University of Virginia Library

Television and the Mobilization of a New Christian Right Family Policy

In 1933, William F. Ogburn published a paper entitled "The Family and Its Functions" in a volume that resulted from the first presidentially commissioned social science investigation. Ogburn identified six primary functions of the family: economic, protective, religious, recreational, educational, and status conferring. The family's role in the performance of each of these functions, he argued, was eroding in modern industrial society.

By contemporary social science research standards Ogburn's mustering of evidence to support his conclusion was seriously deficient (see, for example, Caplow et al., 1981). Nevertheless, for nearly fifty years, his forecast of the demise of the family has been part of the taken-for-granted stock of knowledge of scholars and popular writers alike.

Notwithstanding the considerable attention Ogburn's paper received at the time, it did not lead to governmental policy with respect to the family. The family has long been exalted by presidents and other politicians as the cornerstone of society, but, strangely, it has never been much of a political issue per se. In fact, Jimmy Carter was the first president ever to attempt to create an explicit family policy (Steiner 1981). And his efforts to do so may well have been a significant factor in the mobilization of evangelical Christians who disagreed with his policies.

An evangelical Christian himself, Jimmy Carter believed American families were experiencing "steady erosion and weakening (Steiner, 1981: 3). If elected, candidate Carter promised to "construct an administration that will reverse the trends we have seen toward the breakdown of family in our country" (Steiner, 1981: 3).

President Carter believed there was an inexorable relationship between government and the family. Strong families contribute to the

strength of a good government; weak families add yet more burdens to the government. " If we want less government," Carter told a New Hampshire audience in 1976, "we must have stronger families, for government steps in by necessity when families have failed" (Steiner 1981: 5). Carter was determined to create a family policy that would aid families in need of assistance and, at the same time, selfconsciously seek to eliminate and avoid regulations and laws that might have deleterious effects on the family (for example, tax laws that tax a working couple at a higher rate than an unmarried couple or a couple with only one person in the labor force).

President Carter substantially failed to achieve his goal of creating a systematic government policy on the family, but he succeeded in making the family a highly obstreperous political issue. One important reason for his failure was the absence of consensus regarding what would constitute a sound profamily policy. Liberal philosophy would provide economic assistance and social services to families in need. Conservatives see such policies as creating dependence rather than self-reliance. Thus, conservatives see the good intentions of strengthening the family through economic assistance and social services as likely to have the exact opposite effect and weaken the family.

The White House Conference on the Family convened during the last year of the Carter administration, and the underlying ideological conflict regarding what measures might strengthen the family came to the fore. At that point, the " New Christian Right" emerged as a vocal dissident against the more liberal philosophies of the administration Outmaneuvered in their bid for significant representation at the White House Conference. The New Christian Right went public and had considerable success in persuading a significant proportion of conservative Americans that the conference was dominated by voices dedicated to destroying rather than revitalizing the family.[1]

In the waning days of the Carter administration, the White House Conference on the Family issued a report with a series of recommendations about what government could do to buoy up the presumed fast-fading fortunes of the American family. But the report was too late The sweeping victories conservatives had scored in 1980 and the popular assumption of the effectiveness of the New Christian Right in those victories assured that the recommendations of the White House Conference would not be acted upon. At the same time, the issue of the family in American life would continue to demand attention.

In the first year of his administration, Ronald Reagan concentrated on putting his economic programs in place. Some of his New Christian Right supporters felt his failure to move simultaneously on social programs signaled a betrayal of their conservative goals.

Reagan continued to move cautiously on "pro-family programs in 1982 precisely because they were even more controversial than his economic recovery measures. Still, his commitment to a social policy paralleling the goals of the New Christian Right is abundantly clear.

In his address before the National Affairs Briefing sponsored by the Religious Roundtable in Dallas on August 22,1980, Reagan told a wildly cheering crowd: "The office of the presidency must ensure that the awesome power of government respects the rights of parents and the integrity of the family" (Reagan, 1980: 4). Then, later in that address, he said that we should help families "to care for one another, rather than driving their members into impersonal dependence upon government program and government institutions."

It was President Reagan's close friend and campaign manager in both 1976 and 1980, Senator Paul Laxalt, who introduced the Family Protection Act in 1980. An omnibus bill, the proposed legislation covered some 38 distinct measures dealing with education, welfare, First Amendment guarantees, taxation, and domestic relations. When Senator Laxalt first introduced the bill, it was not considered by most Washington analysts to be a serious piece of legislation. Not so when the Family Protection Act was reintroduced in 1981 with cosponsorship from Senator Roger Jepsen and Representative Albert Lee Smith.

President Reagan (1982) told the conservative National Religious Broadcasters that "rebuilding America begins with restoring family strength and preserving family values." In that same address, in a gesture of support to the New Christian Right leadership, he stated, " I do not agree with those who accuse you of trying to impose your views on others." The Family Protection Act, along with other legislation judged by conservatives to be profamily, received considerable attention in 1982 although it failed to be enacted into law.

