From Bombing Textbooks to the Moral Majority
How evangelicals turned fear into a political machine
In 1974, West Virginia parents didn’t just fight over textbooks. They blew them up, proving that when fear meets politics, the explosions echo for decades.
The spark? Critics claimed new textbooks were filled with secularism, sex, and un-American values.
Protests exploded. Thousands marched through the streets, some carrying clubs, shouting threats at teachers and school board members. Church parking lots became the stage for book burnings, because nothing says “love your neighbor” like a bonfire in the church parking lot filled with multicultural books.
In Oak Hill, a dynamite blast tore through the Board of Education’s copy room, where new textbooks were stored, shattering windows.
School buses carrying children were shot at, which really drives home the “family values” message. A board member’s family business was bombed.
It wasn’t really about reading lists. It was about who gets to shape the moral imagination of the next generation.
The First Battle Wasn’t About Books
Just a few years earlier, white evangelical leaders had rallied around another cause, and it was too offensive to win public support…
In 1970, the IRS announced it would revoke tax-exempt status from private Christian schools that practiced racial segregation. Many of these were “segregation academies” founded after Brown v. Board to avoid racial integration. Bob Jones University became a national symbol, banning interracial dating and refusing Black students until 1971.
(Not-so-fun fact: Some Christian leaders still oppose interracial marriage.12)
Leaders like Jerry Falwell framed the IRS policy as an attack on “religious freedom.” But really, they wanted the freedom to discriminate based on race, which is less catchy on a bumper sticker.
When they realized this cause couldn’t win broad public sympathy, they started searching for something new.
The Meeting
Pastor and author,
, in her book, Shameless, retells the story: evangelical leaders in a room, asking, What issue will move people to the polls?They floated school prayer, pornography, and the Equal Rights Amendment. None had the unifying punch they wanted. Then came the suggestion: abortion.
It was politically perfect. It painted opponents as murderers. It didn’t carry the baggage of segregation. And it could be framed as a moral crusade that transcended race. The movement’s mailing lists and donor networks, built on the fight for segregation, were now powering a new cause.
The Rewrite of History
Here’s what the Moral Majority doesn’t put in their origin story: before the late ’70s, abortion wasn’t a defining evangelical issue.
Many Protestant leaders saw it as morally complex. The Southern Baptist Convention — the same denomination that split from Northern Baptists over slavery, barred women from preaching, and has faced numerous abuse scandals — passed resolutions in 1971, 1974, and 1976 supporting legal abortion in cases of rape, fetal deformity, or danger to the mother’s health.
Books like Joseph Fletcher’s Situation Ethics argued that morality was rooted in love and context, not just rigid rule-keeping. My grandmother, a Southern Baptist pastor’s wife, brilliant and avid reader, gave the book to my father in the 1970s because it was impactful to her. She recognized nuance and complexity. Many Christians today still do. That book is still used today in seminaries to teach Christian Ethics.
The Moral Majority didn’t inherit a no-compromise stance on abortion. They created one, like a DIY kit for culture wars.
Fear as Fuel
By 1979, Falwell’s Moral Majority was born. The science and textbook wars and segregation battles had already proven the formula:
Pick an issue.
Frame it as a fight for God’s truth against cultural collapse.
Mobilize churches into a voting bloc.
Optional: add a bonfire for dramatic effect.
The Echo Today
The faces and issues change. The playbook doesn’t.
In the 1970s, they swapped a then socially inappropriate cause (segregation) for a “morally pure” one (abortion) without changing the strategy. Today, even as most Americans support LGBTQ rights, conservative Christian politicians double down on opposing them.
(“Fun” fact: Most Americans back LGBTQ rights, three in four support nondiscrimination laws, and about seven in ten support marriage equality.34)
Why? Because it still works to rally their base — even if it alienates the broader public. And as history shows, when the playbook works, they don’t rewrite it — they just update the cover art.
Next up: How the Moral Majority’s tactics evolved in the Reagan years, and why the fusion of religion and politics became harder and more dangerous to untangle.
https://wcyb.com/features/weekend-drive/preachers-controversial-video-goes-viral?utm_source=chatgpt.com
https://abcnews.go.com/US/georgia-councilmans-defiant-opposition-interracial-marriage-leads-resignation/story?id=67639500&utm_source=chatgpt.com
https://prri.org/spotlight/americans-views-on-transgender-rights-since-november-2024/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
https://news.gallup.com/topic/marriage.aspx?utm_source=chatgpt.com
A great, somewhat dense but “worth it” read that shows how the Christian culture wars are a retread of prior versions, all based in fear and control, is “Jesus, the Bible and Homosexuality” by Jack Rogers. Originally published by in 2006 with a clearly Presbyterian historical context from a denominational insider, Rogers backtracks to show how the church treated slavery and more recently treats LGBTQ rights with the same fear-based arguments that don’t actually work logically or practically but are used by leaders and consumed by churchgoers in the same fashion decade over decade. https://a.co/d/6viXzcJ
Devin, this is spot on. What you’ve laid out here shows how fear and control often dress themselves up in religious language but are really about power — who gets to shape the imagination of the next generation, as you said so well.
I lived through that 1970s culture-war moment, and what strikes me now is how quickly the “issue” could change while the strategy stayed the same. First it was segregation, then textbooks, then abortion, and today it’s LGBTQ rights. Different cover art, same playbook.
And yet, what gives me hope is that alongside those bonfires, there have always been people quietly tending another kind of fire — the fire of compassion, nuance, and courage. People who refuse to reduce faith to fear or morality to a weapon.
Thanks for reminding us that if we don’t name this history honestly, we’ll just keep repeating it.