Restless Giant: The United States From Watergate to Bush v. Gore (92 page)

36
. In 1981, however, angry Egyptians assassinated Sadat, and tensions mounted again in the Middle East.

37
. The Senate vote on both treaties was 68 to 32.
New York Times
, April 19, 1978.

38
. Kaufman,
The Presidency of James Earl Carter, Jr.
, 117–23; Greenstein,
The Presidential Difference
, 135–37. The treaty was signed in March 1979.

39
. Smith,
Morality, Reason, and Power
, 211–13; Stueck, “Placing Carter’s Foreign Policy.”

40
. Michael Sherry,
In the Shadow of War: The United States Since the 1930s
(New Haven, 1995), 352–53.

41
. America did participate in the winter Olympic Games at Lake Placid in early 1980. When the United States men’s ice hockey team upset the Soviets—and later won the gold medal—Americans were rhapsodic.
Newsweek
noted, “This was not just a sports story. It was a morality play on ice.” Sherry,
In the Shadow of War
, 375. In 1984, the Soviets boycotted the summer Olympics in Los Angeles.

42
. Smith,
Morality, Reason, and Power
, 218–23; Chester Pach Jr., “Reagan and National Security,” in W. Elliot Brownlee and Hugh Davis Graham, eds.,
The Reagan Presidency: Pragmatic Conservatism and Its Legacies
(Lawrence, Kans., 2003), 85–112.

43
. James Mann,
Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet
(New York, 2004), 81–85.

44
. Kaufman,
The Presidency of James Earl Carter, Jr.
, 86. For coverage of these events, see Smith,
Morality, Reason, and Power
, 180–207.

45
. The captors released thirteen hostages—all black or female—later that month, and one more later, keeping 52.

46
. Mary Ann Watson,
Defining Visions: Television and the American Experience Since 1945
(Fort Worth, 1998), 254.

47
. Carter,
Keeping Faith,
510–18; Haynes Johnson,
Sleepwalking Through History: America in the Reagan Years
(New York, 1991), 36; Smith,
Morality, Reason, and Power
, 203–5; Douglas Brinkley, “Out of the Loop,”
New York Times Magazine
, Dec. 29, 2002, 43–44. The shah had died in Egypt in July, removing as a stumbling block to the talks demands that he return to Iran.

48
. Schulman, “Slouching Toward the Supply Side,” 54–61.

49
. Ibid., 67.

50
. Greenstein,
The Presidential Difference
, 135–37.

51
. Paul Boller,
Presidential Campaigns
(New York, 1996), 355.

52
. Anthony Lane, “The Method President: Ronald Reagan and the Movies,”
New Yorker
, Oct. 18, 2004, 190–202.

53
. The abortion bill, signed in 1967, allowed abortion in cases of rape, incest, or fetal defect. It led to a large increase in legal abortions in California, from 5,000 in 1968 to 100,000 in 1972. Daniel Williams, “From the Pews to the Polls: The Formation of a Southern Christian Right”(PhD diss., Brown University, 2005),
chapter 5
.

54
. For Reagan, see Lou Cannon,
President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime
(New York, 2000), 1–77; William Pemberton,
Exit with Honor: The Life and Presidency of Ronald Reagan
(New York, 1998), 3–20; and James Patterson, “Afterword: Legacies of the Reagan Years,” in Brownlee and Graham,
The Reagan Presidency
, 355–75.

55
. Mann,
Rise of the Vulcans
, 96–97.

56
. Lisa McGerr,
Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right
(Princeton, 2001), 6–11, 271–72.

57
. Richard Viguerie,
The New Right: We’re Ready to Lead
(Falls Church, Va., 1981), 27–28.

58
. Robert Collins,
More: The Politics of Economic Growth in Postwar America
(New York, 2000), 189–90. Moynihan had held important posts in the Nixon administration and had been a contributor to
The Public Interest
before winning a New York Senate seat in 1976. He retired from the Senate in January 2001.

59
. Steven Gillon,
Boomer Nation: The Largest and Richest Generation Ever, and How It Changed America
(New York, 2004), 220–21; and Robert Self,
American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland
(Princeton, 2003), 319–27.

60
. Tim LaHaye also co-authored a series of dramatic novels (the Left Behind series), the first of which was titled
Left Behind: A Novel of the Earth’s Last Days
(Wheaton, Ill., 1995). Deriving their inspiration from the Book of Revelation, these focused on Last Judgment themes. These novels (twelve in all) were estimated to have sold a total of 60 million copies by the end of 2004.
New York Times
, Dec. 23, 2004.

61
. William Martin,
With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America
(New York, 1996), 164.

62
. For developments in American conservatism during these years, see Godfrey Hodgson,
The World Turned Right Side Up: A History of the Conservative Ascendancy in America
(Boston, 1996). For Schlafly and LaHaye, see Susan Faludi,
Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women
(New York, 1991), 239–56.

63
. Steven Brown,
Trumping Religion: The New Christian Right, the Free Speech Clause, and the Courts
(Tuscaloosa, 2003).

64
. Martin,
With God on Our Side
, 4–7.

65
. Garry Wills,
Under God: Religion and American Politics
(New York, 1990), 19–20.

66
. Theda Skocpol,
Diminished Democracy: From Membership to Management in American Civic Life
(Norman, Okla., 2003), 167–74; Robert Wuthnow,
Sharing the Journey: Support Groups and America’s New Quest for Community
(New York, 1994), 70–76.