TV PREACHERS AS THE VANGUARD OF THE NEW CHRISTIAN RIGHT

The New Christian Right is a coalescence of a range of diverse and previously only loosely connected groups. Many are single issue groups fighting abortion and ERA, such as the Pro Family Forum, the Right to Life Commission and the Eagle Forum. Some have been on the political scene for a long time, such as the Institute for Christian Economics. Others, such as the Moral Majority, Christian Voice, and the Christian Roundtable, are newcomers to the political process.

While they have diverse interests and goals, these groups share an anger about what is happening to America. American culture has moved significantly in directions that seriously affront their personal

beliefs, which are grounded in evangelical faith. Explicit sex in print and broadcast media are morally wrong, they feel, and there is a clear causal relationship between this development and the soaring divorce rate, living together out of wedlock, casual sex, and so on. In their view, abortion is the taking of human life. To speak of the right of a woman to determine whether to carry a pregnancy is to hide the truth that millions of unborn babies have been murdered.

But these issues represent only the tip of the iceberg. Anger and moral indignation run deep, and resentment about what is happening in and to America has been growing for a long time. Perhaps what angers these groups most is that they do not believe that the rest of society and, particularly, the government have taken them seriously. They are tired of being treated as a lunatic fringe or just another interest group that is not strong enough to be factored into political decisions. Partly because their own values have held politics to be dirty and partly because the political process has discounted their importance, they have developed feelings of powerlessness and second-class citizenship.

From the vantage point of these groups, this nation has fallen from greatness because it has turned its back on God. " Getting right with God" requires repentance and cleaning up of a lot of individual and collective sin. Substantial segments of this belief system have been shared by evangelicals for many years. Billy Graham's crusades have not strayed very far from these themes in a quarter of a century.

However, two new ingredients make this emerging coalition important. The first is the belief that it is the responsibility, indeed the duty, of Christians to engage in the political process as a means to bring America back to God. While the notion that religion and politics do not mix is historically a myth, it has guided the consciousness of most evangelical Christians in recent history. The old beliefs had to be undone. Ironically, it was Jimmy Carter's public profession that he was a "born again" Christian that began to challenge conventional Bible Belt wisdom about the separation of church and state. By 1980 many evangelicals who supported Carter in 1976 were disillusioned with him, but not with the political process. Like the liberals of the 1950s and 1960s, they had come to believe that morality can be legislated; hence it is important to get the right people elected to office (see VanderJagt, 1980)

The second factor that makes the emerging New Christian Right coalition important is involvement of the television preachers. These are the dynamos behind the thrust of born-again politics. While only a few of the "televangelists" have engaged in direct advocacy of political involvement, latent political messages are present in the

messages of the large majority. They constantly remind their audiences of the collective sins of the nation and of the need to repent and bring America back to God.

There are now some 95 syndicated religious television programs being monitored by Arbitron. This does not include most of the programs that are telecast via satellite to a burgeoning cable system in America. There are approximately 600 commercial stations that offer exclusively religious programming, and a total of 1000 that offer at least 14 hours per week of religious content.

The reason the electronic church is important, the reason it has captured the concern of America, is not found in audience size or budgets or air time. It is found in the potential clout of these people to reshape American culture. Unlike the smorgasbord of religious pluralism that one can find in virtually every American community, the menu of spiritual messages on the airwaves is substantially limited to fundamentalist and evangelical offerings. While it would be naive and foolish to fail to see the diversity within the fundamentalist and evangelical camps, there is considerable homogeneity in the conservative theological emphasis. And, as repeated social science investigations have demonstrated, there are clear links between conservative theology and conservative political ideology. Only a few radio and television preachers have publicly pronounced the wedding of conservative theology and conservative politics. The latent link, however, is present in almost all of the conservative traditions.

From a long tradition of circuit riders, tent preachers and Elmer Gantry-like revivalists, the evangelist, now the televangelists have come a long way. No longer are they simply safeguarding the moral an spiritual character of their private constituency. No longer are they satisfied with Sister Lou or Brother Jim finding the Lord and being bor again. For, while salvation may still be their goal, the sinner is not you and me anymore it's America. And to save America takes a lot of believers a lot of money, and a lot of power.

The power of the televangelists lies in their potential to mobilize large masses of everyday Christians. Various polls have estimated the number of evangelicals all the way from 30 to 85 million, depending on the defining criteria. What proportion of this group can be mobilized to support the political objectives of the New Christian Right depends on the political sophistication with which the develop their campaign.

Religious broadcasters represent a nascent social movement. One of the critical components of a successful social movement is access to media. Every important social movement since television has been waged via mass communications. Marches and demonstrations are

means to gain the attention of the news media and thereby bring the causes of social movement leaders into America's living rooms on the evening news and in the morning newspapers.

