Onward Christian Soldiers

The beginning of the Religious Right, which has done so much to promote the cause of life, the very cornerstone of all human rights issues, was popularly attributed to the Evangelical community and, while that perception is largely correct, the important new book, Onward Christian Soldiers: The Growing Political Power of Catholics and Evangelicals in the United States, by Catholic author and former Chairman of Catholic Outreach at the Republican National Committee, Deal Hudson, reminds us of the major contribution of Catholics.

In commenting on the founding period of the Moral Majority and the role they played in the career of Ronald Reagan, he notes:

“Prominent Evangelical leaders such as Falwell, Robertson, Grant, McAteer, Lehaye, and Dobson, along with other nationally known Evangelicals such as Reverend James Robison in Texas, Oral Roberts in Oklahoma, and Campus Crusade founder Bill Bright, threw themselves into the Reagan campaign as if the very future of our nation depended on it. Oddly enough, the strategy for bringing these Evangelical preachers and laymen into politics was the brainchild of a Catholic, Paul Weyrich, a conservative strategist who later became a deacon in the Melkite rite (the Melkite Greek Catholic Church is an Eastern rite Catholic Church in communion with the Roman Catholic Church and the pope.)

“Beginning in 1979 and continuing to the 1980 election, Weyrich and his colleagues Howard Phillips and Connie Marshner traveled coast-to-coast recruiting ministers by explaining both what was at stake and how a nonprofit church could become political without risking tax exemption. It was a hard sell. Evangelicals had stayed out of politics since the Scopes trial debacle in 1925, believing such an active grappling with worldly matters beneath their spiritual mission. Yet when they realized that the power of the federal government and the judiciary was legitimizing the taking of human life, putting its religious schools and churches at risk, redefining the meaning of the family and sexuality, and forcing the teaching of secular and relativistic morality in public education, there was nothing to do but stand and fight.” (pp. 12-13)