The Rights Turn in Conservative Christian Politics

How Abortion Transformed the Culture Wars

Andrew R. Lewis

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781108417709
• eBook ISBN:
  9781108287050
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: American Government
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The Rights Turn in Conservative Christian Politics documents a recent, fundamental change in American politics with the waning of Christian America. Rather than conservatives emphasizing morality and liberals emphasizing rights, both sides now wield rights arguments as potent weapons to win political and legal battles and build grassroots support. Lewis documents this change on the right, focusing primarily on evangelical politics. Using extensive historical and survey data that compares evangelical advocacy and evangelical public opinion, Lewis explains how the prototypical culture war issue - abortion - motivated the conservative rights turn over the past half century, serving as a springboard for rights learning and increased conservative advocacy in other arenas. Challenging the way we think about the culture wars, Lewis documents how rights claims are used to thwart liberal rights claims, as well as to provide protection for evangelicals, whose cultural positions are increasingly in the minority; they have also allowed evangelical elites to justify controversial advocacy positions to their base and to engage more easily in broad rights claiming in new or expanded political arenas, from health care to capital punishment.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title
• Series information
• Title page
• Copyright information
• Dedication
• Table of contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction: Rights on the Right
• 2 Cultivating the Value of Rights: Evangelicals and Abortion Politics
• 3 But Words Can Never Hurt Me: Learning the Value of Free Speech
• 4 Separation Tranquility: Abortion and the Decline of the Strict Separation of Church and State
• 5 First, Do No Harm: Abortion and Health Care Opposition
• 6 Whose Rights: Abortion Politics, Victims, and Offenders in the Death Penalty Debate
• 7 Where’s the Right? What Abortion Taught the Losers in the Gay Marriage Debate
• 8 Conclusion: Rights, Reciprocity, and the Future of Conservative Religious Politics
• Epilogue
• Appendix A Variables and Coding
• Appendix B Statistical Tables
• Notes
• References
• Index