Religious rights

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The term religious rights describes a group of people who, out of religious conviction, are politically active in favor of conservatism . This often means the "Christian right" ( politically right-wing Christians ) in the USA , but the term is also transferred to the situation in other countries as well as to national-religious and ultra-Orthodox Jews , nationalist Hindus ( Hindutva , Sangh Parivar), fundamentalist - nationalist Buddhists, for example: Movement 969 in Myanmarand politically right-wing groups of Buddhist monks in Sri Lanka and Islamists , including right-wing nationalist Islamist movements such as B. the Gulen movement applied.

Origin and influence

The new Christian right emerged in the United States in the 1970s through cooperation of neoconservatives with evangelical - fundamentalist clergy and television preachers like Jerry Falwell and Tim LaHaye . The Presbyterian pastor Francis Schaeffer had a great influence on the later central actors of the Christian right. The Christian right in the USA is also recruited to a small extent from conservative Catholics. A prominent face of the Catholic right is the Republican Rick Santorum , who ran unsuccessfully as a candidate for the party's presidential primaries in 2012 and 2016 .

In the early 1990s, Christian rights began to organize themselves much more strongly as a "political" movement. Instead of clergymen and preachers, lawyers and politicians took on leadership roles. The central strategies in this phase included building right-wing think tanks , infiltrating and infiltrating the Republican Party and supporting Republican candidates in the elections. So was George W. Bush about a third of his votes from the religious right. The decisions of the Supreme Court are crucially influenced by religious rights. Judges who are close to or belong to the religious right make far more conservative decisions on gender discrimination and the death penalty than other judges.

The influence of the religious right in the US temporarily decreased in 2008. Young believers in particular fall away from the conservative church leaders. With the election of Donald Trump in 2016, the religious right experienced growing influence in American politics, especially because Vice President Mike Pence represents right-wing evangelical positions. Since Trump himself neither belongs to the Christian Right nor corresponds to the ideals of this movement, this should be seen more as a kind of alliance of purposes.

Since the 2010s, the religious right gained growing influence amid conservative politicians in Latin America. In 2015 Mauricio Macri was elected in Argentina and in 2017 Sebastián Piñera in Chile, but in particular the election of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil in 2018, who was influenced by the evangelical fundamentalist, marked a break in the otherwise rather Catholic country.

Recently, there has also been eschatologically based support for an unyielding Israeli policy towards the Palestinians and its other neighbors as the subject of agitation by these groups. (→ Christian Zionism )

Organizations

Founded in 1979, the Moral Majority Association by Jerry Falwell was one of the first organizations of the religious right in the United States. In the same year the lobby groups Christian Roundtable (Eng. "Christian Round") and Christian Voice (Eng. "Christian Voice") were formed. The main aim of the Christian Roundtable was to bring together leading politicians with important religious rights. In 1980 the group organized a meeting between Conservative Republicans, including Ronald Reagan, and Protestant fundamentalists, including WA Criswell, former president of the Southern Baptist Convention . The Christian Voice , which had 187,000 members a year after it was founded, set itself the task of assessing the “morals” of public officials. For this purpose, the group developed a “moral scale” with 14 main topics. The Christian Voice opposed abortion, quota regulations for ethnic minorities, bus transportation of school children to other counties to encourage desegregation , the United States Department of Education , gay rights, the SALT II treaties , pornography , sex education, and a host of other issues. Politicians who agreed with the Christian Voice on enough of these points were rated as "moral," with Republicans more likely than Democrats to meet this standard .

Other religious right organizations in the United States include the Christian Coalition of America , the Family Research Council , Focus on the Family , Concerned Women for America, and the Eagle Forum . Der Spiegel counts the Southern Baptist Convention in the United States to be the "spearhead" of the religious right.

Positions

Contraception and termination of pregnancy

A central concern of religious rights has been since the 1970s and especially since Roe v. Wade 's rejection of the right to abortion . Francis Schaeffer, Jerry Fallwell and other representatives of the religious right saw the decision of the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade as an attack on "family values". Already Ronald Reagan spoke out in his campaign for a constitutional ban on abortions.

