Review
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Title: We Gather Together: the Religious Right and the Problem of Interfaith Politics
Author: Neil J. Young
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Genre: History – 20th century
Year Published: 2016
Number of Pages: 425
Binding: Hardcover
ISBN13: 978-0-19-973898-4
Price: $34.95
Reviewed by Gene Mahalko for the Association for Mormon Letters
*We Gather Together* is a serious history book covering the rise, bumpy plateau, and decline of the Religious Right from the mid-20th century up through the Romney run for president in 2012. I lived through that entire period. I was raised in the LDS tradition, so I was more aware of the Religious Right from that perspective. There were, however, some surprising interactions between the LDS Church and evangelicals, particularly Southern Baptists, both positive and negative, that I had not been aware of.
I had always considered the Religious Right primarily an evangelical phenomenon, That may well have been true, especially during the Reagan years and the time of the Moral Majority, but the Catholic Church figured prominently in the birth of the movement in the late 1950s and early 1960s, with the rise of ecumenism, and Vatican II and the reforms of Pope John XXIII and Pope Paul VI. Evangelical Christians were the most diverse group, and usually the most prominent. The Southern Baptists were the largest part of that group, and a significant religious and political force, especially in the Bible Belt.
The other two major players in the Religious Right were fundamentally different from evangelicals in that they were monolithic religious organizations, rather than a confederation of various denominations. The Roman Catholic Church was and is the single largest religious denomination in the US. The Mormon Church, while relatively small as a percentage of total US population, as a single denomination, is actually one of the larger denominations in the US. Both the Catholics and the Mormons consider themselves “the one true church.” Evangelicals were less attached to the “one true church” idea, and more to the one correct theologic interpretation of the Bible. None of these three groups was great fans of the ecumenical movement within mainline Protestantism of the 1950s and 60s, but the Catholics and Mormons were clearly the most stand-offish.
Young had to pick and choose which parts of the story of the uneasy alliances, successes and failures of the religious Right to include. He concentrates on the period from 1960 (JFK, Vatican II), to the administration of Bill Clinton. The book is well annotated, with just over 100 pages of notes. I was very familiar with the 1963 school prayer decision, being a high school student in eastern Pennsylvania near where the case originated. I was a BYU student when President Spencer W. Kimball and the Mormon opposition essentially killed the ERA in the mid-1970s. By coincidence, I happened to know some of the LDS Californians leading the campaign for California’s Proposition 8, and I also knew some of the opponents of that campaign. I mention that because all three of those events are covered in some detail in the book, and I found the coverage to be thorough and accurate.
I often am not very happy with the way outsiders cover Mormonism. They always seem to mess up some details. Conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan gets the details right, and so does Neil J. Young. That gives me great confidence that the parts of the text that I don’t have thorough first hand knowledge of also have the details right.
Young covers the events mostly in chronological order. The 1960s had the ecumenical movement, the school prayer decision, and JFK. I was surprised to see that a number of churches, including some evangelical churches, were supportive of the decision. The major event for the Religious Right in the 1970s was of course the pro-life movement. Again, I was surprised to read that in the years leading up to *Roe v Wade*, many states, including some states in the deep South, had liberalized their abortion laws. The pro-life movement was primarily a Catholic endeavor, and evangelicals were uneasy allies in that fight. The Mormons didn’t even qualify as uneasy allies. They mostly avoided anti-abortion activism.
On the other hand, a few years after *Roe*, Mormons came out in active opposition to the ERA. It eventually failed ratification by three states; if Spencer Kimball had come out in favor of the amendment, it almost certainly would have passed in Utah, Arizona, and Idaho. Idaho had initially ratified the amendment, then rescinded it when the LDS Church came out in opposition. Several other states, including Virginia, were heavily influenced by Mormons in deciding not to ratify the ERA. If the pro-life movement was predominately Catholic, the anti-ERA movement was predominantly Mormon.
The 1980s were the decade of the evangelicals. Jerry Falwell created the Moral Majority. Reagan won the White House. Even though Carter was a Southern Baptist, he wasn’t pushing their agenda the way they wanted. A school prayer amendment was introduced. There was talk of an anti-abortion amendment to the Constitution. Great things were going to happen.
By the end of the Reagan administration, those hopes turned into disappointments. Being united in opposition to something is one thing. Being united on what to do instead is quite another. The constitutional amendments couldn’t get traction. Reagan seemed to mostly ignore the Religious Right except for symbolism. Some of the leaders of the Religious Right were embroiled in sexual or financial scandals. The decade did not end well for the Religious Right.
One event in the 1980s that I was not aware of was how much the film *The Godmakers* was used as an anti-Mormon propaganda tool by evangelicals. At the time I thought the film was embarrassingly shoddy, inaccurate and sensationalistic. I had no idea of the organized and informal use of the film to portray Mormonism as a cult. Young points out when discussing the Romney candidacy in 2008 and 2012, that that has toned down considerably, and evangelicals are much less sensationalistic toward Mormonism, likely because there was considerable national media attention on the Mormons, and sensationalistic claims would get pounced on by the media.
Young skips through the Clinton and Bush 43 years fairly quickly. He closes with an interesting analysis of the Romney campaigns in 2008 and 2012. Romney tried to talk like an evangelical in 2008, and that basically enraged more evangelicals than in won over. He learned his lesson and stayed away from using evangelical phrases in his speeches in 2012.
I think Neil Young has done an excellent job of illustrating the highlights and cross currents of Catholics, Mormons and evangelicals in the phenomenon known as the Religious Right. He now has a great set of contacts and contextual knowledge of what is happening in that arena today. The story is not over by any means, and I hope there is a folder full of notes for a sequel.
The Religious Right seems to have lost all control of the Republican Party. Donald Trump is not Their Boy by any stretch of the imagination. Huckabee’s campaign is barely registering, same for Santorum, previous darlings of the Religious Right. A liberal pope is achieving rock star status. A liberal (and Liberal) Catholic is the new prime minister of Canada. The number of religiously unaffiliated American Millennials is skyrocketing. Opposition to gay marriage has dropped almost totally off the radar screen in a matter of months after the Supreme Court decision. On the other hand, Mormon leadership stunned the world by denying church ordinances to the children living with same-sex parents.
For the Religious Right, the times are changing, and changing very rapidly. The next 20 years should be very interesting.