Part III: 'Religious Front for the Corporate Right'

EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the last in our series of articles drawn from "Politics in America: The American Right," by Joanne Ricca.  She was the legislative research and policy director for the Wisconsin State AFL-CIO. The last version of the paper was published in 2012, but it is still timely, given the Trump administration's hostility toward organized labor, especially public employee unions. Click here to read Part I and here to read Part II. Full copies of the report are available by emailing me at bcraig8960@gmail.com

By BERRY CRAIG

AFT and KEA/NEA retiree

Joanne Ricca titled the last section of her paper "Religious Front for the Corporate Right." It especially resonates today in a state like Kentucky, which is nearly 87 percent white and predominantly rural, and where most people who identify as Christians are Protestant evangelicals.

Historically white evangelical Protest churches emphasized the hereafter over the here-and-now and steered clear of "worldly" politics. But that changed dramatically with the rise of the Religious Right in the late 1970s.

Overwhelmingly, white Christian evangelicals of the "Jesus is my Savior, Trump is my President" persuasion back the current occupant of the White House. 

"Trump once again won the support of about 8 in 10 white evangelical Christian voters, according to AP VoteCast, a sweeping survey of more than 120,000 voters,"  wrote Peter Smith of the Associated Press. "That level of support — among a group that represented about 20% of the total electorate — repeats similarly staggering evangelical support that Trump received in 2020."

The rise of the Religious Right

Paul Weyrich, a leader of the New Right, "saw the potential of expanding the Right's base among white, middle-class fundamentalists," Ricca wrote. She also cited leading Religious Right TV evangelists from the 70s, including Jerry Falwell, founder of the Moral Majority and Liberty University; and Pat Robertson, host of the 700 Club show and founder of the Christian Coalition. Both are dead. But the sectarian-secular alliance they and other conservative clerics and conservative Christian activists helped form continues with far-right pastors such as the Rev. Franklin Graham, Trump's favorite man of the cloth.

Graham, the son of famous evangelist Billy Graham, prayed at Trump's second inauguration, thanking the Almighty for his reelection: “Father, when Donald Trump’s enemies thought he was down and out, you and you alone saved his life and raised him up with strength and power by your mighty hand."  

But it was Falwell, Robertson and other conservative Christians who five decades ago enabled the New Right to "use scripture to mask Right Wing ideology," Ricca wrote. "Now they could convince sincere middle and working-class people to vote against their own economic interest by manipulating their religious faith. Now they would be beyond criticism. They could attack anyone who tried to expose the real pro-corporate, anti-democratic agenda as being anti-Christian."

Thus, politics was no longer a case of "render unto Caesar" among white Protestant evangelicals. "The preachers-turned-political leaders...urged people in the pews to become politically active" and proclaimed "that the road to salvation lay in the Bible and the ballot box," Ricca wrote.

As the GOP tacked further to the right, many Republicans began embracing far right Christian nationalism, a belief that the U.S. should officially become a conservative Christian country where church and state are no longer constitutionally kept separate. A February survey from the Public Religion Research Institute and the Brookings Institution revealed that "more than half of Republicans believe the country should be a strictly Christian nation, either adhering to the ideals of Christian nationalism (21%) or sympathizing with those views (33%)," wrote Ashley Lopez of National Public Radio.

Splitting the union vote by teaming up with the NRA and the NRTWC

The Religious Right eagerly embraced the New (and Old) Right's hostility to organized labor. Ricca quoted Falwell:

-- "Labor unions should study and read the Bible instead of asking for more money. When people get right with God, they are better workers."

-- "I think we ought to take the shackles off business and get rid of outfits like OSHA [Occupational Safety and Health Administration]." 

Robertson used the 700 Club show "to promote the Right's agenda among white fundamentalist Christians," Ricca wrote. She quoted from the Christian Coalition's "political training manual," which advised, "Christians have a responsibility to submit to the authority of their employers since they are designated as part of God's plan for the exercise of authority on the earth by man."

The Christian Coalition promoted especially potent wedge issues to court middle- and working-class voters: abortion and public school prayer. Ricca quoted Ralph Reed, a longtime executive director of the group: "They are the bridge that gets you to constituencies that aren't with you on the economic issues." Guns completed a trifecta "to divert workers from voting according to their economic interests and that of their families," according to Ricca,

 Ricca quoted the National Rifle Association's Neal Knox: "[The gun issue] is the one thing that will spin the blue-collar union member away from his union." She also provided some examples of the crossover between the Christian Coalition, the NRA and the avowedly anti-union National Right To Work Committee.

