The Christian right is a term collectively referring to a spectrum of right-wing Christian political and social movements and organizations characterized by their strong support of social values they deem traditional in western countries. Furthermore, many New Zealand, Australian, Canadian and British Christian Right organisations use discourse, tactics and strategies from the United States Christian Right in their own contexts, leading their feminist, gay and social liberal opponents to foster their own global networking in retaliation. The terms Christian Right and Religious Right are sometimes used interchangeably, although this is problematic.
At the same time, fundamentalists across several religions often share with the Christian Right certain positions on specific issues such as women's and gay rights, separation of religion and government, and opposition to changing moral standards. So even though many leaders of the Christian Right are outspoken critics of radical Islam, conservative Christians, Muslim social conservatives, and Orthodox Jews sometimes cooperate in national and international projects, especially through the World Congress of Families and United Nations NGO gatherings.
The term is complicated by the appropriation of "Christian" by members of the evangelical-doctrine churches for their particular brand of Christianity.
Used in another sense, "Christian Right" may describe a more benign association of individuals from a wide variety of theological beliefs, ranging from moderately traditional movements within Lutheranism and Catholicism to theologically more conservative movements such as Evangelicalism, Pentecostalism and Fundamentalist Christianity.
The beginnings of "The Christian Right" as a nascent political movement began when evangelicals began organizing against a series of Supreme Court decisions, notably Roe v. Wade and also engaged in local battles over pornography, obscenity, taxation of private Christian schools, school prayer, textbook contents (concerning evolution), homosexuality and abortion.
As a modern political force, the Christian Right began in 1974 when Dr. Robert Grant founded American Christian Cause to advocate Christian moral teachings in Southern California. Concerned that Christians overwhelmingly voted in favor of President Jimmy Carter in 1976, Grant founded Christian Voice to mobilize Christian voters in favor of candidates who share their values. Grant involved national conservative leaders including Gary Jarmin, Howard Phillips, Terry Dolan, and Richard Viguerie in his movement and made national headlines when Christian Voice-backed candidates including Ronald Reagan, Steve Symms, Dan Quayle, and John East defeated entrenched incumbents in the 1978 and 1980 elections.. After Grant ousted Phillips, Dolan, and Viguerie several years later, the trio went on to recruit Jerry Falwell to build a new Christian Right organization, the Moral Majority. Grant's movement was said to have played a significant role in the election of President Ronald Reagan in 1980 and dozens of imitators were founded including Concerned Women for America, American Coalition for Traditional Values, and the Christian Coalition.
In New South Wales, Reverend Fred Nile and his Christian Democratic Party have occupied two to three Member of the Legislative Council (upper house) seats in the New South Wales State Parliament. Nile has been conspicuously unsuccessful in his efforts against the popular Sydney Lesbian and Gay Mardi Gras, and lesbian/gay rights legislation in general, as well as women's reproductive choice.
Similarly, his former vehicle, the South Australia-based Festival of Light has been ebbing in recent years. In that state, the Family First political party has been elected at the state and federal upper house levels. Victoria used to be the headquarters of the National Civic Council, a conservative Catholic organisation that still produces News Weekly, a conservative Catholic news publication that opposes free market capitalism as well as reproductive choice, voluntary euthanasia and lesbian/gay rights.
For a decade, this movement delayed the introduction of medical abortion in Australia (1996-2005). As time went on, all Australian states and territories either partially or fully decriminalised abortion access, and eventually, a unified multipartisan pro-choice movement insured passage of legislation that repealed obstacles within the federal Therapeutic Goods Act.
At present, the Howard administration has banned same-sex marriage and has threatened to legislate against proposed civil unions for lesbians and gay men at the federal level, as it had previously done against euthanasia law reform after the Northern Territory parliament carried it out in 1995. Euthanasia marks a particular point of conflict. In 2005, the Howard administration passed an anti-euthanasia Criminal Code Amendment (Suicide Related Offences) Act, which made it illegal to counsel people to commit suicide. However, the Howard administration is now the only Coalition (Liberal Party of Australia/National Party of Australia)-governed jurisdiction anywhere in the country, as the Australian Labor Party federal opposition controls all the state and territory governments.
None of these organisations have been able to make any inroad against Canada's feminist or lesbian gay rights movement. Paradoxically, though, censorship policy has been a continued point of contention between Canada's lesbian, gay and arts communities and federal Customs.
