During the Cold War era, military spending and the creation of jobs helped many working-class people become more financially stable with the increase in defence-based companies. In the article Jerry Falwell’s Sunbelt Politics: The Regional Origins of the Moral Majority, the Christian Right is composed of southern evangelical working-class people that see their faith and understandings of life aligning with republican ideology (Williams). One person who helped get the people together that compose the Christian Right is Jerry Falwell, who was an evangelical pastor who, throughout his career, created a megachurch in Virginia and amassed a large TV following (Williams). With his career as a TV evangelist and his widely known congregation, faith and business politics, Falwell was a key figure in the creation of the Christian Right due to his high visibility among the faith community in America. Jerry Falwell grew up in an economic depression where the local economy wasn’t the best initially but was helped by the addition of defence-related industries during the Cold War, which not only brought more people but also boosted his small town into a larger city economically as well (Williams). This led to him believing that the government’s military spending was good as it helped his local economy and town improve, and that belief would only grow stronger as time went on with the addition of his understanding of business politics. Throughout his time as a pastor and later a TV evangelist, he helped gather mainly working-class people together, as that was the group he could connect to with their work and politics (Williams). Those people he helped connect with through his preaching and faith end up becoming what would be called the Christian right as their faith, morals, and goals end up aligning with the Republican Party more than the Democrats.
Originally, Felwell’s ideas and policies aligned with the democrats more than the republicans. An example of this would be the decision to desegregate schools via Brown v. Board of Education court case where many cities in Virginia were resisting it by closing down schools rather than segregating them with the support of the democrats of the region (Williams). His anti-segregation policy led him to be distrustful of the federal government as they were the ones that made the desegregation ruling. Not only that, he viewed the federal government as being a threat to the white southern south way of life in which faith was a critical aspect that they were trying to get rid of (Williams). This view slowly changed as he increasingly dealt with the business side of running a congregation. His congregation was in a town where people in charge held republican ideas about business, which he slowly adopted as he became more of an entrepreneur in the faith industry. As a business entrepreneur in the faith industry, he became more aware of the republican view of government, which made sense to him in a business way, since he felt the federal government should stay out of the private industry sector due to personal interactions (Williams). Additionally, the views of the Republican Party were held by the majority of his congregation, which meant that he followed and supported the Republican Party in his later career as opposed to the Democrats due to his life experiences and beliefs.
Will Wright 