Operation Rescue, founded in 1986 by Randall Terry and other religious groups, saw abortion as a “holocaust of unborn life”. Members of Operation Rescue use militant means as intimidation and physical harassment to women and doctors for days to weeks from entering abortion clinics, and by the activists. a. referred to as "killing centers" and to prevent them from "child murder" in "pregnancy counseling". Major actions by this group included protests in Atlanta during the 1988 Democratic National Convention and a 46-day "blockade" in Wichita, Kansas in 1991.

Efforts to ban abortion increased significantly during the presidency of George W. Bush. Many of the most important posts in the Bush administration were given to representatives of the religious right. They exerted direct and indirect influence on political decisions, for example by helping to determine which candidates were nominated for the Supreme Court and subordinate courts. They also tried to influence public opinion by posting false information on government websites, including claims that abortion caused breast cancer and mental illness .

During this time, religious rights expanded their campaign against reproductive rights and increasingly turned against contraception and especially the birth control pill . They redefined the beginning of pregnancy and began to portray the morning-after pill as a form of abortion. Christian rights, for example, were resolutely against an application for approval for an over-the-counter delivery of the morning-after pill on the grounds that the drug was an abortive that promoted promiscuity in young women.

Equal Rights Amendment and Feminism

The Christian right in the United States was instrumental in the failure of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), an amendment to the constitution on equality for women. The right-wing religious Eagle Forum was founded with the express aim of preventing ratification of the ERA. The ERA, passed by Congress , enjoyed widespread support among the American people. Nevertheless, the founder of the Eagle Forum , Phyllis Schlafly , worked with anti-feminist organizations through petitions and lobbying to prevent the acceptance of the ERA in key states and to persuade some parliaments to withdraw their approval. The ratification deadline set by Congress expired in 1982 and the ERA had failed.

Pat Robertson , founder of the Christian Coalition of America , said a constitutional prohibition on sex discrimination was "dangerous". The ERA not only carries the “danger” of women's rights, but also of rights for homosexuals. In an appeal for funds to fight the ERA in Iowa , he wrote, “The feminist agenda doesn't care about women's rights. It is a socialist, anti-family movement that encourages women to leave their spouses, kill their children, practice witchcraft , destroy capitalism and become lesbians . ”Jerry Falwell, founder of the Moral Majority , was that Opinion that the ERA would deprive women of many “special rights” by stipulating absolute equality. Feminism is the root cause of divorce because women strive for "self-actualization". "When we exclude women from public life, it is not because we want to forego them, but because we want to give them back their essential honor ... The greatest and greatest calling for women is always to be women and mothers," said Falwell. Even Howard Phillips , of the collection of the Republican Party by the Moral Majority arranged and religious rights, the ERA saw as "anti-family" and was of the view that lead the Amendment to the "liberation of women from the leadership of the husband" and "so that the Family unit "would destroy.

evolution

Religious rights reject the theory of evolution and try to anchor intelligent design in the teaching of public schools and to influence the legislation accordingly. For example, Tim LaHaye sees Darwin's theory as the reason for the "destruction of the moral foundation" of the United States and blames secular humanism for drugs, sex, violence, and abandonment in schools. According to Jimmy Swaggart , "teaching without God" is the greatest threat to children in the United States. Pat Robertson criticized the US government for teaching children an "amoral, anti-Christian and humanist" philosophy - something few states except "the Nazis and Soviets" had tried before.

In the 1980s, Christian rights attempted to influence state education policy by portraying secular humanism and evolution as a "religion" dominating public schools that restricted Christian freedom of religion and thus violated the 1st Amendment to the United States Constitution . This tactic had little success and was replaced in the 1990s by attempts to fill important positions in local school committees and thus to change the curriculum directly.

Private school institutions close to the religious right introduced compulsory intelligent design lessons. For example, students at Liberty University , which was funded by the Moral Majority , had to study one semester of creationist biology regardless of their subject.

homosexuality

Westboro Baptist Church supporters protest against homosexuality

Representatives of the religious right in the USA are predominantly intolerant of homosexuals and reject same-sex marriages . This is based on a literal interpretation of the Bible that condemns sexuality between members of the same sex, or an aversion to sexual practices associated with homosexuality. Religious rights prevented Bill Clinton from lifting a ban on homosexuals in the military in his first term. They mobilized Republicans, veteran groups and insiders in the military who claimed the presence of lesbian and gay soldiers disrupted the heterosexual institution of the military and negatively impacted troop morale.

