6. Paul Weyrich Led the Way
Jerry Falwell, by his own admission, was not a political leader. He was a religious leader who was very concerned about the moral decline of America and believed that it could be reversed through political conservativism. He also had a considerable audience, largely thanks to “The Old Time Gospel Hour,” and they were foaming at the mouth wanting to do something about the crisis of legalized abortion. Falwell frequently engaged a man named Paul Weyrich, a conservative activist who is considered by many to be the father of the religious right.
Weyrich had long been on the conservative end of the Republican party, making him an outlier in his own party. He had proven key in getting evangelicals and fundamentalists to vote for Barry Goldwater in the 1964 campaign, mainly on the grounds of school prayer and the tax-exempt status of private Christian schools. However, those issues were not strong enough in the conservative Christian conscience to merit a large-scale turnout at the polls. The problem that incensed them enough to political action proved to be abortion. Weyrich recognized that galvanizing this massive voting bloc around the issue of abortion could shift the Republican party to a right-wing ideology that more closely resembled his own political views.