The New Christian Right does not have to draw a crowd to attract the attention of the media. They have merely to turn on their television cameras. They already have access to large audiences, and they have developed proven methods to raise the money to retain access. The audiences they are reaching are not nearly as large as they claim, but they are sufficiently large to develop powerful social movement organizations. And when they want the rest of the country to pay attention, they can use their access to the airwaves to organize events such as "Washington for Jesus." Furthermore, as we have seen through the person of Jerry Falwell they have considerable potential to capture the attention of even larger audiences via access to the secular media. Astutely mobilized, this potential power base will not be easily checked.

Yet another factor that gives this nascent social movement so much potential power is its mastery of the ancillary technology of television, which pivots around the computer. Direct mail, targeted to audiences likely to be sympathetic to a cause, is the foundation. It is proven way to raise big money and mobilize people to a cause.

Still another component of a successful social movement is the cause or causes pursued. Virtually all social movements begin with no more than a small percentage of the general population in favor of the positions being advocated by social movement activists. To gain support they must eventually convince the general public of the legitimacy of their cause. There are a variety of ways to legitimize a cause, but all major social movements must ultimately legitimize their activities and goals at a cosmological level. The causes they advocate and the activities in which they engage are pursued because it is the will of the Almighty.

The civil rights movement owed its success in no small measure to its ability to identify brotherhood and justice as goal ordained by God. The leaders of the New Christian Right have carved out four basic issues they hope to define as God given and, therefore, self evident: family, life, morality, and country. Of these four, the family is fast emerging as the master issue. Let us examine next how they have used the old prophecy of the death of the family to weave together their broad agenda to save America.

TELEVANGELIST MESSAGES ABOUT THE AILING AMERICA FAMILY

Jerry Falwell is not the intellectual leader of the New Christian Right, but he is easily its most visible spokesperson. As the Moral

Majority has evolved, Falwell has elaborated the list of things for which the organization stands. Most of the issues that the Moral Majority addresses can be seen as elaborations on four initial issues. The Moral Majority is (1) traditional profamily, (2) prolife, (3) promorality, and (4) pro-America.

Affirmation of the "traditional" family is a rejection of all forms of family life other than the marriage of a man to a woman. Implicit in this affirmation is a rejection of divorce, because marriage is for life. Homosexual and common-law marriages are rejected explicitly. Rejection of the ERA can also be subsumed under the affirmation of the traditional family, for the ERA constitutes a threat to traditional sex roles and the division of labor between husband and wife.

A "prolife" stand is a stand in opposition to abortion under any circumstances. The Moral Majority rejects the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion, and they are prepared to work for legislation and/or a constitutional amendment to outlaw abortion.

Promorality focuses mainly on opposition to pornography although opposition to illegal drug traffic is also included. To date, the Moral Majority has devoted much more energy to fighting pornography than to fighting drugs.

All of these issues, in one way or another, deal with the Moral Majority's perception of the "traditional" family. Pornography, print and broadcast, destroys families by filling minds with lust, which leads to disobedience of God's commandments about sex. Even the affirmation of strong America is rooted in the alleged demise of the family. As members of the Moral Majority see it, sinister forces are at work to topple America from greatness. The strategy America's enemies have chosen for the accomplishment of this goal is the destruction of the traditional family.

What is presented as a set of positive affirmations by the Moral Majority thus turns out to be a rejection of "nontraditional" lifestyles and values.

It is important to stress that while the New Christian Right is a loose coalition, there is rather considerable consensus about the centrality of the family in its agenda of social concerns. There is also the same strong negativism that is found in the writings and sermons of Falwell. Most of the members of the New Christian Right see enemies of the family everywhere, working to destroy this holy of holy institutions The strong element of defensiveness can be gleaned from the titles of their books: Attack on the Family, The Battle for the Family, and How to Protect the Family.

But what do the New Christian Right leaders affirm about the family? Writes Falwell (1981: 110):

James Robison (1980: 7) a fiery televangelist from Texas and vice-president of the Christian Roundtable, agrees:

All that America has become a strong, thriving nation, full of creativity, variety, and uniqueness owes itself to the foundational influence of marriage and the family.

Charles Stanley, pastor of the First Baptist Church in Atlanta, the home base for his television ministry called " In Touch, " also concurs. Speaking to the "Washington for Jesus" rally on April 20, 198O, Stanley said:

Similar affirmations of the centrality of the family to the well-being of the country can be found in the sermons and tracts of virtually all of the televangelists whether or not they cross over into the political arena with Falwell.

But what about the family itself? What about the positive roles of nurture, love, and support? One can infer from the sermons of the leaders of the New Christian Right, and from short passages in their books that the family is a loving, supporting institution. But relatively little space or time is devoted to elaboration of these positive dimensions of the family. The overwhelming message that comes across in their printed and audiovisual messages is that the family is an institution for which the primary function is the exercise of social control over the base impulses of human beings. And, at this moment in history, it stands in perilous danger of losing the battle.

