The Rights Turn in Conservative Christian Politics

How Abortion Transformed the Culture Wars

Bibliographic Data

ID23392004
AuthorsAndrew R Lewis (0000-0002-5291-0175, University of Cincinnati, corresponding author)
Year2017
Publication date2017-10-19
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueRights Turn in Conservative Christian Politics (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherCambridge University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1017/9781108278171
OpenAlexW2761616751
Open LibraryOL34558750M
ISBN9781108278171
LanguageEN
Citations received88

The Rights Turn in Conservative Christian Politics documents a recent, fundamental change in American politics with the waning of Christian America. Rather than conservatives emphasizing morality and liberals emphasizing rights, both sides now wield rights arguments as potent weapons to win political and legal battles and build grassroots support. Lewis documents this change on the right, focusing primarily on evangelical politics. Using extensive historical and survey data that compares evangelical advocacy and evangelical public opinion, Lewis explains how the prototypical culture war issue - abortion - motivated the conservative rights turn over the past half century, serving as a springboard for rights learning and increased conservative advocacy in other arenas. Challenging the way we think about the culture wars, Lewis documents how rights claims are used to thwart liberal rights claims, as well as to provide protection for evangelicals, whose cultural positions are increasingly in the minority; they have also allowed evangelical elites to justify controversial advocacy positions to their base and to engage more easily in broad rights claiming in new or expanded political arenas, from health care to capital punishment

Christian right · Fundamental rights · Grassroots · Human rights · Political science · Politics · Public opinion · Right to property · Secularism · Sociology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Law · Religion and Society Interactions

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