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Learning the Value of Rights: Abortion Politics and the Liberalization of Evangelical Free Speech Advocacy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2016

Andrew R. Lewis
Andrew R. Lewis*
Affiliation:
University of Cincinnati
*
Address correspondence and reprint requests to: Andrew R. Lewis, University of Cincinnati, McMicken College of Arts & Sciences, 1102 Crosley Tower, 301 Clifton Court, Cincinnati, OH 45221-0037. E-mail: [email protected].
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Abstract

For the past century, the expansion of free speech rights has been the domain of liberals. Recently, however, conservatives have become advocates for expanded free speech rights. For Evangelicals Protestants, this advocacy would have been highly controversial only a generation ago, offending the base's ordered liberty sentiments. I suggest that abortion politics is a primary contributor to the evangelical free speech advocacy shift. Using a variety of data, I detail the evangelical shift toward expanded free speech by exploring the topics of radical protest, campaign finance, and obscenity. While rank-and-file evangelicals are less supportive of free speech than the general-public, elites have routinely used abortion politics to frame the shift toward individual free speech rights. Elites have diverged from their constituents to support a higher-priority issue (abortion), and the constituents have been supportive. Abortion politics has come to dominate evangelical advocacy decisions and has cultivated an evangelical rights culture.

Type
Symposium: The Politics of Religious Alliances
Information
Politics and Religion , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , June 2016 , pp. 309 - 331
Copyright
Copyright © Religion and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association 2016 

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