The Evangelical Vote

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[3] Donald Trump won white evangelicals by a record 81 % of evangelicals.

[4] The white evangelicals make a huge swath of the Republican Party, and Donald Trump can credit his victory as president of the United States in part by their overwhelming turnout.

[5] Well, I've done great with evangelicals, including here, where we won our primary big.

[6] But the evangelicals...

[7] There can be this assumption that evangelicals are kind of like cicadas that go into dormancy in between Iowa caucuses, and the entire identity is built around...

[8] The issue of sanctity of life.

[9] What political movement they're involved in and who they're supporting.

[10] Atop their agenda, composition of the Supreme Court and abortion.

[11] When that's just really not...

[12] World versus Wade would get overturned.

[13] What Evangelical Christianity is about.

[14] You're listening to ThruLine from NPR.

[15] Where we go back in time?

[16] To understand the present.

[17] Hey, I'm Rand Abd al -Fattah.

[18] I'm Ramtin Arablui, and on this episode, the evangelical vote.

[19] When Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, the door opened on one of those rare opportunities to tip the ideological balance of the highest court in the land.

[20] It's an opportunity that one particular voting block has been waiting for, evangelical Christians, many of whom voted for Donald Trump in 2016 in the hopes that he and his Republican colleagues could seize this moment.

[21] To change the law on what has become an overriding issue for American evangelicals.

[22] Abortion.

[23] How did we get to this place where one religious group is so affiliated with one political party and so united on one issue?

[24] So now, just weeks before the 2020 election, we thought it was a perfect time to revisit this episode about how evangelical voters became a powerful force in U .S. politics.

[25] According to a 2018 Gallup report, about 36 % of Americans identify as evangelical.

[26] But figuring out exactly what the term evangelical means is a little complicated.

[27] For many, the word evangelical has become a shorthand for voters who are, Christian, Republican, and white.

[28] I do think that it is functionally a white word.

[29] Conservative Protestants of color are very reluctant to use that label because it is so loaded.

[30] This is Molly Worthen.

[31] She teaches history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

[32] Now, theologically, evangelicalism doesn't mean all that.

[33] Religious historian Randall -B -A -L -M -E -R, who also happens to be an Episcopal priest, broke it down for us into three basic traits.

[34] First, Somebody who's an evangelical is a person who takes the Bible very seriously as God's revelation to humanity.

[35] And interprets it literally.

[36] Second.

[37] They believe in spiritual awakenings.

[38] Or born again experienced to use a phrase from the third chapter of St. John in the New Testament.

[39] And third.

[40] An evangelical is someone who takes seriously the mandate to evangelize.

[41] In other words, to convert others and bring them into the faith.

[42] Over the past few decades, pollsters, politicians, and activists have nonetheless helped transform the word into something political.

[43] Evangelicals have been an important part of American politics since at least 1976, the year Jimmy Carter and Evangelical himself became president.

[44] Carter was a Democrat, but since then, evangelical voters have solidly backed Republican candidates, including Donald Trump in 2016, which leads us back to that popular assumption.

[45] Christian, Republican, and white.

[46] While that shorthand risks over simplifying a complicated story, there's also a reason for it.

[47] In this episode, we're going to focus on how and why white evangelicalism, in particular, came to be so linked to conservative political issues.

[48] Beginning with a roaming Irish pastor in the 1800s.

[49] Then moving to the tumultuous World War I era.

[50] And ending with a groundbreaking Supreme Court case in the 1970s, which, I guarantee, is not the one you're thinking.

[51] From Columbus, Ohio, and you're listening to ThruLine on NPR.

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[58] Part one.

[59] Apocalypse now.

[60] The church is in ruins.

[61] The Christian is directed to turn away from evil and turn to the scriptures.

[62] In the early 1800s, a young Anglican minister named John Nelson Darby was traveling from cabin to cabin across the Irish countryside, preaching the gospel.

[63] He lived a simple life, ate little, wore his clothes so they were nearly ripping at the seams.

[64] People began to see him almost as a saint.

[65] But Darby couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong.