During the nineties, John Major pursued a softer stance, and Edwina Currie, a libertarian Conservative MP, produced a private members bill to reduce the gay male age of consent from twenty-one to sixteen. However, the British Parliament accepted eighteen as a compromise age of consent. In 2001, full age of consent equality prevailed. Since 1997, Tony Blair has been Prime Minister, and fully supportive of lesbian/gay rights. Under his Labour Party government, Clause 28 was repealed, the gay male age of consent was equalised at sixteen (2001), civil partnership legislation (civil unions) were introduced, and gay adoption reform passed after several libertarian Conservative MPs crossed the floor to support the measure.
Despite occasional attempts to reduce time limits for abortion access, British anti-abortion groups have been unsuccessfully at limiting women's abortion access, due to that country's long-established and vigilant pro-choice movement.
Britain, Canada and New Zealand have all faced repeated attempts to introduce voluntary euthanasia legislation, or decriminalise voluntary euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide through the courts, in the case of Canada. However, to date, none of these reform efforts have passed the select committee stage in any national, federal or provincial parliament. For example, a euthanasia law reform bill has just been postponed in the United Kingdom's House of Lords, after a massive anti-euthanasia/pro-care rally in London.
In Australia, Fred Nile has supported Aboriginal Land Rights and reconciliation. He has also strongly opposed Pauline Hanson and her racist, anti-immigration One Nation movement. In New Zealand, Brian Tamaki has been the only Māori Christian Right activist of note, perhaps because of New Zealand pakeha Christian Right support for the League of Rights and other far right opponents of redress measures for alienated Māori land under the Treaty of Waitangi and its associated land reclamation and monetary settlement processes. Tamaki is not supported by many pakeha fundamentalists and evangelicals for this reason, as well as perceived egocentrism. In the case of New Zealand, there was also marked opposition to the liberal anti-apartheid movements of the seventies and eighties, which sought to end sporting and diplomatic relationships with South Africa until apartheid ceased to exist in the early nineties.
However, while still supporting the Bush administration and Iraq War, many other Western Christian Right movements are divided over their response to Islam. In the United Kingdom and Canada, fundamentalist Protestant and conservative Catholic social conservatives have been pragmatic enough to reach out to Muslim anti-abortionists and opponents of same-sex marriage. UK SPUC has long had a Muslim Division, and the World Congress of Families includes Muslim and Orthodox Jewish social conservatives from Israel, the United States, Pakistan and Iran. Given worsening US-Iranian relations, it is debatable how long this initiative can survive for.
According to Ribuffo, the Old Christian Right was generally isolationist, while Diamond notes the Christian Right since the 1950s has tended to support U.S. military intervention and covert action (see references below). After the September 11, 2001 attacks, many leaders in the Christian Right joined with neoconservatives in strongly supporting the War on Terror in Afghanistan and Operation Iraqi Freedom in Iraq. Expressing profound sympathy for Israel, some have gone so far as to advocate the "transfer" of the Palestinian population from the West Bank to another Arab nation (Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt or Saudi Arabia) as the only viable long-term solution to the ongoing turmoil in the Middle East. The Reverend Franklin Graham, in particular, has been noted for his strident views, drawing secular criticism for his harsh remarks directed at Islam and for his traveling to Baghdad to conduct an open-air Good Friday service primarily for persecuted Assyrian Christians and Chaldean Christians on April 18, 2003, nine days after the city had fallen to American troops.
Some critics of the Christian Right including Sara Diamond and Frederick Clarkson claim that the Christian Right's political agendas are a form of Dominionism influenced by Dominion Theology and Christian Reconstructionism; the latter two are related philosophies that regard the Bible as the only strictly true reference for civics, government, scientific theory or any scholarly pursuit. Many in the Christian Right oppose this point of view, and no major Christian Right leader has gone on record as advocating Reconstructionism.
According to sociologist and professor of religion William Martin*, author of With God on Our Side, however:
Political groups and individuals that worry about how, and to what extent, dominionism influences the Christian Right include People for the American Way, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Interfaith Alliance, and the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Joan Bokaerand Katherine Yurica [http://www.yuricareport.com/Dominionism/TheDespoilingOfAmerica.htm.
Sara Diamond warns, however, that while dominionism has influenced the Christian Right, liberals too often use hyperbolic language to describe the activities and goals of the Christian Right.*
The term "Dominionism" - with its close affiliation with notions of theocracy - can be used pejoratively to inaccurately describes the philosophical underpinnings of some individuals who identify themselves with the Christian Right. Very few of these see the Christian Right as an eschatological political movement designed to usher in the Kingdom of God; for them, the Christian Right articulates the traditional cultural critiques of paleoconservatives in the context of a worldview informed by orthodox Christian teaching. Moreover, many policies endorsed by the Christian Right contradict Dominionist notions. For example, the avid support of school vouchers by the Christian Right could lead to greater plurality in educational institutions, rather than a monolithic education system shaped by Dominionist ideas.