There is virtual consensus among the televangelists that the American family is under attack as never before in the nation's history. The attackers are diffuse, but evangelical theology allows that Satan is behind the onslaught. (In contrast to main-line Christian theology, demonic forces are very much alive in fundamentalistevangelical theology). In the 1950s, Satan's instrument to destroy America was unabashedly the atheistic communists. They are still around. Falwell (1980: 82-96) has a chapter on "the threat of communism" in his book, Liste America. James Robison (1980: 9-11) writes about "the collectivists" in his book, Attack on the Family, and cites (inaccurately) content from The Communist Manifesto to identify their goals. But the scare tactics of a "commie in every

closet" and "better dead than red," which characterize the era of Joseph McCarthy, are largely missing.

The communists who in the 1950s threatened to infiltrate and take over our government have been replaced by new enemies who have already infiltrated our government, media, and educational institutions. In many instances, the new enemies mean well, but their minds have been corrupted by the awesome arsenal of Satanic forces. If they are diverse in their motives, these enemies stand united in their intent to destroy the family. And what better way to destroy America than to erode the family the foundation upon which this godly nation was built?

Tim LaHaye, pastor of one of the largest churches in the country founder and president of Family Seminars, and one of the three members of the board of directors of the Moral Majority, gave the new enemies a name. In his best-selling book, The Battle for the Mind, LaHaye (1980) details how the secular humanists have plotted to take over America. Beginning with only a tiny cadre early in this century, they have profoundly influenced media, education, and public policy. Even today, according to LaHaye, there are only about a quarter of a million dedicated secular humanists. But they have so influenced how we think and what we think that they have impact far beyond their number.

Through the skillful use of the media, the secular humanists are said to promote world views that erode commitment to traditional family values. Abortion, adultery, premarital sex, free love, divorce and remarriage, and rebellion against authority, to name but a few issues, have become commonplace subjects in the media. To deal with these issues without moral protestation is to render them legitimate. In the name of fairness and openness to alternative viewpoints, thus, the media have sanctioned rebellion against God's commandments.

Falwell believes the media have been instrumental in promoting the "cult of the playboy." He sees this philosophy as the "most dangerous" factor in the "war against the family." "This . . . philosophy, writes Falwell (1980: 123-124), "tells men that they do not have to be committed to their wife and to their children.... It is more than just revolution of dirty magazines. It represents a life style that ultimately corrupts the family." Kennedy (1981: 2) echoes Falwell on this point: "The 'playboy philosophy' promotes a life style that says 'up with lust, down with the family.'"

Education, too, has become a sanctuary for advocating rebellion against God's word. "Creation versus evolution" has become another rallying cry of the fundamentalists. But the heart of the issue

is not what the public schools teach about how the world was created. The problem is that public schools socialize young people to all sorts of values that run contrary to fundamentalist doctrine, not the least of which is the legitimacy of developing independent thought and the questioning of authority.

The Christian school movement may once have received support from persons whose primary motive was the avoidance of desegregation. Today the issue is not racial segregation, but segregation of children from public school systems that threaten the values of these fundamentalist Christians. Let it be noted that this movement is not without precedent. Virtually every sectarian school movement in the history of this nation has been motivated by the desire to socialize children to a particular group's world view.

According to the New Christian Right, the media and our public education system have molded a cultural value system that is anchored in secular humanism rather than godly principles. Secular humanism has penetrated the halls of Congress, the courts, and the executive office. The goal of the New Christian Right is to change the composition of all branches of government, replacing those who willfully or unwittingly have fallen prey to the secular humanist philosophy.

The armies of the New Christian Right, like the loyal supporters of Senator McCarthy, know that their enemies are everywhere. The true believers among their troops, like the dedicated forces in any social movement, know that the world can be divided between those who are for them and those who serve the pernicious secular humanists. This reasoning is captured in a fundamentalist bumper sticker that reads: "God said it. I believe it. That settles it." Either you are for them in every painstaking detail or you serve secular humanism.

Alarm about the rise of the New Christian Right has generated a predictable countermobilization of persons who stand in opposition to the group's beliefs. In fact, there is something approaching a state of hysteria about the implications of fundamentalist Christian becoming as zealous about their politics as they are about their faith. Those who believe that the New Christian Right constitutes a threat to our pluralistic culture are busy creating organizations and putting new life into old organizations in an effort to combat its influence.

In the final section of this chapter, I examine the potential of the New Christian Right to exert significant political influence and thereby impose on America its viewpoints about the family.

ASSESSING THE POWER OF THE NEW CHRISTIAN RIGHT

The single most important fact in assessing the rise of the New Christian Right is that its power has been grossly exaggerated Prior to the 1980 National Republican Convention in Detroit, the New Christian Right was virtually unknown to the media and, hence, America. When Jerry Falwell and his Moral Majority showed up in force, the media took note. When they learned a few weeks later that Ronald Reagan was to address a gathering of born-again politicians in Dallas, the press showed up in force more than 250 strong.

