Moral Majority
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| Hail to the Chief? |
| Persons of interest |
“”Behind the idea of the Moral Majority was this notion that there could be a coalition of these different religious groups that all agree on abortion and homosexuality and other issues even if they never agreed on how to read the Bible or the nature of God
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| —John Green, director of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron and an expert on religious conservatives.[1] |
The Moral Majority was a special interest group founded by Jerry Falwell [2], designed to inject Christian fundamentalism into politics. It was founded in 1979 and disbanded in the late 1980s but its campaigning methods outlived it and were taken up by other right-wing organizations.
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[edit] Policies
The Moral Majority was Pro-life and supported Bible based morality, Classroom prayer, Family values, Free enterprise and Israel, they opposed Communism, the Gay agenda, Pornography and Sex education.
[edit] History
The Moral Majority aimed to include Roman Catholics, Mormons, Jews and others with Conservative opinions,[citation needed] though they became predominantly Evangelical Christian. This inclusiveness was their downfall as different right wing groups set up campaigning on different interests and the Moral Majority gradually lost support. Its founding is usually considered the beginning of the Religious Right in the United States.
[edit] Inappropriate name
The moral majority consisted of the same people that Richard Nixon called "the silent majority". It has been pointed out that the moral majority was neither moral nor a majority. They may well have been silent, though.
[edit] See also
[edit] Footnotes
- ↑ http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/16/obituaries/16falwell.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
- ↑ though Paul Weyrich originally developed the term [1]