The Christian Right has also worked to promote expressly partisan Republican campaigning. For example, during the 2004 campaign, Christian Voice waged a $2.9 million Christian Voter Drive Their 6,199 Church captains collectively registered 355,562 new voters and turned out an estimated 1.2 to 1.5 million voters. Traditional Values Coalition website highlighted a voter registration drive by the Republican National Committee, with a link to the RNC website, and added, "The Democratic National Committee is also engaged in an aggressive campaign to register homosexual, bisexual, and transgendered individuals to defeat President W. Bush in the November election." [http://www.traditionalvalues.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1433" target="_blank" >* Individual ministers also made political comments from the pulpit.
On rare occasion, small churches ascribing themselves to the views of the Christian Right have taken overtly partisan actions, although such overtly political activities are generally considered inappropriate in most conservative Protestant churches. For example, the pastor of the East Waynesville Baptist Church in Waynesville, North Carolina "told the congregation that anyone who planned to vote for Democratic Sen. John Kerry Democratic presidential candidate in 2004 should either leave the church or repent". * The church later expelled nine members who had voted for Kerry and refused to repent. *
Elsewhere, other western Protestant fundamentalist movements have supported conservative state or provincial or national governments. In the case of Australia's Fred Nile, he has strongly supported current Australian federal Prime Minister John Howard and his (Liberal Party of Australia/National Party of Australia)Coalition federal government, as has South Australia's Family First party, represented at the state and federal levels.
Similarly, in Canada, REAL Women of Canada and Campaign Life Coalition vociferously supported Stephen Harper and his Conservative Party of Canada at the recent Canadian general election in late 2005. Unfortunately for Harper, his party and the aforementioned social conservatives, social liberal pressure groups were monitoring their websites and those of particular social conservative constituency candidates. As a result, Harper and the Canadian Tories only succeeded in achieving a minority government, and seem to have backed away from divisive tactics like repeal of federal same-sex marriage legislation.
In New Zealand, Destiny New Zealand and Christian Heritage New Zealand have been effusive in their support for the National Party of New Zealand, currently the largest Opposition party. As New Zealand is a unitary state, and has a single parliamentary chamber, there was little opportunity for social conservative niche parties to influence politics until the electorate voted for Mixed Member Proportional electoral reform at a referendum held in 1993.
Thus far, United Future New Zealand has been the only fundamentalist party able to take advantage of this, but has not conspicuously succeeded in preventing sex work decriminalisation or civil union laws, and suffered decimation at the New Zealand general election 2005. At that election, the Exclusive Brethren may have alienated urban voters from Don Brash and his National Party. Social conservatism does not appear to be electorally viable in modern New Zealand.
In the United Kingdom, Margaret Thatcher actively courted the conservative Christian vote throughout her tenure as Prime Minister (1979-1990). However, despite Clause 28 and stricter censorship law and policy, the Conservative Family Campaign proved to be divisive, and the Conservative Party has always had a more active socially liberal libertarian contingent than its Republican counterpart in the United States. The Conservative Family Campaign was closed down in the late nineties under John Major, and replaced with a less strident Conservative Christian Fellowship. To complicate matters, there are also left-wing evangelicals in British Protestant circles, who strongly disagree with the US Christian Right over issues like social and environmental policies, and major evangelical and anti-abortion lobby groups like CARE,SPUC and LIFE have always been careful to appear multipartisan, and not alienate social conservatives within the Labour Party and Liberal Democrat Party.
Under new Tory leader David Cameron, it appears that the British Conservatives have decided that there is no benefit in seeking social conservative constituencies if they alienate younger, gay, urban professional or female voters.
From the above, one can conclude that while other western Christian Right movements model themselves on the US Christian Right and seek closer ties with their dominant national centre-right parties, that backfired in New Zealand and perhaps Canada, and has only succeeded in Australia, and only at the federal level, at that. In Britain, the Conservative Party has backed away from actively courting evangelical and fundamentalist voters out of fear of alienating other significant electoral interest constituencies.
Contrast: Christian left
| See: Christian politics (index) for articles related to this subject. |
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Christian evangelicalism | Christian group structuring | Religion and politics | Charismatic and Pentecostal Christianity
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