[66] I felt that the style of work was not in agreement with what I had read in the Bible concerning the church and Christianity, nor did it correspond with the effects of the action of the spirit of God.

[67] At the time, the Church of England, which was Protestant, was exercising more and more influence.

[68] over Ireland, a traditionally Roman Catholic country.

[69] This was not only a religious mission, it was a political one.

[70] Many of England's clergy thought the church and government should be intertwined.

[71] Darby didn't see it that way.

[72] He wanted Christians to come together to unite, but the church didn't seem to be doing that.

[73] When I looked around to find this unity, I found it nowhere.

[74] If I joined one set of Christians, I did not belong to another.

[75] The church, God's church was broken up And the members scattered among various self -formed bodies Darby became more and more frustrated Unable to connect with the Christianity he saw around him And then, in 1827, he reached a breaking point An accident happened, which laid me aside for a time My horse was frightened and had thrown me against a doorpost Okay, so it was a literal and figurative breaking point He got in a horse riding accident, was holed up in bed for months, and he spent a lot of time reading the Bible, dissecting it.

[76] After deep exercise of soul, I was brought by grace to feel I could trust the word of God entirely.

[77] And in that context, he came up with this new interpretation, this new scheme for reading the Bible.

[78] That new interpretation will lead to a major change.

[79] within evangelicalism around the world.

[80] Darby concluded that denominations only divided people, and so he rejected them.

[81] He also suggested that there shouldn't be any formal ministers, no hierarchy, all in contrast to the Church of England, which had a very clear hierarchy.

[82] Archbishops, bishops, priests, deacons, you get the idea.

[83] But Darby's most important and drastic rereading was of Christian theology itself.

[84] At the time, most Christians believe that God is going to establish a new kingdom on earth and it's going to run for a thousand years of peace and prosperity.

[85] So basically, Jesus Christ would only return to usher in the end of times after the world experienced a thousand years of peace.

[86] And the general state of things would be pretty good.

[87] This idea was called post -millennialist.

[88] Post -millennialist.

[89] That's when Jesus would come, after a thousand years.

[90] So most evangelicals...

[91] They believed that if they worked hard enough to reform society according to the norms of godliness.

[92] Then Jesus would return.

[93] But Darby flipped that idea.

[94] According to his reading of the Bible, Jesus Christ would return before this thousand years of peace.

[95] Darby's rereading became known as pre -millennialism.

[96] The second coming of Christ is imminent that we're actually moving towards this horrific Battle of Armageddon.

[97] This is Matthew Sutton.

[98] He teaches history at Washington State University.

[99] His latest book is called American Apocalypse, a history of modern evangelicalism.

[100] Darby foreshadowed that the world would just keep getting worse and worse until the apocalypse arrived.

[101] So there was no real point in hoping and working for peace.

[102] If you look back to one of Jesus' sermons in Matthew, and Jesus' disciples ask him, how will we know that the end is coming?

[103] What will be the signs?

[104] Darby predicted one of the biggest signs was that Jews will return to Palestine and the nation of Israel will be restored.

[105] Now remember, this is the early 1800s, so Israel wasn't even on the map.

[106] And so evangelicals become some of the staunchest Zionists, even before American Zionism has really taken hold among very many American Jews.

[107] They're the ones who are advocating for the creation of a new Jewish state in Israel, and first a return of Jews to Palestine and then ultimately a Jewish state.

[108] Another major sign, the world would become hellish, filled with misery and suffering, culminating in something Darby called the rapture.

[109] rapture is this idea that Jesus is going to take all true Christians off the earth that are just going to sort of disappear and be in this nebulous space until he returns to defeat evil to battle the Antichrist.

[110] This idea was another innovation of John Nelson Darby.

[111] I call this sometimes a theology of despair because it says there's nothing we can do to make this world a better place.

[112] The only thing we can do is get our own house in order, try to bring as many others as possible into our circles, that is, to convert them or to evangelize them, and then wait for Jesus to come and make everything all better.

[113] This End of Times philosophy wasn't entirely new.

[114] Almost every generation since the birth of Christianity had some group of people who believed the end was near, all of whom eventually faded into obscurity when the world didn't end.