67
. “A Tide of Born-Again Politics,”
Newsweek
, Sept. 15, 1980, 28–29.

68
.
Jacobellis v. Ohio
, 378 U.S. 184 (1964). Though the Court in the early 1970s adopted tougher standards, conservatives nonetheless railed at the permissiveness, as they called it, of this and other decisions.

69
. “Abortion and the Court,”
Christianity Today
, Feb. 16, 1973, 11.

70
. Williams, “From the Pews to the Polls,”
chapter 5
.

71
. Jonathan Zimmerman,
Whose America? Culture Wars in the Public Schools
(Cambridge, Mass., 2002), 160–85, 207–11.

72
. Martin,
With God on Our Side
, 168–73. Opponents of the IRS case against Bob Jones University contested it in the courts. The Supreme Court ruled against the university in 1983, by a vote of eight to one.
Bob Jones University v. the United States
, 461 U.S. 574 (1983).

73
. Martin,
With God on Our Side
, 55–58, 68–73.

74
. Frances FitzGerald,
Cities on a Hill: A Journey Through Contemporary American Culture
(New York, 1986), 125–56.

75
. Williams, “From the Pews to the Polls,”
chapter 5
.

76
. Martin,
With God on Our Side
, 196–204.

77
. Sherry,
In the Name of War
, 353.

78
. FitzGerald,
Cities on a Hill
, 172.

79
. Martin,
With God on Our Side
, 213, is cautious about estimating audience sizes of televangelists and others, noting that no TV preacher had an audience larger than 2.5 million in 1980. Falwell’s
Old Time Gospel Hour
, Martin writes, had an audience at the time of 1.4 million.

80
. Jon Butler, “Jack-in-the-Box Faith: The Religious Problem in Modern American History,”
Journal of American History
90 (March 2004), 1376–77. In 2001, Disney acquired the Fox Family Channel and renamed it ABC Family.

81
. For the figures on money, David Frum,
How We Got Here: The ’70s, the Decade that Brought You Modern Life (For Better or Worse)
(New York, 2000), 152–53. For audiences and new voters, Sara Diamond,
Not by Politics Alone: The Enduring Influence of the Religious Right
(New York, 1998), 63–67. For church membership and church attendance figures used in these paragraphs, see
Stat. Abst., 2002
, 55–56; Putnam,
Bowling Alone
, 65–79; and Russell Shorto, “Belief by the Numbers,”
New York Times Magazine
, Dec. 7, 1997, 60–61. These statistics depend on responses given to pollsters and are generally thought to exaggerate (though not greatly) the numbers and percentages of church members and attendees.

82
. The referendum in 1978, when Reagan was no longer governor, concerned Proposition 6, which would have rescinded a 1975 law (signed by Reagan) protecting homosexual teachers from discrimination and would have given school districts authority to fire gay teachers who publicly endorsed homosexual practices. Voters decisively defeated the proposition.

83
. FitzGerald,
Cities on a Hill
, 125; Diamond,
Not by Politics Alone
, 9–10; Putnam,
Bowling Alone
, 76.

84
. Hugh Heclo, “The Sixties False Dawn: Awakenings, Movements, and Post-Modern Policy-Making,”
Journal of Policy History
8, no. 1 (1996), 34–63; and Robert Fogel,
The Fourth Great Awakening: The Future of Egalitarianism
(Chicago, 2000), 176–81.

85
. Roger Finke and Rodney Stark,
The Churching of America, 1776–1990: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy
(New Brunswick, 1992); Butler, “Jack-in-the-Box Faith,” 1375.

86
. By the early 2000s, polls suggested that more than 30 million Americans belonged to large churches that generally backed socially conservative causes: Southern Baptist (16 million), Church of God in Christ (5.5 million), Mormon (5.2 million), and Assemblies of God (2.6 million). Most mainline Protestant churches were smaller. The largest of these churches, which had a total membership of more than 20 million by the early 2000s, were United Methodist (8.3 million), Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (5.1 million), Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) (3.5 million), Lutheran–Missouri Synod (2.6 million), and Episcopalian (2.1 million). Some of these were theologically conservative, and many of their members backed socially conservative causes. Episcopalians declined in number by 44 percent and Methodists by 38 percent between 1967 and 1997.
Stat. Abst., 2002
, 55; Shorto, “Belief by the Numbers.”

87
. James Davison Hunter,
Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America
(New York, 1991), 367. According to statistics reported by the government, people identifying themselves as Protestants in 1980 were 61 percent of the population. Those who said they were Jewish were roughly 2 percent of the population. Though the percentage self-identifying as Protestants slipped a little—to a low of 56 percent in 2000—the percentage of people self-identifying as Catholics (28) remained at the level of 1980.
Stat. Abst., 2002
, 56. These are estimates: Statistics concerning church membership and attendance, based for the most part on polls and church-derived numbers, vary considerably. A later poll, by the Pew Research Center for the People, concurred that the percentage of Americans who said they were Catholic remained steady between 1977 and 2002, but set the number at 23, not 28. Compared to some other reports, it discovered low percentages of Americans who attended religious services once or more per week. These percentages, the poll found, were around 30 in the 1980s, after which they dipped, to around 25 by 2002.
New York Times,
April 3, 2005.