]].<ref>[https://www.voanews.com/a/why-americans-are-losing-their-religion-/7576935.html "Why Americans are losing their religion"] by Dora Melcouar, Voice of America, 2024 April 23</ref><ref>[https://archive.ph/VeWTP "Why Are Women Leaving the Church?"] by Roxanne Stone, Christianity Today, 2015 June 10, archived on 2023 May 17</ref>

In short, should a [[Second Coming]] actually happen somehow, Jesus will have one hell of an uphill battle convincing decent people to follow him because the bigoted fascists appropriating his teachings have driven so many of them to apostasy.

==Theology==
{{cquote|It was the result of having multiple pastors tell me, essentially, the same story about quoting the {{wpl|Sermon on the Mount||,}} parenthetically, in their preaching — "turn the other cheek" — [and] to have someone come up after to say, "Where did you get those [[liberal]] talking points?" And what was alarming to me is that in most of these scenarios, when the pastor would say, "I'm literally quoting [[Jesus Christ]]," the response would not be, "I apologize." The response would be, "Yes, but that doesn't work anymore. [[Militant Christianity|That's weak]]." And when we get to the point where the teachings of Jesus himself are seen as subversive to us, then we're in a crisis.|||Former top [[Southern Baptist Convention|SBC]] official {{wpl|Russell D. Moore}} on how he came to believe that [[Christian nationalism]] is causing a crisis in the American church.<ref name="wokesermononthemount">[https://www.npr.org/2023/08/05/1192374014/russell-moore-on-altar-call-for-evangelical-america "Russell Moore on 'altar call for Evangelical America'"], NPR, All Things Considered, 2023 August 5</ref>}}
{{cquote|Christians today tend to be the ''most'' un-Christlike people, and when even they cannot deny that Christians are behaving badly, they will tell you that they're only human and that of course they will fall short. But I'm not talking about perfection - not even close. I mean that they now ''embrace'' cultural values that are not only un-Christlike but the perfect opposite of Christianity. It's not about falling short; it's about being ''diametrically opposed''. Christianity is supposed to be about love, forgiveness, acceptance, and having great concern for the welfare of others even at your own expense. But the Christianity being sold to us today is the antithesis of that.|||[[DarkMatter2525]]<ref name="darkmatter2525"/>}}
[[File:What_would_Republican_Jesus_do.jpg|thumb|Give Republican Jesus™ a try, kick a vagrant today!]]
Most members of the religious right proudly self-identify as [[Christian evangelism|evangelical Christians]], though most aren't actual [[Fundamentalist Christianity|fundamentalists]]. Although of many different denominations, their main [[Theology|theological]] priorities seem to be: keeping [[same-sex marriage|gay marriage]] illegal; [[homophobia|restricting the rights]] of [[gays]] and [[lesbian]]s; removing comprehensive [[sex education]] and the teaching of [[evolution]] from [[public school]]s; getting [[creationism]], [[Classroom prayer|school-sponsored prayer]], and [[abstinence education|abstinence-only sex education]] into those schools; also overturning ''[[Roe v. Wade]]'' and outlawing [[abortion]] (some want it banned under all circumstances, while others are willing to make exceptions for [[rape]], [[incest]], and ''possibly'' the mother's health). For some odd reason, they are also [[anti-environmentalism|anti-environmentalist]] and [[Myths and facts about immigration to the United States|anti-immigration]] (though Bush himself and some religious right leaders like Richard Land aren't). Caring for the [[poverty|poor]], [[disease|sick]], and homeless is rarely mentioned.