[115] It often helped people make sense of the world when things didn't seem to be going their way.

[116] In Darby's case, his frustrations with the Church of England drove him to seek out a different approach, and that approach tapped into what a lot of people in Ireland felt at that time, that they were losing control.

[117] The world seemed to be changing against their will, so his fatalistic view began to gain steam.

[118] Darby wrote pamphlets and circulated them throughout the country.

[119] Then he began preaching across Europe.

[120] You know, he managed to publicize his writing, widely.

[121] This is Marie Griffith.

[122] She's a professor at Washington University.

[123] So Darby traveled to dozens of countries around the world.

[124] And in the early 1860s, he traveled to North America.

[125] He came to the U .S. and led a series of revivals and says, look, you guys have been interpreting the Bible all wrong.

[126] And initially, it wasn't super popular.

[127] It wasn't like Americans were clamoring to him.

[128] But he was able to essentially plant some foundations, lay some seeds.

[129] So why didn't Darby's ideas immediately catch on in the U .S.?

[130] Well, one big reason was the Second Great Awakening, a Protestant revival movement that took hold of the country in the early 1800s.

[131] Let me set the scene a bit.

[132] The U .S. was a young country.

[133] It was buying new territories and expanding west.

[134] The possibilities of manifest destiny seemed endless.

[135] So it was a pretty hopeful time, at least if you were a white landowner.

[136] And the second grade awakening channeled that spirit.

[137] It was characterized by infectious enthusiasm and really big conversion meetings, and people across the country were swept up by it.

[138] There was no differentiation at that time between mainline Protestant and evangelicals.

[139] Can you just introduce yourself?

[140] Sure.

[141] My name is Lisa Sharon Harper.

[142] She's written several books on Christianity, including left, right, and Christ, evangelical faith in politics.

[143] So at the time, most of the country was Protestant.

[144] It was literally almost pretty much everybody.

[145] The only bifurcation would have been Protestant, Catholic.

[146] The Second Great Awakening also pushed a lot more people to get involved in social issues of the time.

[147] Their involvement was huge.

[148] They sought to reshape society.

[149] The issues people advocated for were different depending where they lived, north or south.

[150] Keep in mind, this was Antebellum America.

[151] They were involved in the abolition of slavery, obviously in the north.

[152] They were engaged in prison reform, public education, women's rights, and voting rights for women, which in the 19th century was a radical idea.

[153] And they were also highly critical of capitalism.

[154] So at its core, the Second Great Awakening embraced a more hopeful, more progressive view of the future and encouraged Christians to express their faith through engagement with society.

[155] And it's in this context that John Darby came along with his pessimistic, fatalistic ideas.

[156] Instead of permitting ourselves to hope for a continued progress of good, we must expect a progress of evil.

[157] We are to expect evil until it becomes so flagrant that it will be necessary for the Lord to judge it.

[158] It's no wonder his ideas didn't immediately take off.

[159] But Darby kept returning to the U .S., and those seeds he planted began to grow, because during that time, the U .S. faced more and more challenging problems.

[160] Look at this labor unrest, look at the rapid industrialization of American society, look at the urbanization of American society, the influx of non -Protestant immigrants.

[161] Mainly Catholics and Jews from Europe.

[162] Who don't share our views on temperance.

[163] And the biggest problem, the problem of slavery, led to the Civil War.

[164] The Civil War, of course, had a profoundly demoralizing impact.

[165] on the whole nation.

[166] The death and destruction, we can't even really imagine it anymore from our historical distance, I think.

[167] How many families lost sons and fathers and loved ones to that war.

[168] It was so bloody and so devastating.

[169] For many evangelicals, especially white evangelicals in the South, they felt chastened by the war.

[170] This horrific thing had happened.

[171] The world seemed to be in shambles in some.

[172] way.

[173] And so this sort of pre -millennial view began to make more sense.

[174] So on the heels of the Civil War, Darby's view that the world was getting worse, hopeless, darker, and that evangelicals should disengage and wait for Jesus to return, his theology sort of takes off.

