Evangelicals were pro-choice until the late 70's

[SpankMe]

This is a 60-second long, or so, YouTube short. If accurate, it's an eye-opener into how the Christian right has devolved into fascist positions on abortion:

https://youtube.com/shorts/s3Efzy35dr0

[Hugh_Lebowski]

1. Probably mostly because the Catholics were against it is my guess (nt)

[RussellCattle]

4. Don't know, but sounds entirely reasonable. The "born again" evangelicals have usually tried.....

.....to out do the Catholics in a kind of "holier than thou" competition. Like some of our MAGAt friends, for whom no position is too extreme.

[Hugh_Lebowski]

6. True but in the time frame before the late 70's I think there was a desire to 'differentiate'

their little 'movement' from the Catholics. I mean, if you're pretty much the same ... the larger group is likely to win.

[RussellCattle]

8. You're absolutely right. Thinking back now I remember their criticism of "Roman Catholics" as....

.....church goers who listened to priests and never read scripture.

[Hugh_Lebowski]

10. And it is, in fact, recommended in the Bible that if a woman gets pregnant through adultery

It's perfectly proper to cut the baby out of her, or whatever brutal abortion methods they had available in those days.

You know, as punishment for cheating.

Abortion is actually condoned by scripture ... just not the WOMAN ... choosing it.

Fun fact.

[RussellCattle]

11. Fun fact, indeed. So the Evangelicals stopped reading the Bible so much and just started.....

......watching Jerry Falwell and the other TV grifters for their ideological foundation. Makes sense. Writing checks is easier than going to bible study and being confronted with some uncomfortable ideas.

[JHB]

15. Pretty much. Being up in arms about abortion was seen as a "Catholic thing"...

...and no self-respecting Southern Baptist/Pentacostalist/name-your-fundy-protestant-demonination-ist wanted their neighbors thinking they were Catholic.

Or at least, that's the way it worked at a practical level.

[keithbvadu2]

2. 1+

[multigraincracker]

3. Divorce was the big issue until Reagan.

Then it changed.

[RussellCattle]

9. Very true. One small and brief exception was their efforts to create a legal "marriage for eternity"

......in Mississippi a few years back. That is to say a legal marriage from which the state would not allow divorce. This brief effort was "still-born" as it happened because it was a bridge too far for some of the born-again (but not born yesterday) crowd.

[keep_left]

5. Basically, what changed was Protestant-Catholic "co-belligerence", at least among...

...the conservative churches. The left could learn a lot from their cooperation in the creation of a successful movement. (Eventually, resentments developed among them because the Protestants would not let the Catholics rise to leadership positions in the "pro-life" groups. The Catholics ended up decamping to their own organizations).

https://msmagazine.com/2022/05/19/abortion-catholic-church-opus-dei-evangelical-christianity-religion-roe-v-wade/

[Dave in VA]

7. This was why I left the church

When Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson started the "Christian Coalition" everything changed. Anti-choice, prosperity gospel, etc.

Left it all behind and have never looked back.

[Hekate]

12. Newt Gingrich, Jack Abramoff, Ralph Reed, Tom DeLay. They were foundational in politicizing religion

They didn’t do it by themselves, but oh they were there in the beginning.

It’s complicated, it really is. But think how cynically-used the phrase “moral majority” was. Then think how cynical you’d have to be to use people’s religious beliefs against them so you could attain money and power on a national, and even international, level.

Protestants had always mistrusted Roman Catholics, in part because of that “foreign potentate” thing. But old mainline Protestants were the WASPS who held power from the beginning.

Fundamentalists had by and large stayed out of politics because their eyes were on the World To Come. And they really mistrusted the Roman Catholics. It was a long road from there to Evangelical mega-churches and making common cause with Catholics.

This is only a tiny introductory sketch.

[Kaleva]

13. Hard to believe that denominations that took a dim view on divorce and premarital sex

would be pro-choice.

[FakeNoose]

14. The Catholic Church has always been anti-abortion, anti-choice

The Christian Evangelicals didn't see themselves in any kind of partnership with the Catholic Church, as far as I know. The whole political movement came about in the early 70's when Jerry Falwell's Religious Right became a thing. Before that, non-Catholics didn't take a stand on abortion one way or the other.

Nobody called themselves Pro-Choice or Anti-Choice back in those days. The Religious Right didn't like being called "anti-abortion" because they thought it backed them into a corner of negativity. So they re-positioned themselves as the "Pro-Life movement." That happened in the 1980's and I believe the American Catholics adopted the same political stance as the Religious Right. I believe the evolution of the names "Pro-Life" and "Pro-Choice" were all done for PSA/public messaging reasons.

This guy is doing a very quick commentary and skipping over a lot of details. But he's accurate in what he says.

[Freddie]

16. They needed an issue to rile people up and get votes

And segregated schools was no longer “cool”