From that date forward, the involvement of right-wing Christians in the election was one of the big campaign stories. By election time, the country was braced for the election of a former second-rate cowboy movie star to the White House, but the stunning defeat of many liberal senators and house members required explanation.

Jerry Falwell, whose name became practically a household word during the campaign, wasted no time in stepping forward to claim responsibility for the political upsets in the name of the Moral Majority and other New Christian Right organizations. Pollster Louis Harris agreed with Falwell's assessment. So did several of the defeated senators and members of Congress. It seemed and the media played up the idea that the televangelists had created a force to be reckoned with.

Skeptics thought that Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority would go away after the election. They were wrong. Not everybody bought Falwell's claims about being a central figure in the outcome of the elections, but neither were his claims seriously challenged. At age 47, with nearly 25 years of experience in front of television cameras, Falwell proved to be very adept at gaining media attention.

Much of what was written about Falwell and his followers was not very favorable, but people kept writing. A year after the elections, Falwell was in the news more than he was during the 1980 campaign. Through a combination of luck and skillful media manipulation Falwell kept himself in the limelight in the role of emerging power broker.

Shortly after the national elections, the Moral Majority joined forces with a little group called the Coalition for Better Television. They threatened to boycott sponsors of programs that "promote sex, violence and profanity." They called off the boycott during the summer of 1981, claiming a major victory, when Procter and Gamble announced withdrawal of sponsorship of network programs that did

not meet its program guidelines. This was hailed as great victory and evidence of the group's political power. No one challenged the ability of the Moral Majority and its allies to stage a successful boycott.

Liberals did a lot to help Falwell's cause. Even before the elections, Norman Lear (1980), creator of several of the most successful television situation comedies of the 1970s, organized People for the American Way to combat the "pernicious danger" of "fascism masquerading as Christianity." After his defeat, former Senator George McGovern organized another group called Americans for Common Sense. The ACLU wastes little time in sounding an alert about the assault on civil liberties being orchestrated by the Moral Majority. Common Cause (1981) also joined the campaign, claiming that Falwell and other New Christian Right leaders were trying to "radically change our Constitutional system of checks and balances."

Many individuals joined in sounding the alarm. Yale University President A. Bartlett Giamatti sent a letter to the entering freshman class in the fall of 1981 warning against the radical assault on freedom coming from the Moral Majority and other New Christian Right organizations. Wrote Giamatti (1981: 28):

Angry at change, rigid in the application of chauvinistic slogans, absolutistic in morality, they threaten through political pressure or public denunciation whoever dares to disagree with their authoritarian positions. Using television, direct mail and economic boycott, they would sweep before them anyone who holds a different opinion.

Several other college presidents quickly followed suit, publicly denouncing Falwell and his followers. For months there was an almost never-ending outpouring of attacks on Falwell. Each public outcry resulted in at least two news stories: one an account of the criticism and another a report of a rebuttal from Falwell or his spokesman.

Falwell's friends also helped to keep him visible. When Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin bombed the Saudi nuclear power plant he called Falwell and asked him to rally Americans in support of this act. And later that year, when Begin visited Washington, he warmly received Falwell and a group of the Moral Majority leader's friends at Blair House. President Reagan also gave credence to the image of Falwell as an important spokesman for conservatives when he called Falwell to ask for his support when he nominated Sandra O'Connor to be the first woman Supreme Court justice. And Falwell's initial feisty defiance made him seem all the stronger.

The only problem with the unfolding political drama portraying Jerry Falwell as the powerful leader of many emerging New Christian Right organizations was that the press and the politicians did not bother to check the facts.

Jerry Falwell is not alone when it comes to exaggerating the size of his television audience. Virtually all the televangelists do just as itinerant evangelists are prone to exaggerate the number of souls that were saved in their last crusade down the road. It is an accepted part of fundamentalist folk culture.

In June 1981, two independently published reports, one using Arbitron data, the other Nielson data, reported Jerry Falwell's audience to be about 1.5 million, not the 25 or 50 million variously claimed by Falwell (Hadden and Swann, 1981; Martin, 1981). The false claim about audience size proved to be a popular news item around the country for several months. Still, there seemed to be a reluctance to accept the implications of this datum: If Falwell had lied about his TV following, is it not possible that he had also uttered misleading statements about both his Moral Majority following and its political accomplishments?

The answer is an emphatic yes. The first significant evidence pointing to the conclusion that America had overestimated th power of the evangelical involvement in the elections was presented in an article by Lipset and Raab published in Commentary in March 1981 Having examined a mass of polling and election data, Lipset and Raab (1981: 30) conclude: "What all these findings seem to indicate is that the effort to mobilize a religious constituency for political purposes in America had no measurable effect on the 1980 elections" (emphasis added). Lipset and Raab (1981: 30) continue:

Lipset and Raab (1980: 30) further warn that the danger of giving groups such as the Moral Majority "more credit than they deserve [is] to run the risk of self-furfilling prophecy.... If politicians become convinced that the Moral Majority is a decisive force in American life, they are likely to treat it as such, just to be on the safe side."

