Cultural Wars of the Religious Right

In his article, The Culture Wars Are Still Not Over, Frederick Clarkson recalls claims by the political punditry in the wake of the 2000 Presidential election that the religious right was effectively dead and asserts that those who claim that the religious right is dead now are just as wrong as they were 8 years ago. He cites a 1992 speech made by Pat Buchanan at the Republican National Convention in which Buchanan declares that the United States was in the midst of a “cultural war” that will determine what we stand for as Americans. Clarkson, however, disagrees, saying that the religious right is not driving a cultural war, but indeed a religious one that manifests itself on cultural fronts, “most urgently abortion, homosexuality (especially, now, marriage equality), education privatization, and curriculum content of the public schools”.
Though some historians, such as Thomas Frank in his book What’s the Matter with Kansas, argue that the religious right has been largely unsuccessful in passing the agenda it promises, it also true that the religious right successfully passed Proposition 8 in California, rolling back civil rights legislation for homosexuals in that state. Or as Clarkson emotionally declares, the religious right effectively squashed the “court ordered advance in civil rights gained by an oppressed minority”. As such, Clarkson argues that the ‘cultural war’ the religious right claims to lead is actually a one-sided war of aggression on the civil rights of others and an effort to ‘save’ people who don’t want or need saving by slipping religious education into public schools, reinstituting what they insist is “God’s country”.
But in addition to their war-like rhetoric and moral certitude , what is particularly alarming to those who oppose the agenda of the religious right is their broadening coalition and ability to transcend their many political losses. As William Martin describes in his book With God On Our Side, the evangelical religious right, once a splintered cluster of un-unified religious groups, coalesced in the seventies around their mutual frustration of the Federal government’s so-called intrusions into their lives. Just as Protestants unified and entered politics due to a mutual sense of oppression by the national government, so now are many denominations of Christianity unifying to pass a religiously oriented political agenda. Proposition 8 did not pass in California solely as a result of evangelical efforts but indeed a broad coalition of Protestants, Roman Catholics, and Mormons worked together to pass the initiative. As such, as the religious right broadens it’s coalition, it is counter-intuitive to believe that the religious right will die anytime soon: as it withstood its many political losses, it is not likely to die out after such a momentous victory as the passing of Proposition 8.