[175] By the time Darby died in 1882, his pre -millennialist theology was on the rise across the U .S. Some evangelical pastors began popularizing Darby's ideas and molding them into a distinctly American movement.

[176] They published magazines and journals and organized conferences to study prophecies in the Bible.

[177] Still, not all evangelicals were on the same page.

[178] Especially on the issue of race.

[179] Remember, before the Civil War, evangelicals were a mix of all sorts of people, but it was still the era of slavery.

[180] Every single denomination in the United States split around that time based on the question of slavery.

[181] So the Baptist split, the Methodist split, the Presbyterians split, everybody is splitting because of this question of slavery.

[182] Can you own slaves and be a Christian?

[183] And the reality was, while many white and black evangelicals shared similar theologies, they almost never worshipped together.

[184] There were black evangelicals all along the way, but oftentimes because of the racism of the white denominations, they had created their own denominations.

[185] So that's the genesis of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and many others.

[186] In the post -war Jim Crow era, that racial divide became even more stark.

[187] Across any political divide among white evangelicals, you know, whiteness was sort of a presumption.

[188] I mean, even the abolitionists were often what we would very much consider racist and had a strong view, you know, of white supremacy over blacks.

[189] They were for freedom, but not for friendship.

[190] They were for freedom, but not for equality.

[191] There are a number of African Americans who share the same theology with them, but they're explicitly excluded.

[192] They worship separately.

[193] That rather than building an interracial network over shared theology, race becomes more important.

[194] It's still Jim Crow America.

[195] Basically, the same thing that was happening across the country after the Civil War happened in the church.

[196] People divided along racial lines.

[197] The nation was entirely segregated.

[198] And it's the Southern evangelicals that never did repent of having slaves.

[199] In fact, they were the ones who picked up muskets and fought to maintain slavery in the South.

[200] And it's that church that becomes, it's the Southern evangelical church that becomes the heartbeat of the segregationist movement in the Jim Crow era.

[201] And that unleashed 90 years of terror for black people until the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, which were products of the black church that had the depth of spirituality to face violence, to face violence.

[202] We could make a whole episode about the evolution of black evangelicalism from this point on.

[203] But that's a story for another day.

[204] The important thing to note for now is that white evangelicals, regardless of their political views before the war, became their own distinct group.

[205] But white evangelicals had a bunch of things to sort of out among themselves.

[206] For starters, many just didn't buy into Darby's theology.

[207] In fact, people who did were considered, quote -unquote, radical evangelicals.

[208] And liberal evangelicals tended to disagree with radical evangelicals on more than just theology.

[209] The world was rapidly changing and industrializing, which was completely disrupting the American way of life.

[210] And there was a lot of debate over whether to embrace those changes or reject them.

[211] Then there was the question of whether to engage with the world, to get involved in politics and social issues, or to disengage.

[212] The battle among white evangelicals over all these questions will play out over the course of the next century.

[213] Hi, this is Maddie calling from Seattle, Washington, and you're listening to ThruLine from NPR.

[214] Christian nationalists want to turn America into a theocracy, a government under biblical rule.

[215] If they gain more power, it could mean fewer rights for you.

[216] I'm Heath Drusen, and on the new season of Extremely American, I'll take you inside the movement.

[217] Listen to Extremely American from Boise State Public Radio, part of the NPR Network.

[218] Part 2, at the edge of the world.

[219] The night was marvelously clear and still, the star shining with exceptional brightness and the sea perfectly smooth.

[220] Near midnight, the steamship Titanic collided with an iceberg and sank with the greater part of her passengers and crew at about 2 o 'clock.

[221] I walked forward to my window and saw a grease white mast drifting by.

[222] Then when the water rushed into the boilers, there was a terrible explosion.

[223] And I saw that ship breaking half, and the forepart went down, nose first and the other.

[224] The steamer Carpathia, then about 90 miles away, received a message by wireless telegraph, asking for assistance.

[225] She at once altered her course.

[226] And I had a life jacket on.

[227] and I hit the water with a true crash.

[228] The survivors in the various lifeboats, mostly women, were taken aboard.

[229] It was doubtless the greatest cargo of human misery.

