1. My grandparents were friends with Billy and Ruth Graham, (they went to college together). Growing up, he was an icon and I knew he had grown the ranks of Evangelicals by the millions. According to recent studies however, Christianity is loosing popularity... 
2. Christians now make up less than 50% of the population. Actually, not ALL Christianity. Black and Latinos are as Christian as 20 years ago, so I have to wonder how much of it is actually due to the unholy alliance between white evangelicals and the GOP wnycstudios.org/story/americas…
3. The politicization of Evangelical Christianity did not happen from a grassroots and leaderless movement but was done purposefully and in a systematic and carefully executed strategy by a group that included Heritage Foundation co founder Paul Weyrich theocracywatch.org/yurica_weyrich…
4. Weyrich realized that Christians could form an immense but until then untapped voter base with the potential to swing elections if he could only rally them around an issue and get that issue put on the GOP platform.
5. He himself was motivated to vote Republican for "White Identity" issues. By that time Democrats, (like Evangelical Jimmy Carter), had embraced black voters so the white voters who could not stand to be in a party with black people had already fled to the "Party of Lincoln".
6. He realized if he could motivate Christians to vote Republican they would also, perhaps unwittingly, uphold "white" agenda items and that other Christian leaders were on board. He knew this this because there was ONE issue that had already rallied a number of church leaders
7. and motivated them to push their congregations to get politically active, and no, it wasn't for abortion, it was segregation in schools. They failed, on that front but Weyrich made connections with leaders who felt the same way and saw the power of their numbers.
8. His next project was to get Christians to support Ronald Reagan (who backed Christian school segregation). The problem was segregation had become a bit unpopular and Carter was Evangelical so he needed another way to excite average church goers to vote Republican against him.
9. Weyrich called a meeting with those other church leaders who, after a number of other ideas, came up with abortion as the issue they could use to convince their congregations to vote Republican. politico.com/magazine/story…
10. At the time it was not an overly controversial issue for protestants, in fact many churches endorsed it, so he not only had to manufacture a voter issue, but also create opposition against it.
11. He did this by getting Francis Schaefer on board & coming up with the term "pro-life." They put together a film series showing abortion as a horror and took the films on tour to churches around the US while pushing the addition of anti abortion language to GOP politicians.
12. After successfully creating abortion as the biggest voter topic in Evangelical churches they also promoted and politicized other topics such as anti LGBTQ issues (I remember hearing the early sermons back in the 80's about how AIDS was God's punishment for being gay)
13. Overall it has worked. Many Evangelicals today are now willing to vote Republican no matter what and turn a blind eye to anything and everything as long as they are told the GOP candidate "Will stop abortion, end gay rights, and 'bring back' the church."
14. It has also come full circle. The son of Billy Graham as well as Jerry Fallwell's son who have embraced and promote the "Christian Right" were recently called out for their hypocrisy and lack of decency by the son of Francis Schaeffer frankschaefferblog.com/2017/12/an-ope…
15. The "Christian Right" sprouted out of racism, and like most white supremacists, they were also misogynistic and afraid of loosing 'masculinity" and authoritarian power.
No wonder we see such a bewildering mess of hypocrisy in the church now.
No wonder people are leaving. End
No wonder we see such a bewildering mess of hypocrisy in the church now.
No wonder people are leaving. End
