1962
While the Supreme Court's controversial school prayer ruling in
Engel v. Vitale didn't technically create the Religious Right, it certainly galvanized social conservatives who felt that society had become unacceptably secular.
1973
The Supreme Court's ruling in
Roe v. Wade, legalizing abortion, very likely created the Religious Right as we know it today. The anger of conservatives, who often characterize the ruling as a rejection of human life in favor of sexual liberation, has motivated the movement's base for four decades.
1979
Semi-reformed segregationist fireband
Jerry Falwell co-founded the Moral Majority, the first national modern Religious Right organization, in 1979.
1980
While some might have doubted the Religious Right's power and relevance during the 1970s, none could do so after 1980 - when the movement brought in four million new evangelical voters to elect
President Ronald Reagan by a landslide and produce the first Republican Senate majority since 1952.
1983
Psychologist and syndicated advice columnist
James Dobson created the Family Research Council in 1983, which worked to reframe the Religious Right's historically macho agenda around the maternal protection of children. This broadened the movement's appeal, though the Religious Right remained, and still remains, a primarily male movement.
1984
Reagan carried 49 out of 50 states in the 1984 election, further solidifying the Religious Right's influence over mainstream politics.1987
The unsuccessful attempt to nominate notorious
Christian Dominionism scholar
Robert Bork to the U.S. Supreme Court demonstrated the limits of a Religious Right movement whose power had, up until that point, often appeared to be limitless.
1988
Right-wing televangelist
Pat Robertson was a serious contender for the 1988 Republican presidential nomination, but the eventual nomination of the more moderate
George Herbert Walker Bush - like the unsuccessful nomination of Bork - showed the movement's limitations.
1989
Robertson didn't let his unsuccessful 1988 campaign deter him from building a national platform. When he founded the Christian Coalition in 1989, it quickly became one of the most powerful institutional forces in American politics.1992
White nationalist
Pat Buchanan's infamous "Culture War" speech at the 1992 Republican National Convention merged the interests of the Religious Rights with that of the racially-charged
"state's rights movement, further expanding its base of support within the party.
1994
The Christian Coalition was instrumental in generating Republican turnout for what would ultimately be a
completely successful Republican takeover of both chambers of Congress - the first time the Republicans had held the U.S. House in four decades.
1999
The Republican majority was no political match for President
Bill Clinton, whose slick and very Southern approach to politics quickly helped reframe the Religious Right as a sinister, meddlesome movement in the eyes of many moderate voters. While the movement remains part of the Republican Party base, and achieved some resurgence during the administration of President
George W. Bush, Religious Right founder
Paul Weyrich echoed the sentiments of many in the movement when he wrote in 1999 that "we probably have lost the culture war."
