What’s interesting is the Southern Baptist Convention’s turn on school prayer over the decades. In the wake of the Supreme Court decisions circa 1962 ending public school prayer, the Convention applauded the removal of prayer in public schools and affirmed its commitment to church/state separation as a public good. Of course their position was motivated largely by anti-Catholic paranoia. But they were on the side of the angels nonetheless. It wasn’t until the late 70s and 80s that the SBC began to take doctrinal positions that school prayer should be reintroduced, not commenting on their previous support.
They had a similar delayed reaction to abortion. The Convention was at least agnostic on Roe v. Wade for years. Arguments in support of abortion access could found without looking too hard. But something happened in the late 70s and 80s that the church again turned nearly 180 degrees.
I know there’s been work on the influence of theologians like Francis Shaeffer on conservative Protestant denominations in moving them to oppose abortion, but these turns also seem a product of cynical political opportunism as the Reagan coalition forms at the same time. A unified ideology comes out that coalition that joins poisonous strains that had always been present in the South that include religiously grounded anti-science, anti-education, anti-LGBTQ, with the new anti-abortion movement. Throw this in the already present hyper-militarist, hyper-capitalist elements on top of the solid racism and xenophobia that weren’t sufficiently extinguished by the 60s and 70s reform governments and a very toxic but attractively holistic world view comes to the South.
My feeling is that white southerners, outside of some large cities and some university towns, are less politically and ideologically diverse now than they ever have been.
typos edited