[230] I seem to be all by myself.

[231] Ever brought to port.

[232] On April 15th, 1912, Philip Morrow was sailing across the Atlantic aboard the Carpathia, the ship that rescued survivors of the Titanic.

[233] He was a radical evangelical.

[234] And one of many evangelicals in the Earth, early 20th century, who would bring Darby's ideas into American life with greater force.

[235] Here we have a most pertinent lesson.

[236] After this experience, he wrote a book called The Titanic Catastrophe and Its Lessons.

[237] That's the reading you're hearing.

[238] And in Darby -esque style, Moro warns that Christians should disengage with the world and accept the inevitable.

[239] So in the spirit of the spiritual, when the hour for judgment comes, it will be found that human strength, human goodness, human ingenuity, avail nothing against the waters of death.

[240] So he sees the sinking of the Titanic is this huge message, essentially this, you know, blinking red light from God, telling humankind that everything that they've built, everything they've done, all of their accomplishments are really paling in comparison of the threat that's looming on the horizon.

[241] And just two years later, war, war, war, the nations of Europe battle, and unconsciously prepare the way for the return of the Lord Jesus to establish his kingdom upon the earth.

[242] World War I, the Great War, begins, which only reinforced Morrow's apocalyptic vision.

[243] 65 million soldiers fought.

[244] Some 20 million people died.

[245] Whole cities were destroyed.

[246] The war literally reshaped the world.

[247] New countries were formed.

[248] Old empires crumbled.

[249] It was a time of intense and painful transition.

[250] You know, on top of that, you have Jews returning to Palestine in increasing numbers.

[251] The British are going to support making Palestine a homeland for Jews.

[252] And so for these radically evangelicals, everything seems to be falling into place.

[253] As the war came to an end, radical evangelicals who embraced this apocalyptic outlook were starting to have the upper hand over liberal evangelicals.

[254] And so that's why World War I becomes so critical to this story because it really undermines everything they thought they were doing in where they thought history was going.

[255] And it does just the opposite for these radical evangelicals.

[256] For them, it becomes proof that what they had been saying was actually right.

[257] The narrative that radical evangelicals had been pushing since Darby arrived decades earlier that the world would end any day now and Jesus would return seemed to be playing out in real time.

[258] So within evangelical circles, many radical evangelicals were rebranded as fundamentalists, a term that had been used before but was now emerging as a broader movement.

[259] They define themselves as fundamentalists because they argue that they're going to contend for the fundamentals of the faith, that they believe that they are the ones who understand true Christianity and that liberal Protestants have abandoned the faith.

[260] The movement was led by a guy named William B. Riley, a .k .a. the grand old man of fundamentalism.

[261] Riley was a tall, handsome man with striking white hair and a captivating voice.

[262] And unlike other pastors, He dressed like a banker, always in a suit and tie.

[263] Initially, he'd wanted to pursue a career in law, but changed his mind and instead attended the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

[264] He established a huge fundamentalist church in Minneapolis and then began spreading fundamentalism more widely.

[265] Riley wanted fundamentalism to drown out the voices of liberal evangelicals, who were less bothered by modernism and its impact.

[266] He had a big problem with the changes he was seeing in American life, changing roles of women, civil rights, urbanization, but especially the secularization of college campuses.

[267] There were more women around discussions about humanism and Freud replacing discussions of the Bible, and that terrified Riley.

[268] Unlike Morrow and Darby, Riley's instinct was not to disengage or retreat.

[269] Instead, he took a more proactive approach.

[270] He founded an evangelical college called Northwestern.

[271] Bible and missionary training school in Minnesota, which would become one of the largest Bible schools in the world.

[272] He also built a network of fundamentalist pastors across the country.

[273] And around 1918, 1918, he decides it's time to organize them together.

[274] Riley organized the first meeting of the World's Christian Fundamentals Association, which brought together leaders from all the major Bible schools across the country.

[275] He called it more historic than the nailing up at Wittenberg of Martin Luther's 95 Theses.

[276] an event which launched the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century.

[277] And after the conference, Riley took singers and speakers on a massive cross -country tour, publicizing his fundamentalist vision.

