13. Still, Religion and Politics Didn’t Mix
To sociologists who paid attention to the Billy Graham movement, the return of Protestant Christianity to public life – what came to be termed the “religious right” – might not have come as such a surprise. However, sociologists admit that they did not pay attention to the forces that were brewing. The prevailing modicum of sociological thought was still the secularization thesis. They viewed America as continuing to become more and more secular, following the path that Europe had already taken. That attitude was not carried only by sociologists but also by many religious leaders, including Jerry Falwell, who would later become a leader of the religious right.
Billy Graham’s movement brought to the fore the age-old idea that evangelicals did not need to involve themselves with political action. If Christians focused more on evangelizing, bringing people into the Kingdom of God and under the allegiance of the Christian flag, then social evils would solve themselves. The broader system of the liberal state didn’t need to be fixed; the people who ran the state needed to be converted. Moreover, fundamentalists, as well as evangelicals, were very good at converting: the movement was continuing to grow, though not so quietly, given the national prominence of Billy Graham and his crusades.