I think of Conservative Christian Agreements as ideas about how we should live that have been agreed upon by conservative Christians for the sake of some sort of control. I don’t know all there is to know–I do not at all see myself as an expert. I see myself as an explorer. And in this exploration, I’m better able to see how the foundation of some of these agreements is racism. It’s a miserable acknowledgement, to say the least, but here we are.
One of these agreements is that conservative Christians will vehemently oppose abortion. We talk about the opposition in terms of the “sanctity of life” but it only pertains this strongly to the life of the unborn. Here’s an excerpt from an article by Shannon Craigo-Snell in the Anglican Theological Review titled “The Theological Anthropology of Dobbs: Women in Service to White Nationalism”. Everything below the line is from that article. You’ll find the rest of the article, which provides a fuller picture, via your school library’s database or by purchasing the Summer 2024, Vol 106, Num 3 issue of Anglican Theological Review.
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After Roe v. Wade, anti-abortion political action revolved around race in a different way, as detailed by Randall Balmer. There was no particular evangelical outrage when Roe became law; indeed, some saw it as an affirmation of religious liberty. It was six years later when the “religious right” decided abortion was an acceptable proxy for the real issue of concern: segregation.
When Brown v. Board of Education signaled the end of segregation in public schools in 1954, white parents responded by creating all-white Christian academies—more accurately referred to as “segregation academies”—across the country. These private schools enjoyed tax-exempt status until a court decision and a presidential order from Richard Nixon in 1970. Bob Jones University resisted, but in 1976 the IRS rescinding its tax-exemption.
Paul Weyrich, a conservative political operative, had been looking for an issue that could motivate religious conservatives to political action. He and others publicly blamed President Jimmy Carter for interfering with Christian schools. Weyrich and Jerry Falwell intentionally created emotional fervor around the issue of abortion in order to sway elections. They brought together Roman Catholics who opposed abortion as a part of a larger ethic and white evangelicals who were moved by an aggressive propaganda campaign. President Carter was demonized for refusing to outlaw abortion by constitutional amend-ment. Ronald Reagan, who had supported abortion as governor of California, decried the actions of the IRS “against independent schools.” Abortion, then, was a politically useful rallying cry for evangelical Christian segregationists. It was more than a dog whistle, but not by much.
It should be noted that the Dobbs opinion denies that earlier anti-abortion laws were motivated by maintaining racial, ethnic, or religious dominance. However, the historical record says otherwise, as seen in the American Medical Association’s concern to maintain Anglo-Saxon dominance in the nineteenth century. Furthermore, three members of the conservative majority on the Supreme Court were appointed by former President Donald Trump, who ascribes to the “great replacement theory.” This theory goes back to KKK member Theodore G. Bilbo, who served as governor of Mississippi and then as a U.S. Senator from 1935 to 1947. Bilbo feared that white society in the United States would be overrun by mixed-raced descendants. This fear that white people would be “replaced” by people of color has popped up again and again in popular culture and poli-tics, even as the details have changed. In a 1973 novel, The Camp of the Saints, white, Western society is destroyed by immigration from the global South. The Great Replacement, a book published in 2012, again stokes the fear of white people being replaced by immigrants.
Recall that Trump said there were “good people” among those who chanted, “you will not replace us” in Charlottesville in 2017. Campaigning in Minnesota in 2020, Trump said, “The racehorse theory, you think we’re so different? You have good genes in Minnesota.” He claims that undocumented immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.” In his campaign to be president in 2024, Trump asserts that if he is elected there will be a “baby boom” in the United States.” His words echo both the great replacement theory and eugenics.