[278] He hoped that if he could move enough evangelicals towards fundamentalism, he'd eventually be able to grow that community into a political movement.

[279] Around the same time, a bunch of other fundamentalist pastors were breaking into mainstream pop culture and helping to spread a similar vision, sort of like televangelists for the radio age.

[280] Like Riley, they pushed the movement towards engagement with American society.

[281] They were all really charismatic and enthusiastic, able to draw a crowd.

[282] And no one better exemplifies that than Amy Semple McPherson.

[283] Amy Semple McPherson.

[284] Yeah, McPherson was one of my favorite people in American history.

[285] She was amazing.

[286] She was a very colorful woman, you know, very dramatic preaching style.

[287] Here's how McPherson described the moment.

[288] she found her calling.

[289] Quote, the entire atmosphere seemed stretched taught in the clear cold air, like the strings of an overstrained violin.

[290] The very stars were singing in a high -pitched tremolo.

[291] Upon the gem -arched Milky Way, the radiant moon was gliding lazily.

[292] Venus winked at Saturn.

[293] The big dipper ladled out stardust in the bowl of its smaller sister.

[294] It was as though a master musician, beat exacting time with a directing baton and the orchestra of the universe moved and played, chimed and swayed in unison.

[295] For seven years, McPherson traveled from coast to coast preaching in parks, cotton fields, tents, auditoriums.

[296] Preaching about the end times.

[297] She sees the signs coming.

[298] She was all about putting on a good show.

[299] She'd sing, play piano, speak in tongues, onlookers would weep, faint, even roll on the ground.

[300] And she drew really big crowds.

[301] In 1923, McPherson started her own church, the four -square church, in Los Angeles.

[302] And like McPherson herself, it was unconventional.

[303] She built it as a theater.

[304] I mean, it's in the round.

[305] It's got two balconies.

[306] It's got a stage.

[307] This magnificent building, the largest sitting capacity, church, in the American continent.

[308] She draws on all the tools and the talents of people in Hollywood to perform these elaborate sermons.

[309] And so she called them dramatic sermons, where she would actually.

[310] out the Christian faith, and she always was the star.

[311] She always played a starring role, but she had actors, she would borrow animals from the Los Angeles Zoo, and she was likely the first woman in the country to own radio station and one of the very first evangelists to use radio.

[312] The glory of God had shone round about him when he fell to the earth and cried, Lord, what shall I do?

[313] And was gloriously converted.

[314] She also created a Bible Institute.

[315] She also had a magazine.

[316] She had everything that all the other fundamentalists were doing to try to build her movement.

[317] Despite all that, McPherson faced resistance from some fellow fundamentalists.

[318] Her gender kept her always a little bit apart from the mainstream fundamentalist movement.

[319] Most fundamentalist leaders were not comfortable with a woman leader.

[320] And some disagreed with her over -the -top dramatic style, which not all evangelicals found appropriate as an expression of the gospel.

[321] But whether they gave her the credit or not, McPherson helped make fundamentalism much more mainstream.

[322] This wasn't about politics or platforms for her.

[323] This was just about gaining wider acceptance in American society and challenging the liberal evangelical wing of the movement.

[324] And thanks to McPherson, as well as other fundamentalist leaders in the post -World War I period, fundamentalists eventually won the battle against liberal evangelicals.

[325] Radical evangelicals were no longer considered so radical.

[326] For William Riley, the grand old man of fundamentalism, that wasn't enough.

[327] Remember, his endgame had always been political.

[328] Now that fundamentalists were in the mainstream, Riley set out to create a political movement and push his anti -modernist agenda.

[329] Unlike John Nelson Darby, the father of the rapture, who thought there was no point in engaging with the issues of the world, Riley believed that if Christians shaped society according to their beliefs, they could cause the apocalypse to come sooner.

[330] He said, quote, when the church is regarded as the body of God -fearing, righteous living men, Then, it ought to be in politics and as a powerful influence.

[331] His biggest concern was a new idea that was sweeping through the country, Darwin's theory of evolution.

