Heather Hendershot’s “God’s Angriest Man: Carl McIntire” (2007) describes Carl McIntire as “successful failure” (374). Hendershots calls him crude, stubborn, and unable to make real political, legal change during his career/lifetime. Yet his name was remembered. He was a strong anti-communist that would identify his “enemies” as groups such as the NAACP, the pope, and who Hendershots main focus’ is – the Federal Communications Commission (373).
McIntire mainly claimed to use his radio broadcasting to promote his presbyterian religion and host sermons as well as share religious lifestyle, when it reality his radio shows were pacted with strong right wing political views. He shared his strong opinions to influence others to think as he did. And he did gain a large following from it.
In this essay, Hendershot spotlights how the FCC had been trying to limit and monitor things said over radio broadcast that could be deemed as controversial. They worked on censoring (for lack of a better word) both left and right wing religious extremists who focused a bit too much on politics. It can certain be argued that this type of monitor can go against freedom of speech, and that’s what McIntire had done by repeatedly going against the FCC’s limitations. I believe he was instrumental to the creation of the Christian Right because of the way he interlaced religion and political to gain attention and following.
I think neo-evangelicalism was important to the rise of the conservative consensus because it had a more moderate factor that Old Christian Right wouldn’t tolerate. This New Christian Right approached issues from a newer, more ‘progressive’ approached that allowed them to make real political progress instead of simply ranting and not doing anything to fix whatever issue. The neo-evangelicalism allowed a wider range of [christian] conservatives to settle on more matters.
Will Wright 