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Christian Worldview
Compare/Contrast the worldview of the Religious Right, at the time of its founding, to your current
worldview. Your answer must be at least 250 words.
Christian Worldview
With its origin in the early eighties, the Religious Right was initially an amalgam of
Evangelical Pentecostals. It initially emerged from the biblical higher criticism in the theological
colleges and divinity schools, the teaching of Darwism in public schools system, the existing and
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or perceived threat of communism. The Religious Right thus includes Catholics, Jews and
Mormons who hold very conservative views on politics in addition to the occasional Secularists.
This have joined together and taken over the Religious Right. The Religious Right can thus be
said to be a the meeting point between the evangelicals with a penchant for politics and were
bold enough to politicize the pulpit and the non-evangelicals who saw the opportunity to work
with the religious to play politics.
One can thus draw the conclusion that the Religious Right increasingly finds that political
goals are the overarching aspects that gel them together. This can be traced to the changes that
happened in the early and late 60’s that affected the national psyche – civil rights conflicts,
Vietnam protests, the alternative youth culture, the women’s liberation movement, the sexual
revolution, and the rise of the new religions (ancient religions emerging from obscurity)
(Hansen, 2008). When the glue that joins Religious people together changes from the word of
God to politics then society is going down a slippery road – in 1962, the Supreme Court banned
prayer and bible reading in schools, legalized first trimester abortion in 1973 and regulated
government involvement in private Christian academies.
Presently, the Religious Right is based on four cornerstones; the assumptions, that moral
absolutes exists as surely as mathematical or geological absolutes, that metaphysics, morals,
politics and mundane customs stand on a continuum, that government’s proper role is to cultivate
virtue, and not to obstruct the activities of the marketplace, and that all successful societies need
to operate within a framework of common assumptions (Hansen, 2008). This explains why
liberals are increasingly major actors in the present Religious Right.
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References
Hansen B. S (2008). Religion and Reaction: The Secular Political Challenge to the Religious
Right, Rowman & Littlewood Publishers, Inc., Plymouth, UK.