Westboro Baptist Church , part of the far- right religious right, holds regular demonstrations against lesbians and gays. During the funeral of Matthew Shepard , a Wyoming college student murdered for his sexual orientation , Westboro Baptist Church supporters protested homosexuality, shouted insults and hate speech, and held up signs that read, "No Fags in Heaven," "Matt in Hell" and "AIDS cures fagots". The Family Research Council, one of the leading lobbying organizations for the religious right, distanced itself from the followers' methods, but shared their horror at an alleged " homosexual agenda ", stating that homosexuals who show no repentance "do not see the kingdom of God." inherit ”.

capitalism

The conservative Protestant attitudes of the religious right in the United States are linked to economically liberal views. According to Jerry Falwell , founder of the Moral Majority , capitalism is a God-favored economic system, as he said in 1987: “The Bible promotes free enterprise. The book of Proverbs and the parables of our Lord clearly promote private property ownership and the principles of capitalism. ”See also: Gospel of Prosperity .

Climate change

In the United States, sections of the religious right as well as social conservatives and advocates of the smallest possible role for the state ( small government ) deny that there is human-made global climate change . Religious right-wing leaders like Jerry Falwell, James Dobson and Pat Robertson question climate change. Falwell gave a sermon in 2007, entitled The Myth of Global Warming (dt. The myth of global warming ) and Robertson rejected the global warming in 2014 with the argument that the winter 2013/14 was particularly cold. Studies show that opposition to climate change efforts is particularly strong among Protestant white evangelicals . The climate change denial organization Cornwall Alliance , founded in 2005, plays a key role here . It rejects the limitation of greenhouse gas emissions for moral, theological, political and, according to its own account, also scientific reasons. Climate change is not denied by all representatives of the religious right. For example, have evangelical Christians in the Evangelical Climate Initiative (dt. Evangelical Climate Initiative ) joined forces to educate their community about global climate change.

Stem cell research

The religious right opposes research on embryonic stem cells because, according to representatives of the religious right, such research constitutes murder. They are trying to change public opinion about stem cell research through large-scale campaigns and to put pressure on politicians to block initiatives and new laws on stem cell research in the Senate and the House of Representatives . Organizations of the religious right increasingly employ their own scientists and experts who compile information on the topic of stem cell research. For example, the Family Research Council has a department called The Center for Human Life and Bioethics , which deals exclusively with stem cell research.

In May 2010, President Barack Obama signed a bill to promote research on embryonic stem cells. In doing so, he suspended the funding restrictions previously set by President George W. Bush. The religious right reacted with sharp criticism. Family Research Council President Tony Perkins called the new law "a lethal ordinance." The extraction of embryonic stem cells destroys developing life, according to Perkins, and is a "slap in the face of all Americans who believe in the dignity of every human life."

Links to other political movements

A survey conducted in 2010 found that there is an overlap between the religious right and the tea party movement . Half of Americans who see themselves as religious rights also counted themselves to the tea party movement. A poll by the Pew Research Center showed that 69% of eligible voters who agreed with the positions of the religious right supported the tea party movement. White evangelical Protestants are over-represented in both groups.