Drew "Genetically Modified Skeptic" McCoy, a former evangelical Christian who became an atheist in adulthood partly because the extreme teachings he received caused exposure to actual science to cause a crisis of faith and led to his family falling for [[Young Living]]'s bullshit,<ref>[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7urcE4IwMf0 This Is Exactly Why I'm An Atheist] by Genetically Modified Skeptic</ref> explored increased Satanic imagery in entertainment in 2023 and, while not specifically naming the Religious Right, argued that the kind of theology the Religious Right espouses was responsible. He noted that the traditionally Christian virtues of charity, peace and justice, wisdom, and love and mercy have increasingly been replaced with the traditionally Satanic vices of greed through the [[prosperity gospel]]; violence through [[Child sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church|abuse]] [[Residential school|scandals]] and mishandling thereof; [[ignorance]] and [[Deceit|deception]] through evangelical embrace of President Trump leading to swathes of Christians falling for [[QAnon]], [[Anti-vaccine movement|anti-vax rhetoric]], 2020 election denial, and other [[Conspiracy theory|conspiracy theories]]; and hatred and cruelty through religious bigotry, especially queerphobia and the anti-"woke" [[moral panic]], and the popularity of horrible people like [[Matt Walsh]] who mock liberal and queer teens for existing and spread {{wpl|Stochastic terrorism|rhetoric that causes harassment and violence|.}} In other words, the Religious Right is causing what Christ and Satan represent to invert, leading to Satan being seen as a symbol of rebellion against a warped, increasingly fascistic Christianity that has become anathema to its own traditional virtues and embraced the worst version of itself.<ref name="geneticallymodifiedskeptic"/> McCoy is not alone in noticing that right-wing preachers are turning Christianity into its own antithesis; {{wpl|Russell D. Moore||,}} a preacher and former [[Southern Baptist Convention]] official who split with the SBC over their support for Trump, came to the same conclusion after hearing stories of congregations dismissing the {{wpl|Sermon on the Mount}} — a summary of '''the literal fucking teachings of Jesus Christ''' — as "liberal talking points" and "weak" because Jesus' teachings emphasized compassion, a value incompatible with the Religious Right's "cut down their groves" mentality, above all else.<ref name="wokesermononthemount"/>

In short, Jesus would ''despise'' these evil hatemongers, even before discovering how badly they've tainted his image.

==Religious Right in other countries==
Not even countries outside of the [[United States]] are free from the religious right:
* Tadeusz Rydzyk, a [[Polish]] fundamentalist Catholic priest.
* [[Jarosław Kaczyński]], a Polish politician and a leader of a Polish conservative party "Law and Justice."
* [[Jean-Marie Le Pen]], a French politician and almost a [[fascist]], and in some ways, worse than any person from America since he proudly and openly admits his [[racism]], and denies the [[Holocaust denial|Holocaust]].
** His daughter [[Marine Le Pen]], current leader of the [[Front National]]
* Christine Boutin, noted for brandishing a Bible in the French National Assembly.

In [[Australia]], the Christian Right dominate in much of northern Queensland (birthplace of [[Ken Ham]]), and the infection has also spread into parts of suburban Brisbane as well. It is also rather prevalent in suburban Sydney, New South Wales, particularly in the western parts of Sydney. The Religious Right is also prevalent in South Australia, particularly in suburban Adelaide, as well as parts of Western Australia. In [[New Zealand]], the Religious Right is embodied by megapastor {{Wpl|Brian Tamaki||,}} the indigenous leader of a megachurch who has started a few far-right conspiracy political parties, all of which were largely unsuccessful.

In the UK, most right wingers are only vaguely Christian (i.e. [[Church of England]]), but there have been a few extremists opposing abortion, sex education, gay rights, etc, such as Catholics [[Ann Widdecombe]] and [[Jacob Rees-Mogg]].

==See also==
*[[TheocracyWatch]]
*[[Christian democracy]]
*[[American Taliban]]
*[[Reformed Political Party]] for everything you need to know about the Dutch Christian fundamentalists
*[[One world religion]]

==External links==
* [[Slacktivist]]: The Gay-Hatin' Gospel [https://web.archive.org/web/20060523011335/http://bradhicks.livejournal.com/118585.html (Part 1)] [https://web.archive.org/web/20061031200551/http://bradhicks.livejournal.com/118805.html (Part 2)] [http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/2007/10/gay-hatin-gos-2.html (Part 3)] [http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/2007/10/gay-hatin-gos-3.html (Part 4)] [http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/2007/11/gay-hatin-gospe.html (Part 5)]
* Brad Hicks: [https://web.archive.org/web/20060523011335/http://bradhicks.livejournal.com/118585.html Christians in the Hand of an Angry God (part 1)] [https://web.archive.org/web/20061031200551/http://bradhicks.livejournal.com/118805.html (Part 2)] [https://web.archive.org/web/20061031200546/http://bradhicks.livejournal.com/119283.html (Part 3)] [https://web.archive.org/web/20061031200622/http://bradhicks.livejournal.com/119661.html (Part 4)] [https://web.archive.org/web/20061031200601/http://bradhicks.livejournal.com/119950.html (Part 5)]
* [[The Onion]]: [https://archive.ph/XXKsi I'm Not One Of Those 'Love Thy Neighbor' Christians]

==Notes==
{{reflist|2|group=note}}

==References==
{{reflist|2|80%}}

[[Category:United States politics]]
[[Category:Fundamentalism]]
[[Category:Political strategery]]
[[Category:Trumpism]]

Categories: United States politics, Fundamentalism, Political strategery, Trumpism