The Orange Wave: A History of the Religious Right Since 1960

On the series finale, Brad reflects on his departure from Orange County and evangelicalism. This provides a jumping off point for reflecting on what we've learned through the series, and, perhaps most importantly, how Orange County's politics and culture provides a window into the contemporary moment.

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Some just want to watch the world burn. But for others, the end of the world is an opportunity to rebuild it in their image. On this penultimate episode, Brad explores how global kleptocrats, Donald Trump, and Christian Reconstructionists all view the end of the world as a chance for power and control. It is the simplest and scariest explanation of why the Religious Right continues to support the 45th president--they both want to destroy the world. This episode contains an interview with Prof. Julie Ingersoll, author of Building God's Kingdom: Inside the World of Christian Reconstruction.

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If you want to take the country back for God, if you want to have dominion over every level of society, if you want to ensure a white Christian patriarchy rules over the land--you have to start with the children. Christian school movements are part of the fabric of the Religious Right. On this episode, Brad examines why the Christian schooling movement--including homeschooling--took off in the 60s, how it has shed government oversight, and what effects its having on our public education system and our public square. This episode features interviews with Dr. Chrissy Stroop and Scott Okamoto.

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You might be surprised to learn that the history of sex ed in the USA is a religious history. Christians were not always the enemies of science-based sex education programs. But during the 1960s, the Religious Right began a war against comprehensive sex education. Since then, it has been able to implement abstinence-only sex ed programs through tens of millions of dollars in federal funding. Where did this war start? Who are its major players? And why are evangelicals so afraid of condoms? This episode include an interview with Dr. Kristy Slominski, Assistant Professor of Religion, Health, and Science at the University of Arizona, and the author of the forthcoming book Teaching Moral Sex: A History of Religion and Sex Education in the United States. 

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Since the mid-twentieth century, evangelicals and others on the Religious Right have looked to Hollywood, rather than the Bible, to construct their visions of "cowboy masculinity." It started with John Wayne and Ronald Reagan, then moved to Mel Gibson and others. On the political side, tough guys like Barry Goldwater and Donald Trump were favored over more reflective leaders like Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama. Conservative women, such as Phyllis Schlafly and Maribel Morgan, provided the tools to construct a corresponding submissive femininity. The militant masculinity of the Religious Right is a key component to their love for strongmen leaders, willingness to engage authoritarianism over democracy, and desire to return the country to a white Christian patriarchy. This episode features an interview with Dr. Kristin Kobes du Mez, the author of the new book: Jesus and John Wayne: How Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation."

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Brad explores the alliance between the alt-right and the Religious Right in and through Trump's presidency. In tracing this story, he uncovers how and why the Religious Right now looks to Putin's Russia, Orban's Hungary, and other autocratic regimes as the City Upon a Hill that the USA used to be. This episode features an interview with the renowned journalist Sarah Posner, author of Unholy: Why White Evangelicals Worship at the Altar of Donald Trump.

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In the wake of the 1964 Goldwater campaign, three young men decided to start the Council for National Policy in order to take back the country for God--and themselves. They joined forces with an army of clergy, big donors, and media moguls in order to take back America. This "shadow network," as the journalist Anne Nelson calls it is the secretive, but pervasive force that has overtaken the GOP and infiltrated every level and every corner of this country's politics. Interview: Anne Nelson, author of Shadow Network, and faculty at Columbia University.

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In the early 1960s, Orange County became the hub for both white evangelical Christianity and libertarian politics. It was the epicenter of the John Birch Society and the Goldwater campaign. This history is crucial for understanding the rise of the Religious Right throughout the 80s and beyond. It was from this soil that Reagan and his evangelical coalition took over the GOP. The racism, conspiracies, and extremism of 1960s libertarian evangelicals in Southern California has remained part of the GOP and the Religious Right from Goldwater to Reagan to the Tea Party and the presidency of Donald Trump.

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Interviewee: 

Dr. Gerardo Marti is a L. Richardson King Professor of Sociology at Davidson College, President of the Association for the Sociology of Religion (2021-2024), Editor of Sociology of Religion: A Quarterly Review (2012-2021), Chair of the Religion Section of the American Sociological Association (2019-2021), Co-Chair the Religion and Social Science Program Unit of the American Academy of Religion (2009-2016), and Executive Council of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion (2007-2010).

Suggested Reading: 

Darren Dochuk, From Bible Belt to Sun Belt: Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism (WW Norton: 2010)

Gerardo Marti, American Blindspot: Race, Class, Religion, and the Trump Presidency (Rowman and Littlefield 2019).

 Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (Princeton University Press 2015)

On this installment of the Orange Wave, Brad traces two intertwined histories. First, the Sun Belt Migration, which led to a massive westward population shift in the 1950s and 1960s and turned Orange County into the nation's hub of defense production. This led in turn into an evangelical wave in Southern California. Second, Brad examines the decline of the Mainline Protestant denominations during the same time period. The breaking of their cultural and political authority opened a space for the Religious Right to rise.

For access to the full series, click here: https://irreverent.supportingcast.fm/products/the-orange-wave-a-history-of-the-religious-right-since-1960

Interviewees: 

Dr. John Compton is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Chapman University. In 2012, he was awarded the Law and Society Association’s annual dissertation prize. His first book, The Evangelical Origins of the Living Constitution, was published by Harvard University Press in 2014. In 2015, he received the Cromwell Book Prize for excellence in scholarship in the field of American legal history by a junior scholar (for Evangelical Origins). Dr. Compton’s articles have appeared in the Review of Politics, American Political Thought, and the Journal of Supreme Court History. His most recent book is The End of Empathy: Why White Protestants Stopped Loving Their Neighbors (Oxford University Press, 2020).

Dr. Gerardo Marti is a L. Richardson King Professor of Sociology at Davidson College, President of the Association for the Sociology of Religion (2021-2024), Editor of Sociology of Religion: A Quarterly Review (2012-2021), Chair of the Religion Section of the American Sociological Association (2019-2021), Co-Chair the Religion and Social Science Program Unit of the American Academy of Religion (2009-2016), and Executive Council of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion (2007-2010).

John Compton, The End of Empathy: Why White Christians Stopped Loving Their Neighbors, Chapters 7 and 8. 

Darren Dochuk, From Bible Belt to Sun Belt

Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors 

The Religious Right has not always existed. White evangelicals have not always been the guardians of far-right immigration policies and patriarchal models of the family. In the 19th century, they were often progressive activists fighting for labor rights, abolition, and women’s suffrage. As the example of Jimmy Carter shows, they were a visible and influential part of American politics into the 1970s. How did they transform into the scions of Christian nationalism? Brad explores this history with Professor Randall Balmer of Dartmouth College on the initial episode of The Orange Wave: A History of the Religious Right Since 1960.

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Randall Balmer is the John Philips Professor of Religion at Dartmouth College. A prize-winning historian and Emmy Award nominee, Randall Balmer holds the John Phillips Chair in Religion at Dartmouth, the oldest endowed professorship at Dartmouth College. He earned the Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1985 and taught as Professor of American Religious History at Columbia University for twenty-seven years before coming to Dartmouth in 2012. He has been a visiting professor at Princeton, Yale, Northwestern, and Emory universities and in the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He was a visiting professor at Yale Divinity School from 2004 to 2008.

Suggested Reading: 

Randall Balmer, Redeemer: The Life of Jimmy Carter (2014)

Randall Balmer, Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America (2006), Chapter 1.

Mark Noll, The Expansion of Evangelicalism: The Age of Wilberforce, More, Chalmers and Finney, Chapters 6 and 7.