See also

Web links

further reading

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Chip Berlet and Matthew Nemiroff Lyons: Right-wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort . Guilford Press, New York 2000, ISBN 978-1-57230-562-5 , p. 213.
  2. ↑ Lukas Mihr: The Christian Right in the USA ( Memento of the original from April 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . In: materials and information currently , 3/08. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.miz-online.de
  3. ↑ a b c Manfred Brocker : Protest, adaptation, establishment: Christian rights in the political system of the USA . Campus-Verlag , Frankfurt am Main 2004, ISBN 978-3-593-37600-4 , pp. 159f.
  4. ^ Frederick S Lane: The Court and the Cross: the Religious Right's Crusade to Reshape the Supreme Court . Beacon Press, Boston 2008, ISBN 978-0-8070-4424-7 , pp. 8-9.
  5. ↑ Donald R. Songer and Susan J. Tabrizi: The Religious Right in Court: The Decision Making of Christian Evangelicals in State Supreme Courts . In: The Journal of Politics . 61, No. 2, 1999, pp. 507-526. doi : 10.2307 / 2647514
  6. ↑ More Americans Question Religion's Role in Politics , Pew Research Center poll, August 21, 2008
  7. ↑ a b Gregor Peter Schmitz: America's religious warriors fear for their power. In: Der Spiegel , June 16, 2008.
  8. ↑ Posner, Sarah. "How Donald Trump ...." New Republic . March 20, 2017. November 16, 2017.
  9. ^ Blow, Charles M. "Moore, Trump and the Right's New Religion." The New York Times . November 16, 2017. November 16, 2016.
  10. ↑ Evangelicals wield voting power across Latin America, Including Brazil . October 6, 2018. Retrieved November 1, 2018. 
  11. ^ A Perfect Marriage: Evangelicals and Conservatives in Latin America . In: The New York Times , January 17, 2018. Retrieved June 2, 2018. 
  12. ↑ a b c Glenn H. Utter and John W. Storey: The religious right: a reference handbook . ABC-CLIO, Oxford 2001, 2nd edition, ISBN 1-57607-212-6 , pp. 12ff.
  13. ^ Jerome L. Himmelstein: The Rise of the New Religious Right . In: To the Right: The Transformation of American Conservatism . University of California Press, Berkeley 1990, ISBN 0-520-06649-9 , pp. 97-128.
  14. ↑ Jeffrey D. Schultz, John G. West and Iain S. MacLean: Encyclopedia of religion in American politics . Oryx Press, Phoenix 1999, ISBN 1-57356-130-4 , p. 32.
  15. ^ Josef Braml : The Bush Administration's Faith-Based Foreign Policy . In: Hermann Kurthen, Antonio V. Menéndez Alarcón and Stefan Immerfall (eds.): Safeguarding German-American relations in the new century: understanding and accepting mutual differences . Lexington Books, Lanham (MD) 2006, ISBN 0-7391-1599-5 , p. 41.
  16. ↑ a b c d e Diane di Mauro, Carole Joffe: The Religious Right and the Reshaping of Sexual Policy: An Examination of Reproductive Rights and Sexuality Education . In: Sexuality Research & Social Policy . 4, No. 1, March 2007, pp. 67-92. doi : 10.1525 / srsp.2007.4.1.67
  17. ^ Seth Dowland: 'Family Values' and the Formation of a Christian Right Agenda . In: Church History . 78, No. 3, September 2009, pp. 606-631. doi : 10.1017 / S0009640709990448 .
  18. ↑ Katja Merin: Between Adjustment and Confrontation: Religious Right in American Politics . VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2004, ISBN 978-3-531-14363-7 , p. 79.
  19. ^ Steve G. Hoffmann: Operation Rescue . In: Roger Chapman (ed.): Culture Wars: An Encyclopedia of Issues, Viewpoints, and Voices . ME Sharpe, Armonk (NY) 2010, ISBN 978-1-84972-713-6 , pp. 418f.
  20. ↑ Madeline Duntley: Civic and Political ritual performances . In: Gary Laderman and Luis D. León (Eds.): Religion and American Cultures: An Encyclopedia of Traditions, Diversity, and Popular Expressions . ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara (CA) 2003, ISBN 1-57607-238-X , p. 535.
  21. ↑ Jesus help us . In: Der Spiegel , July 10, 1989.
  22. ^ Chris Mooney: The Republican War on Science . Basic Books, New York 2005, ISBN 978-0-465-04675-1 , e.g. BS 220.
  23. ^ Sara Diamond: Not by Politics Alone: ​​The Enduring Influence of Christian Right . Guilford Press, New York 1998, ISBN 1-57230-385-9 , p. 116.
  24. ↑ Valeska von Roques: Raise your leg and praise the Lord . In: Der Spiegel , March 23, 1987.
  25. ^ Eagle Forum . In: Randall Herbert Balmer: The Encyclopedia of Evangelicalism . Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville (KY) 2002, ISBN 978-0-664-22409-7 , p. 184.