In Prime Time Preachers (1981), Charles Swann and I wrote about the great potential evangelicals have to amass political power, but we cautioned against interpreting the 1980 election outcomes as evidence of power achieved. And we presented substantial data to support our

caution. Some of our data paralleled evidence presented by Lipset and Raab, but we used independent data sources.

Evidence challenging the assumption of the great power and influence of Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority continues to mount. A Washington Post ABC News poll conducted in June 1981 found that only 49 percent of the American public had heard or read about the Moral Majority (Peterson and Sussman, 1981). This, even after the enormous amount of publicity Falwell and the organization had received over the previous ten months. Of those who had heard of the Moral Majority, 37 percent said they generally approved of the group's positions. But this figure is very misleading. Almost half who said they generally approved of Moral Majority positions also favored the Equal Rights Amendment. And 40 percent approving Moral Majority positions agreed with the proposition that "homosexuals and lesbians should be allowed to teach in public schools, and that homosexual relations between consenting adults should be legal" (Peterson and Sussman 1981). The Moral Majority stands in strong opposition to the ERA and the homosexual propositions. The 37 percent approval of Moral Majority positions thus must be interpreted as a very soft number. The truth is that a lot of people do not know where the Moral Majority stands on a lot of issues.

One might assume that Falwell would have both greater recognition and a greater following close to home. These assumptions are not supported by two independent polls conducted during the Virginia gubernatorial race during the fall of 1981. A Richmond Times-Dispatch (1981: 1) poll revealed that only 13 percent of Virginians approved of the Moral Majority's goals, while 49 percent said they disapproved. Right in his home state, thus, almost 4 out of 10 citizens did not know or had no opinion about Falwell's Moral Majority. An even more telling indicator or Falwell's political strength in Virginia is revealed by the Times- Dispatch poll: Only 4 percent of those surveyed said they would be more inclined to vote for a candidate endorsed by Falwell, while 24 percent said they would be less likely to do so (Richmond Times-Dispatch, 1981 1).

The second Virginia poll, conducted for the Virginia Pilot (1981: 27) in Norfolk, found that only 10 percent of those surveyed had positive evaluations of Falwell while 54 percent had negative evaluations.

A survey conducted in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolita area during the same time span affirms other evidence of the limited influence of the New Christian Right (Shupe and Stacey, 1981). Only 14 percent of those surveyed in the metropolis supported the Moral Majority. And, as in the Washington Post poll, many who said they supported the Moral Majority did not support Moral Majority po-

sitions: 34 percent disagreed with the proposition "Abortion is a sin against God's law," and 41 percent supported the ERA to guarantee women equal rights.[2]

An examination of the social and demographic characteristics of the supporters of the Moral Majority leads sociologist Shupe and Stacey (1981: 28) to conclude that the New Christian Right "is a social movement whose membership/support base is preponderantly composed o fundamentalist Christians rather than some interdenominational or ecumenical population."

If the preponderance of data runs counter to the widely held assumption that the evangelical Christians have already amassed enormous power and are now positioned to take over America, extreme caution should be exercised in shifting to the opposite conclusion that they are totally lacking in a power base. There are several reasons this is so.

The first reason is the group's unique access to mass media. No other social movement has ever had the kind of access to media that they do. Even after we discount Falwell's exaggerated audience claims, he is still talking to approximately 1.5 million persons each week. And there are a lot of other televangelists reaching significant audiences with messages that, though not blatantly political, are generally supportive of the proposition that America must return to godly principles. Furthermore, the televangelists have command of the ancillary technology of the electronic church that is so critical to the raising of large sums of money. Media access and money are clearly two of the most important ingredients of a successful social movement.

A second important reason that the New Christian Right is not to be dismissed is that their potential constituency is very large. To date, no more than one-third to one-half of the religiously conservative Protestants in America could be counted as sympathetic to the Moral Majority or some other New Christian Right organization. If mobilized, they would represent a significant political minority in America.

A recently released study of American values found that 26 percent of those over age 14 are "highly religious" (Pollock, 1981: 43). That amounts to 45 million adults. While it is theoretically possible to score "high" on the study's eight-item scale of religiosity without being theologically conservative, it is unlikely. Of those aged 65 or over, 46 percent were "highly religious." This fact has long-range implications as our nation gradually ages.

In addition to the potential to mobilize evangelicals and fundamentalists, there are a lot of conservative persons who are only marginally religious. While not institutionally involved in religion,

they stand ready to "vote" for religion. A 1978 George Gallup survey estimated the number of unchurched Americans at 61 million. What most impressed Gallup in his examination of the characteristics of the unchurched was their similarity to the churched. They pray. They believe in Jesus Christ. They believe in the resurrection. "With a few distinct variations ... the unchurched claim the church as the churched except they are not attending, supporting, or belonging to a congregation of the visible church" (Gallup and Poling, 1980: 89). Furthermore, the unchurched, like the churched, affirm traditional family values (Gallup and Poling 1980: 82).

