According to Jonathan Dudley's article, "The Real Story of the Religious Right," the Religious Right originated not ex nihilo as organized protest against Roe v. Wade, but was in part triggered by government-imposed desegregation: race not womb birthed concerted political organizing among evangelicals and fundamentalists.
In support, Dudley offers a quote from Paul Weyrich, a Republican operative who was instrumental among the founders of the Religious Right. (Citations for the quotation can be found in various sources, including, With God On Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America, by William Martin, Random House, 2005.)
Dudley also notes that the pro-life movement itself ignored theological nuance and stiffled open debate within evangelicals' ranks.
It did involve legitimate moral concerns about abortion, it did occasion serious reflection on the issue by evangelical scholars and pastors, and it did bring a formerly apolitical segment of America into the political process. But its founding moral outrage stemmed not from Roe v. Wade, but from the prospect of government-imposed desegregation; it rest its intellectual foundation on highly dubious, non-scholarly arguments advanced by Francis Schaeffer; it mobilized lay evangelicals to action by telling them the Bible teaches something it does not actually teach; and it actively suppressed the scholarship of evangelicals who held alternative viewpoints.
Read the article.
