For more than three decades, American presidential candidates have desperately sought the conservative Evangelical vote. With an ever broadening base of support, the Evangelical movement in America may now seem to many a very powerful lobbyist on Capitol Hill. As Andrew Hogue shows, however, this was not always the case.
In Stumping God Hogue deconstructs the 1980 presidential election, in which Ronald Reagan would defeat Jimmy Carter and John B. Anderson, and uncovers a disproportionately heavy reliance on religious rhetoric–a rhetoric that would be the catalyst for a new era of presidential politics. Until 1980, the idea that conservative politics was somehow connected with conservative theology was distant from the American imagination. Hogue describes the varying streams of influence that finally converged by the Reagan-Carter election, including the rapidly rising Religious Right. By 1980, candidates were not only challenged to appeal rhetorically to a conservative religious base, but found it necessary to make public their once-private religious commitments.
In compelling and illuminating fashion, Stumping God explains the roots of modern religious politics and encourages readers to move beyond the haze of rhetorical appeals that–for better or worse–continually clouds the political process.
Table of Content
Introduction
1. Religion and American Conservatism: A Rhetorical History, 1944-1979
2. American Change and Religious Engagement, 1942-1976
3. Raising the Rhetoric of Righteousness: The Pivotal 1976 Election
4. Two Roads Diverged: Religious Conservatives and the Carter Disappointment
5. The Birth of a New Religious Politics in 1980
6. The Legacy of 1980 at the Dawn of a New Era: Lessons for Religion and Politics Going Forward
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Andrew Hogue is a lecturer in Political Science and Director of Civic Education & Community Service at Baylor University. He lives in Waco, Texas.
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