The Radical Mind: The Origins of Right-Wing Catholic and Protestant Coalition Building
The Radical Mind: The Origins of Right-Wing Catholic and Protestant Coalition Building
Ebin, Chelsea
product information
Condition: New, UPC: 9780700636990, Type: Hardcover ,
join & start selling
description
ndbreaking analysis of the origins of the Christian Right, whose political victories are radically reshaping the landscape of American society. Scholars and the public alike have traditionally regarded the New Right and the Christian Right as separate movements. The New Right is supposedly a secular right-wing operation with purely political goals, while the Christian Right is an evangelical Protestant movement largely motivated by religious convictions. Insofar as both are conservative efforts, most people view them as reactionary and driven by a culture-war backlash against liberal changes to society.

Chelsea Ebin's The Radical Mind aims to overturn this consensus. Through a close analysis of New Right architects Connaught Marshner and Paul Weyrich (who is often seen as secular but was a committed Catholic), this book explores the way conservative Catholics and Protestants overcame their long-standing antipathy to form a political coalition--what Ebin calls the New Christian Right. Drawing on extensive archival research, Ebin shows how the movement's key architects infused right-wing activism with religion. Rather than working to conserve the past, this book argues that the New Christian Right is fundamentally a forward-looking and proactive movement focused on remaking the political landscape in the United States.

The radical aims of the New Christian Right have been obscured by the way they cultivated a shared identity of victimhood and manipulated the discourse about backlash to create a nostalgic idea of the past that they then leveraged to justify their right-wing policy goals. The Catholic-Protestant alliance constructed an imagined past that they projected into the future as their ideal vision of society. Ebin calls this strategy "prefigurative traditionalism"--a paradoxical prefiguring of a manufactured past. Using this tactic, the New Christian Right coalition disguised the radicality of its politics by framing their aims as reactionary and defensive rather than proactive and offensive.

An interdisciplinary work informed by the fields of history, religious studies, public law, and American politics, The Radical Mind offers a new and convincing explanation for the recent gains of the Christian Right and the morally supercharged political landscape we face today.

reviews

Be the first to write a review

member goods

No member items were found under this heading.

notems store

Rand McNally Easy to Read! ...

by Rand McNally

Calendar/Blank Book /Folded

$4.49

The Gospel of the Holy ...

by Ouseley, G. J.

Paperback /Paperback

$6.98

The Plants of Middle Earth: ...

by Hazell, Dinah

Paperback /Paperback

$17.21

listens & views

KING KONG

by ZAPPA,FRANK / PONTY,JEAN-LUC

COMPACT DISC

out of stock

$12.99

SOMETHING DIFFERENT

by GORDON,DEXTER

COMPACT DISC

out of stock

$19.99

LAST LAUGH (REIS)

by BRIGADE

COMPACT DISC

out of stock

$14.99

DER SCHATZ IM SILBENSEE

by ASTOR,WILLY

COMPACT DISC

out of stock

$10.99

Return Policy

All sales are final

Shipping

No special shipping considerations available.
Shipping fees determined at checkout.