[332] Fundamentalists, many of them were critical of Darwinian evolution.

[333] They didn't believe that humans were the product of survival of the fittest or of natural selection.

[334] They believed that humans were created in the image of God.

[335] Riley saw evolution as the real linchpin of modernism, and refuting it became his top priority.

[336] There were a lot of Americans, whether they were, were fundamentalists or not, who were uncomfortable with Darwinian ideas of evolution as they understood them.

[337] And they often didn't understand them very well.

[338] But they simply reduced evolution to the idea that humans came from monkeys and humans were essentially just animals.

[339] And that made them uncomfortable because that seemed to contradict the idea that humans had free will and that humans were a distinct creature that had a soul.

[340] Riley and members of his organization, the World's Christian Fundamentals Association, traveled across the country, rallying support for laws that would prohibit teaching evolution in public schools.

[341] Because they were convinced that evolution was undermining children's ethics.

[342] Because really, if we're all just animals, why not do whatever we want?

[343] Was there logic?

[344] That angered a lot of liberal groups who saw this as anti -scientific and a violation of free speech.

[345] The question of whether to teach evolution in public schools came to a head in the now -famous case, the state of Tennessee versus John Thomas Scopes.

[346] In 1925, biology teacher John Scopes, Or, as you probably know it, the Scopes' monkey trial.

[347] Whether a man was descended from the monkey or just making a monkey out of man. On one side, there was John Scopes, a high school biology teacher charged with illegally teaching the theory of evolution.

[348] He was represented by well -known attorney Clarence Darrow.

[349] There's a cause for all sorts of human conduct.

[350] Just exactly as it's a cause for all the physical action of the universe.

[351] And on the other side, the state argued that teaching evolution was unconstitutional.

[352] Riley helped get a political superstar as the prosecuting attorney, William Jennings Bryan, who was a three -time Democratic candidate for president.

[353] Brian became the face of this fundamentalist crusade.

[354] As the world waited, hundreds jammed the courtroom to see if man's intelligence and belief could be controlled by law.

[355] The trial lasted just eight days.

[356] Brian argued that if evolution wins, Christianity goes.

[357] Both.

[358] Darrow mocked Brian repeatedly for his very literal reading of the Bible and cornered him into admitting that he didn't know much about science.

[359] There was a lot of mudslinging back and forth, all happening in the public eye.

[360] It gets national attention.

[361] I mean, it's just enormous news.

[362] The press and public listened with unprecedented interest as the legal brains of both sides was the culmination of Riley's hard work, the moment that might launch white evangelicals as a political force.

[363] In the end, the jury deliberated for just nine minutes before Brian, Riley, and the fundamentalists won the trial.

[364] Scopes was forced to pay a $100 fine, although the decision was later overturned on a technicality.

[365] But the more important impact of the case was that the media circus around the trial hurt public opinion about fundamentalists.

[366] It really ultimately makes the fundamentalists look stupid to a lot of people outside that tradition, dealing a real blow to Riley's vision for political engagement.

[367] After the trial, white evangelicals largely stepped away from American politics.

[368] For most of the 20th century, evangelicals were not involved in politics, at least not in any organized way.

[369] Instead, many evangelicals sought to shield themselves from the pressures of the modern world, and the unnerving, some would say apocalyptic politics of those decades, World War II, the Cold War, communism, the spread of nuclear weapons.

[370] Evangelicals began to withdraw from the larger world, the larger community, and construct what I call a subculture, which was this vast and interlocking network of congregations, denominations, Bible schools, Bible camps, Bible institutes, seminaries.

[371] So it was possible, and I can attest to this personally, to grow up within that subculture, and have very, very little commerce with anyone outside of that world.

[372] It was a closed society in many ways.

[373] This isolationism made Riley's mission nearly impossible.

[374] Eventually, he passed the baton to a pastor named Billy Graham, who Riley persuaded to become president of the college he'd founded.

[375] Riley also passed on his political mission, although Graham took it in a different direction, choosing to mostly stay out of public debates while providing counsel to many presidents, both Republican and Democrat.

[376] But while Graham didn't create a political movement...