  26. ^ A b c Michele Swenson: Democracy Under Assault: TheoPolitics, Incivility and Violence on the Right . Sol Venture Press, Denver 2004, ISBN 978-0-9766788-0-9 , pp. 172f.
  27. ^ A b c d e f Andrew Hartman: "A Trojan Horse for Social Engineering": The Curriculum Wars in Recent American History . In: Journal of Policy History . 25, No. 1, 2013, pp. 114-136. doi : 10.1017 / S0898030612000371 .
  28. ^ A b c Lenny Flank: Deception by Design: The Intelligent Design Movement in America . Red and Black Publishers, St. Petersburg (Florida) 2007, ISBN 978-0-9791813-0-6 , pp. 24-30.
  29. ^ Suzanne Goldenberg: Religious right fights science for the heart of America . In: The Guardian , February 7, 2005.
  30. ^ Didi Herman: The Gay Agenda Is the Devil's Agenda: The Christian Right's Vision and the Role of the State. In: Craig A. Rimmerman, Kenneth D. Wald, and Clyde Wilcox: The Politics of Gay Rights . University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2000, ISBN 978-0-226-71998-6 , pp. 139-160.
  31. ^ A b Tina Fetner: How the Religious Right Shaped Lesbian and Gay Activism . University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 2008, ISBN 978-0-8166-6633-1 , e.g. BS xiv, 104.
  32. ^ Martin Durham: The Christian Right, the Far Right and the Boundaries of American Conservatism . Manchester University Press, Manchester 2000, ISBN 978-0-7190-5485-3 , p. 52.
  33. ^ John D'Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman: Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America . University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1997, 2nd Edition, ISBN 0-226-14264-7 , p. 364.
  34. ^ A b c David A. Neiwert: Death on the Fourth of July: the story of a killing, a trial, and hate crime in America . Palgrave Macmillan, New York 2004, ISBN 1-4039-6501-3 , p. 105.
  35. ^ Anthony Joseph and Paul Cortese: Opposing hate speech . Praeger Publishers, Westport (Conn.) 2006, ISBN 0-275-98427-3 , p. 128 .
  36. ↑ David C. Barker and Christopher Jan Carman: The Spirit of Capitalism? Religious Doctrine, Values, and Economic Attitude Constructs . In: Political Behavior . 22, No. 1, March 2000, pp. 1-27. doi : 10.1023 / A: 1006614916714 .
  37. ↑ Jerry Fallwell in the Houston Chronicle, April 5, 1987, cited in: Glenn H. Utter and John W. Storey: The Religious Right: A Reference Handbook . 2nd Edition. ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara / Calif. 2001, ISBN 978-1-57607-594-4 , p. 142.
  38. ^ Jean-Daniel Collomb: The Ideology of Climate Change Denial in the United States . In: European Journal of American Studies . 9, No. 1, spring 2014.
  39. ^ Laurel Kearns: The Role of Religions in Activism . In: John S. Dryzek, Richard B. Norgaard, David Schlosberg (Eds.): The Oxford Handbook of Climate Change and Society . Oxford University Press, New York 2011, ISBN 978-0-19-956660-0 , pp. 414-430, 420.
  40. ^ Mark R. Amstutz: Evangelicals and American Foreign Policy . Oxford University Press, New York 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-998765-8 , p. 175.
  41. ^ Lindsay Abrams: Pat Robertson: Believing in climate change is "idiocy" because it's cold outside . On: Salon.com , February 19, 2014.
  42. ↑ Karin Edvardsson Björnberg et al .: 'Cornwallism' and Arguments against Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reductions . In: Environmental Values . 2020, doi : 10.3197 / 096327119X15579936382554 .
  43. ↑ Naureen Khan: Evangelicals preach climate change . In: Aljazeera America , August 17, 2013.
  44. ↑ Eve Herold: Stem cell wars: inside stories from the frontlines . Palgrave Macmillan, New York 2006, ISBN 978-1-4039-7499-0 , p. 16 .
  45. ^ A b Kathryn Lindsay Oates: Social Movement Adaptation: The Case of the Christian Right and Stem Cell Research . In: Journal of Political Science . 34, 2006, pp. 78-116.
  46. ↑ Kenneth D. Wald and Allison Calhoun-Brown: Religion and Politics in the United States . 7th edition. Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham / Maryland 2014, ISBN 978-1-4422-2553-4 , 229 .
  47. ^ A b C. Berndt: Stem cell research: Obama wants new freedom for science . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , May 17, 2010.
  48. ↑ Michelle Boorstein: Tea party, religious right often overlap, poll shows . In: Washington Post , October 2, 2010.
  49. ^ The Tea Party and Religion . Pew Research Center, February 23, 2011.