The Shupe and Stacey (1981) study also demonstrates the potential for support among the nominally religious. Of the persons they surveyed in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, 44 percent reported church attendance of only "now and then" or less.[3] Still, 87 percent of their sample believed that prayer should be allowed in the schools, and 73 percent favored teaching the Biblical account of creation in public schools. [4]

Social movements are first and foremost in the business of shaping public opinion. Almost always they begin from minority positions and gradually develop support for their causes. To sustain a movement, they need a solid core of supporters. The mass of public support can be soft so long as it constitutes a majority and responds affirmatively to the questions posed by the pollsters. How people respond to questions depend on how the questions are raised. This means that the success of a social movement depends, in part, on shaping the questions so that it is easy for people to agree with them.

By selecting the family as one of its central concerns, the New Christian Right has aligned itself with a plurality issue. No on is against the family or hardly anyone. The strategic issue is how the group aligns itself with the family. To date, the moral absolutism of the New Christian Right has deprived it of a lot of potential support. The abortion issue illustrates the matter well. Even the most liberal Protestant leaders in America have difficulty supporting unrestricted abortion. It is an agonizing issue that defies a satisfactory moral position. By taking an absolute and uncompromising position on abortion as murder, the New Christian Right deprives itself of many potential supporters. The same can be said of almost every other issue that troubles the New Christian Right.

All social movements are caught between holding on to hard core of "true believers" and reaching out to build larger constituencies. It can be a precarious and dangerous line to walk. What we have learned thus far about the New Christian Right is that it has not strayed very far from the old issues of personal morality that have bothered and periodically rallied conservative Christians for a long time. And as a result, it has not broadened the base of its constituency.

As long as the New Christian Right defines issues only in absolutist principles, it will be perceived as an extremist element in society and will not sign)ficantly increase its following. The Moral Majority may become a very vocal minority in America, but it is not likely to build a significant following until it succeeds in presenting its concerns in ways that can be perceived as reasonable by much large sectors of society.

TOWARD UNDERSTANDING THE REAL PROBLEMS OF THE FAMILY

The American family is a troubled institution. Few will deny this proposition. Ogburn's (1933) analysis of the demise of the family a half-century ago was not based on speculation alone. The critical flaw is his analysis, however, was not very different from the error in reasoning of the modern-day "family fixers." Both Ogburn and the New Christian Right leadership confuse change with demise. Certainly change produces disruption in processes that over time come to be defined as "normal." But this is no necessarily synonymous with demise.

The disruptions that are occurring in the American family result from both changing social structures and changing values The changing size and composition of the nuclear family is an example of structural change. One of the most important comparisons that can be made between the mid-nineteenth- and mid-twentieth-century American family is that the former had an average of six children, in contrast to only two for the latter (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1974). The mid-nineteenth- century mother spent virtually her entire adult life in a nuclear family with children present; on the average, there was a period of only 1.8 years between the marriage of the last child and the mother's death. By contrast the mid-twentieth-century mother can expect an empty nest for fully three decades, and can expect to survive her spouse by nearly a decade.

Choosing to have fewer children or the female's choice to pursue a career are examples of changing patterns. Whether husband and wife pursue dual careers, or the female enters the labor force out of boredom, the need for a second paycheck, or the desire for extra earnings to enhance leisure lifestyle activities, the movement of women into the labor force alters the division of labor and the mutual expectations husbands and wives have one for another. This is very likely to create tension.

The New Christian Right leadership would interpret this tension as resulting from a violation of the fundamental and God ordained

division of labor between the husband and wife. In their view, although there may be exceptions, in the final analysis the woman's place is in the home as mother, wife and homemaker. To assert that women have the right to pursue a career is to utter the heresy of feminism, godless ideology grounded in secular humanism.

The New Christian Right is seriously lacking in any systematic analysis or appreciation of structural and value changes that are taking place in American society. They seek scapegoats that can explain complex phenomena with simple labels. A case in point is LaHaye's (1982) treatment of the phenomenon of women in the labor force. LaHaye, executive committee member of the Moral Majority and one of the "intellectual leaders of the New Christian Right, offers several reasons, including economic necessity, for the presence of women in the labor force. Then he proceeds to chip away at the legitimacy of each of these reasons and concludes, in the final analysis, that it is "the feminist movement, which has agitated careerism, . . . based on humanist commitment to self actualization" that is responsible for women in the labor force (LaHaye 1982: 176).

LaHaye's book The Battlefor the Family (1982), like his earlier best seller, The Battlefor the Mind (1980), is diatribe about what is wrong with American society from the fundamentalist's perspective. Only tangentially does the book deal with the family. His laundry list of things that ail America closely parallels Jerry Falwell's. How these ills are related to the family is often not clear. We are told that social ills are destroying the family, while, in almost the same breath, we are told that the breakdown of traditional Christian values is what has permitted the social ills to flourish. Careful reading of the books and sermons of these men fails to reveal any systematic cause-and- effect analysis.

