The Eighties in America - Salem Press (2009)

of the 1970’s by using his influence as a so-called tele-
vangelist to form a political action group called the
Moral Majority in the summer of 1979. This group
has sometimes been credited with helping elect
Ronald Reagan as president the following year. Led
by Falwell, the Moral Majority condemned abortion,
homosexuality, and the Equal Rights Amendment
and supported a balanced budget and increased mil-
itary spending. The group’s public prominence was
short-lived, however, since Falwell dissolved it in
1989, although the Christian Coalition, founded by
Pat Robertson in 1989, carried forward significant
aspects of the Moral Majority’s agenda. Thereafter,
the influence of the “Religious Right,” as Falwell and
other conservative Christians came to be known, was
still a prominent force in American politics. The ex-
tent of this political influence, though, was widely
debated. Falwell remained a regular commentator
on public events into the twenty-first century.

Impact The early twentieth century witnessed a de-

cisive split between conservative and liberal Chris-

tians. After this division, conservative Christians

tended to retreat into their own cultural enclaves,

distant from public affairs, while it was the liberal

Christians who were more likely to engage in activ-

ism. In the last half of the twentieth century, though,

conservative Christians reacted to the U.S. Supreme

Court’s decisions removing government-sponsored

prayers from public schools and, still later, its opin-

ion inRoe v. Wade(1973) granting constitutional

protection to abortion rights. They began to take

public action against these decisions and other events

they found anathema to their values. Falwell helped

leverage this public opposition into a more wide-

scale engagement by conservative Christians in the

political process, turning them into a significant lob-

bying force in American politics.

Further Reading

D’Souza, Dinesh.Falwell, Before the Millennium: A Crit-

ical Biography. Chicago: Regnery Gateway, 1984.

Falwell, Jerry.Falwell: An Autobiography. Lynchburg,

Va.: Liberty House, 1997.

Harding, Susan Friend.The Book of Jerr y Falwell: Fun-

damentalist Language and Politics. Princeton, N.J.:

Princeton University Press, 2000.

Timothy L. Hall

See also Bakker, Jim and Tammy Faye; Conserva-

tism in U.S. politics; Elections in the United States,

1980;Hustler Magazine v. Falwell; Moral Majority;

Reagan, Ronald; Religion and spirituality in the

United States; Robertson, Pat; Televangelism.

Family Ties

Identification Television comedy series

Date Aired from September 22, 1982, to May 14,

1989

A successful long-lived situation comedy,Family Tiestack-

led family issues, social ideologies, and politics and helped

make a star of Michael J. Fox.

A distinctively 1980’s situation comedy,Family Ties

was a long-running series that fused personal issues

affecting the family with the societal conventions

and politics particular to the decade. The show

ran for seven seasons on the National Broadcasting

The Eighties in America Family Ties
353

Jerry Falwell, right, with Phyllis Schlafly at a Moral Majority
news conference in 1984.(AP/Wide World Photos)