Jerry Falwell, the leader of a movement called the Moral Majority that arose in the late 1970s. Falwell spearheading a coalition of conservative, evangelical voters angered about a variety of social issues and other ills that plagued America.
The Moral Majority was the term given to a political action group that consisted mainly of evangelical Christians that sought to influence public policy. The now wielded considerable influence in American politics, and laws that affect our daily lives.
The formation and growth of this movement can be mainly attributed to the conservative backlash against the many upheavals of the 1960s, but the 1970s provided the main issue, the legalization of abortion, that stoked the movement’s grassroots activism. Throughout this decade, other related issues such as women’s liberation, the gay rights movement, the sexual revolution, secularism in schools, and fears of social disintegration-also provided fodder for evangelical and fundamentalist Christians. They saw these disturbing trends as the moral decline of the nation, the possible formation of a modern-day Gomorrah in America, and a general departure from what they believed used to be a God-fearing nation. The Moral Majority today is exactly what it was all those years ago, a violent political movement.
The following paper will provide insight as to how and why the Moral Majority became a force in American politics; Banwart-MoralMajority.pdf (wiu.edu)