So long as Jerry Falwell, Tim LaHaye. Pat Robertson, James Robison, and the other New Christian Right leaders possess the "truth" about what ails the family, we are probably safe from the most pernicious acts they might commit in the name of fixing the family. This is not to say they will not be mischievous. They will. But their views are simply too far afield from the mainstream of American values to garner aufficient political strength to impose their family policy package on this nation.

In his 1933 assessment of the status of the family Ogburn identifies a seventh function. which he calls, a bit awkwardly. "personality." Somewhat timidly. Ogburn argues that the decline in the other functions, especially the economic functions, of the family is shifting the central role of the family toward personal development and socioemotional fulfillment. Had Oghurn been bold enough to pursue

this, he might have analyzed how love, rather than economic necessity, functions as the glue that holds the family together.

If the New Christian Right were to grasp this important fact about the modern American family, much of its contrived rhetoric against feminists and secular humanists could be eschewed and replaced with a gospel of love. A theology that emphasizes how love can overcome the tensions and contradictions of modern life could establish a much firmer foundation to build a real moral majority.

Jerry Falwell and his New Christian Right friends appeal to be engaging in pugnacious resistance to compromise their social agenda. While chiding unrelenting fundamentalists like Bob Jones, Falwell seems more preoccupied with looking over his shoulder to see if the likes of Jones are following him than with charting a course of accommodation that would permit him to build a broader constituency.

If and when the Moral Majority sets its mind on becoming a real majority, America will be faced with a great opportunity as well as great peril. The danger is that the group will enhance its political skills and abilities to manipulate the media without altering its agenda. This possibility must be taken seriously. If groups such as Norman Lear's People for the American Way have overreacted to any real and immediate danger they nevertheless serve an important role in guarding against political excesses from the right.

On the other hand, there is nothing to fear from a Moral Majority that can learn to temper its rhetoric and change its mind in the face of evidence. To date, the members of the New Christian Right appear to have treated the family as a symbol of all that troubles them about American society. But the family is the locus of real problems that are crying for understanding and solutions. Opportunity rests in the prospect of liberals and conservatives joining in the honest pursuit of real solutions to real problems.

NOTES

REFERENCES

Caplow, T. E. et al. (1981) Middletown Families: 50 Years of Change and Continuity. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Common Cause (1981) Advertisement in the New York Times October 11.

Falwell, J. (1981) The Fundamentalist Phenomenon: The Resurgence of Conservative Christianity. (Edited with E. Dobson and E. Hindson.) Garden City, NY: Doubleday.

(1980) Listen America. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.

Gallup, G., Jr., and D. Poling (1980) The Search for America's Faith. Nashville: Abingdon.

Gallup Opinion Index (1978) Survey of the Unchurched American. Princeton, NJ: American Institute of Public Opinion.

Giamatti, A.B. (1981) "Liberal education and the new coercion." Yale Alumni Magazine (October): 27-29.

Hadden, J. K. and C. E. Swann (1981) Prime Time Preachers. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Kennedy, D. J. (1981) " Assault on the family. Messenger 3 (September): 1981.

LaHaye, T. (1982) The Battle for the Family. Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revell.

(1980) The Battle for the Mind. Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revell.

Lear, N. (1980) People for the American Way direct mail letter, October.

Lipset, S. M. and E. Raab (1981) "The election and the evangelicals." Commentary 71 (March): 25-31.

Martin, W. C. (1981) "The birth of a media myth." Atlantic (June): 9-11, 16.

Ogburn, W. F. with the assistance of C. Tibbits (1933) "The family and its functions," pp. 661-708 in Recent Social Trends in the United States. New York: McGraw- Hill.

Peterson, B. and B. Sussman (1981) " Moral Majority is growing in recognition, but it remains unknown to half the public." Washington Post (June 13).

Pollock, J. C. (1981) The Connecticut Mutual Life Report on American Values in the '80s: The Impact of Belief. Hartford: Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance.

Reagan, R. (1982) Address to the National Religious Broadcasters, Washington, D. C., February 9.

(1980) Address to the Roundtable National Affairs Briefing, Dallas, August 22.

Richmond Times- Dispatch (1981) September 27 1.

Robison, J. (1980) Attack on the Family. Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House.

Shupe, A. D:, Jr., and W. A. Stacey (1981) " A assessment of grass roots support for the new religious right." Department of Sociology, University of Texas, Arlington. (unpublished)

Stanley, C. (1980) Address to Washington for Jesus rally Washington, D.C., April 29.

Steiner, G. Y. (1981) The Futility of Family Policy. Washington, DC: Brookings.

U.S. Bureau of the Census (1974) Fertility Histories an Birth Expectations of American Women: June 1971. Current Population Reports, Series P-20, No. 263. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.

Vander Jagt, G. (1980) Address to the Roundtable National Affairs Briefing, Dallas, August 21.

Virginia Pilot (1981) October 4: 27.