She  cited Chuck Cunningham, who led the NRA's "massive get out the vote effort to elect President George W. Bush." Cunningham, she added, was "a former director of voter education for the Christian coalition. He had been executive director of the anti-union New England Citizens for Right-to-Work."

in 1994, actor Charlton Heston, a former NRA president, backed the NRTWC when the group "lobbied Congress to defeat S.55 / H.R. 5 Anti-Strikebreaker bill.…Heston appealed to union members to 'put freedom first' and support NRA–endorsed candidates." The NRTWC touted Heston as "their world famous ally." Later, Heston got behind a national right to work bill. Ricca called him "a very effective spokesman for the NRA in distracting workers from the Right's real agenda."

In addition, she highlighted Grover Norquist, who headed the far-right Americans for Tax Reform. He helped lead "the anti-union paycheck protection/deception [state] ballot initiatives throughout the country. Norquist bragged, according to Ricca,  "'We're going to crush labor as a political entity' and ultimately 'break the unions.'"

In summarizing her study, Ricca touched on topics that are as current as today's news. She noted that while "the modern Right developed independently of the Republican Party, it now dominates that party." The New Right helped elect Ronald Reagan in 1980 and reelect him in 1984. George H.W. Bush and his son, George W. Bush, also largely owe their elections to the New Right.

But the election and reelection of Donald Trump signaled the New Right's almost complete takeover of the GOP. "We just watched the final fulfillment of a 50 year plan," Thom Hartmann wrote in Common Dreams the day after last year's election. "[Lewis] Powell "laid it out in 1971, and every step along the way Republicans have follow it.

"It was a plan to turn America over to the richest men and the largest corporations. It was a plan to replace democracy with oligarchy. A large handful of America’s richest people invested billions in this plan, and its tax breaks and fossil fuel subsidies have made them trillions. More will soon come to them....Our modern era of big money controlling government began in the decade after Richard Nixon put Lewis Powell — the tobacco lawyer who wrote the infamous 1971 “Powell Memo” outlining how billionaires and corporations could take over America — on the Supreme Court in 1972."

Ricca wrote that "corporate America [couldn't] care less about gun control, traditional family values or abortion (or the latest useful single-issue-of-the-day), not does it feel totally comfortable with the extremism of the religious front for the right, but the overall movement serves corporate interests perfectly."

She pointed out that "the Right has developed an extensive infrastructure of national and state–level think tanks, legal advocacy groups, magazines, columnists, social media, it's own Fox TV network and conservative commentators. They are magnified by the numerous conservative radio talk shows. Altogether they create an 'echo chamber' that gives the false impression of a large mandate for Right Wing policies."

The New Republic's Michael Tomasky says that ever expanding rightwing media echo chamber won the election for Trump.

"I’ve had a lot of conversations since Tuesday  [election day] revolving around the question of why Donald Trump won," he wrote. "The economy and inflation. Kamala Harris didn’t do this or that. Sexism and racism. The border. That trans-inmate ad that ran a jillion times. And so on.

"These conversations have usually proceeded along lines where people ask incredulously how a majority of voters could have believed this or that. Weren’t they bothered that Trump is a convicted felon? An adjudicated rapist? Didn’t his invocation of violence against Liz Cheney, or 50 other examples of his disgusting imprecations, obviously disqualify him? And couldn’t they see that Harris, whatever her shortcomings, was a fundamentally smart, honest, well-meaning person who would show basic respect for the Constitution and wouldn’t do anything weird as president?

"The answer is obviously no—not enough people were able to see any of those things. At which point people throw up their hands and say, 'I give up.'

"But this line of analysis requires that we ask one more question. And it’s the crucial one: Why didn’t a majority of voters see these things? And understanding the answer to that question is how we start to dig out of this tragic mess.

"The answer is the right-wing media. Today, the right-wing media—Fox News (and the entire News Corp.), Newsmax, One America News Network, the Sinclair network of radio and TV stations and newspapers, iHeart Media (formerly Clear Channel), the Bott Radio Network (Christian radio), Elon Musk’s X, the huge podcasts like Joe Rogan’s, and much more—sets the news agenda in this country. And they fed their audiences a diet of slanted and distorted information that made it possible for Trump to win." 

Ricca acknowledged that "the opinion of any individual on a given issue should be respected. However, unions have a duty to represent workers' economic interests and inform members of any threats to those interest. Members must be alerted to the Right's 'bait and switch' tactics. All voters must understand that it is dangerous to make a decision about a candidate based on a single issue, given that a movement hostile to middle class and working class economic interests is cynically manipulating emotional issues and religious faith."

She ended her study with a warning that rings truer than ever as Trump and his party are trying to wreck our representative democracy: Ideas have consequences. The Right [insert MAGA Republican Party] aims to repeal decades of progress in improving labor standards, civil rights, environmental and consumer protection, women's status, gay rights, public education and economic support programs (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc.) The very existence of unions as effective organizations to represent the economic interests of working families is threatened. This is a sophisticated, determined, corporate-funded, Right Wing movement that will not automatically be swept back by some hoped-for political pendulum. It will not just dissipate on its own. It needs to be challenged and defeated.