[377] He is the person who starts to re -engage evangelicals with the larger culture and the larger society.

[378] And it wasn't until the 1970s, long after Riley was gone, that evangelicals really got involved in politics.

[379] And he began with a court case that brought to the surface a long -ignored, an uncomfortable reality.

[380] From Vincennes, Indiana, and you're listening to ThruLine from NPR.

[381] Thanks.

[382] Love your show.

[383] On the TED Radio Hour, MIT psychologist Sherry Turkle, her latest research into the intimate relationships people are having with chatbots.

[384] Technologies that say, I care about you, I love you, I'm here for you, take care of me. The pros and cons of artificial Intimacy.

[385] That's on the TED Radio Hour from NPR.

[386] Part 3.

[387] The Moral Majority.

[388] If there's one issue that defines white evangelicals today, it's without a doubt abortion.

[389] Evangelicals are seen as the heart and soul of the pro -life movement, and Roe v. Wade is seen as the thing that launched it all.

[390] Here's how the story usually goes.

[391] January 22nd, 1973.

[392] Good evening.

[393] In a landmark ruling, the Supreme Court today legalized abortions.

[394] The U .S. Supreme Court decides in a 7 -2 vote that unduly restrictive state regulation of abortion is unconstitutional.

[395] The nine justices made abortion largely a private matter and ordered the states to make no laws forbidding it, except possibly during the final months.

[396] Story goes, evangelicals, who had been politically passive for decades, are so morally outraged by Roe that they become hellbent on overturning it.

[397] The quote -unquote religious right and a Republican political action group called the Moral Majority are born.

[398] But Randall Bomer says that after digging deeper...

[399] I've spent more years than I carried a tally hunting this down in various archival sources and talking to many individuals.

[400] He found that story to be mostly a myth.

[401] The abortion myth is the fiction that the religious right began as a political movement in direct response to the Roe v. Wade decision on abortion coming down from the Supreme Court on January 22, 1973.

[402] Balmer says before Roe, evangelicals were more or less indifferent to abortion.

[403] In fact, 1968, Christianity Today, the flagship magazine of evangelicalism, together with another evangelical group called the Christian Medical Society, met for a conference to discuss the morality of abortion.

[404] At the end of several days of convening, these are the top flight evangelical theologians at the time, they issued a statement saying, we can't really decide whether or not abortion is morally wrong, but we want to leave open the possibility of abortion and the availability of abortion to women.

[405] And in 1971, The Southern Baptist Convention, not exactly a redoubt of liberalism.

[406] The largest Protestant denomination in the U .S. The Southern Baptist Convention is one of the most conservative denominations.

[407] It was formed during the antebellum period when Southern Baptists split with Northern Baptists over the issue of slavery.

[408] The Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution calling for the legalization of abortion.

[409] a resolution they reaffirmed in 1974, the year after Roe v. Wade, and again in 1976.

[410] Okay, you're probably thinking...

[411] How did that happen?

[412] Like, it doesn't add up.

[413] Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, testing one, two, three.

[414] The Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission is sort of the PR machine for the Southern Baptist Convention, overseeing a lot of its outreach and communication efforts.

[415] If one looks at what evangelicals were saying about abortion in the late 60s, early 70s, most of it was framed in reaction to Roman Catholicism.

[416] They were, profoundly anti -Catholic, as were most American Protestants generally, right?

[417] They were very suspicious that Catholics wanted to take over the country.

[418] Again, Marie Griffith?

[419] So anything Catholics were for, you know, Protestants tended to be against.

[420] And abortion was seen as a Catholic issue, which meant most Protestants, including evangelicals, didn't take it up as their issue.

[421] All right, logical next question.

[422] If abortion wasn't the thing that really pulled white evangelicals into politics, what was?

[423] It really begins with a court case in 1971 that's decided by the district court at the District of Columbia.

[424] Case called Green v. Connolly.

[425] The case was about desegregation in schools.

[426] Keep in mind, this is late in the civil rights era, and segregation had been outlawed more than a decade earlier in 1954, with the case of Brown v. Board of Education.

[427] But changes on the ground were really slow.