| The active presence of conservative Christians in American politics over the past forty years prompts many important historical questions about the role of religion in a largely secularized democratic society. Despite being key contributors to the "right-turn" in modern American politics, which fostered numerous Republican party electoral successes, conservative Christians, for the most part, have remained outside the political mainstream and have struggled to advance their socially conservative agenda. Using the issue of school prayer as a case study, this dissertation explores the political, social, and cultural context of the so-called Christian Right's turbulent political experience. Spanning from the Supreme Court decision in 1962 to ban school prayer to the end of the so-called Gingrich Revolution in 1996, the dissertation documents the ways in which conservative Christian leaders mobilized their constituencies, and attempted to lobby Congress and presidents in support of constitutional amendments to reinstate organized prayer into public schools. Further, it highlights significant transformations in both the substance and technique of Christian lobbying, illuminating the extent to which religious values have shaped the nature of political discourse in post-World War II America.; Conservative Christians moved from a religious-moral and majority rights based framework predicated on direct lobbying of national policy leaders, to a grassroots approach aimed at building constituent support from the bottom-up through the use of arguments that emphasized secular constitutional principles and individual or minority rights. These tactical shifts by the Christian Right illustrate the presence---at least in terms of federal public policy development---of a secularized political system in which religious values are constrained in terms of their direct influence on public policy. In other words, the Christian Right was forced to engage the political system using secular or non-religious arguments, even in defense of religious issues like school prayer. Finally, this dissertation draws connections between the Christian Right and interest groups on the left, who, for their own peculiar reasons, also find themselves on the political periphery where they struggle to advance their public policy agenda and influence the direction and form of the state. |
