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God, Country, and Anita Bryant: Women’s Leadership and the Politics of the New Christian Right

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 June 2018

Emily Suzanne Johnson
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Abstract

As a new cohort of religious conservatives became major players in U.S. political discourse during the 1970s and 1980s, they expressed ambivalence about the political realm and often represented their religious motivations as simultaneously separate from politics and as justification for their political activism. Prominent conservative evangelical women drew on this ambivalence in specifically gendered ways, referencing their religious commitments as well as their roles as mothers, which they asserted both compelled them to speak out on political issues, and proved that these issues were not fundamentally political. Building on scholarship about women’s grassroots support in conservative movements, this article underscores the importance of women’s national leadership in the New Christian Right. It focuses on the career of singerturned- activist Anita Bryant, who offers a particularly instructive example due to her public and explicit transformation from representative symbol of American motherhood to outspoken political activist in the late 1970s. Within the context of a flourishing evangelical subculture and shifting political landscape, Bryant’s negotiations of her political authority exemplify conservative evangelical women’s ways of understanding their leadership in support of a platform that emphasized women’s domestic roles. It demonstrates how they invoked an existing tension between religious and political identification to expand the ideology of “traditional gender roles” without overstepping its bounds. More broadly, Bryant’s career offers insight into the importance of women’s national leadership in framing the rhetoric and priorities of the New Christian Right, including its central emphases on gender and its relationship with contemporary feminist movements.

Keywords

religious rightgenderwomanevangelicalism1970s
Type
Research Article
Information
Religion and American Culture , Volume 28 , Issue 2 , Summer 2018 , pp. 238 - 268
Copyright
Copyright © Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture 2018

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References

Notes

1. Bryant, Anita, Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory (Old Tappan, N.J.: Fleming H. Revell, 1977), 13–14.Google Scholar

2. An historical account of Revell, produced by that company in 1995, lists Bryant's first book, Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory, among the company's top-six selling books in the 1970s. Sales figures indicate that this was Bryant's best-selling book by a wide margin, though her sustained popularity is suggested by the fact that Revell continued to contract her to produce books, at the rate of slightly more than one per year during the 1970s. Fisher, Allan, Fleming H. Revell Company: The First 125 Years, 1870-1995 (Grand Rapids: Fleming H. Revell, 1995);Google Scholar Marilyn Gordon, Director of Rights and Contracts at Baker Publishing Group, email message to author (June 1, 2012).

3. Dade County Board of Commissioners, Commission Minutes for December 7,1976, received in email attachment from Scott Rappleye, Commission Reporter, October 16, 2012.

4. The group and the campaign were originally called “Save Our Children” but were renamed within a year in response to a lawsuit from the international children's relief agency Save the Children. For clarity, this article uses “Protect America's Children” throughout. See “Anita Bryant Group Must Change Name,” Bakersfield Californian, July 17, 1977, 4.

5. Bryant, Anita, The Anita Bryant Story: The Survival of Our Nation's Families and the Threat of Militant Homosexuality (Old Tappan, N.J.: Fleming H. Revell, 1977), 46;Google Scholar Rosellini, Lynn, “Anita Bryant's Battle with Gays Turns into a Holy War,” Chicago Tribune, May 2, 1977, B 1.Google Scholar

6. Historian Michael Foley argues that this mantra characterized the political activism of the 1970s, with activists across the political spectrum mobilizing grassroots campaigns and national political movements on the basis of deeply personal issues including family life, reproductive rights, and sexual identity. Foley, Michael Stewart, Front Porch Politics: The Forgotten Heyday of American Activism in the 1970s and 1980s (New York: Hill and Wang, 2013), 7, 67.Google Scholar See also Echols, Alice, Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967-1975 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), 16–17.Google Scholar

7. Some prominent conservative Christian women have become well known, thanks especially to the work of scholars like Donald Critchlow, Tina Fetner, and others. However, these women tend to appear as lone figures in a movement characterized by male leadership and women's grassroots support. An exception to this trend is Seth Dowland's recent book, which highlights a number of female leaders in the New Christian Right and acknowledges the widespread significance of women's leadership in this movement. See Critchlow, Donald, Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005)Google Scholar; Fetner, Tina, “Working Anita Bryant: The Impact of Anti-Gay Activism on Gay and Lesbian Movement Claims,” Social Problems 48 (August 2001): 411-28;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Dowland, Seth, Family Values: Gender, Authority, and the Rise of the New Christian Right (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015).Google Scholar

8. Nickerson, Michelle M., Mothers of Conservatism: Women and the Postwar Right (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2012), 31.Google Scholar

9. Bryant, Mine Eyes, 34-2.

10. Bob Green, telephone interview with Adam Nagourney, April 28, 1995. Originally collected for Clendinen, Dudley and Nagourney, Adam, Out for Good: The Struggle to Build a Gay Rights Movement in America (New York: Touchstone, 1999).Google Scholar My thanks to Mr. Nagourney for sharing this transcript with me.

11. Bryant, Anita and Green, Bob, Running the Good Race (Old Tappan, N.J.: Revell, Fleming H., 1976), 13–14;Google Scholar Bryant, Mine Eyes, 81-86; Herb Kelly, “Her Christmas in South Viet Nam,” Miami News, January 7, 1963.

12. Bryant, Mine Eyes, 64-67.

13. McDannell, Colleen, Material Christianity: Religion and Popular Culture in America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 246-56;Google Scholar Balmer, Randall, The Making of Evangelicalism: From Revivalism to Politics and Beyond (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2010): 43–58.Google Scholar

14. Carpenter acknowledges that fundamentalists in this period were not apolitical “if one thinks of politics in broader terms as contests for power and influence.” Matthew Sutton takes that observation further, arguing that fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals remained deeply engaged with American political and cultural developments throughout the twentieth century. My analysis expands upon Sutton's, while also arguing that this subculture's purportedly apolitical nature was a key component of its ability to attract audiences who thought of themselves as disengaged with mainstream politics in a more traditional sense. Carpenter, Joel A., Revive Us Again: The Reawakening of American Fundamentalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 118 Google Scholar; Sutton, Matthew Avery, American Apocalypse: A History of Modern Evangelicalism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014), xi–xiv.Google Scholar

15. This trend was also apparent within conservative churches and denominations. For example, as the Southern Baptist Convention dealt with profound political turmoil in the 1970s and 1980s, the question of women's ordination proved an especially divisive issue. Notably, however, although conservatives within the denomination vehemently opposed the idea of women serving as pastors, they often did not object to seeing women in other leadership roles, and many conservative women held denominational offices and spoke at the denomination's annual convention during these years. In 1978, a conservative faction within the SBC even nominated Anita Bryant to serve as the denomination's vice president, although she did not ultimately win. See Ammerman, Nancy Tatom, Baptist Battles: Social Change and Religious Conflict in the Southern Baptist Convention (New Bruinswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1990), 94–96 Google Scholar; Norman Jameson, “Entertainer Anita Bryant Offered SBC Nomination,“ Tampa Bay Times, (May 27,1978), 8D.

16. See Bendroth, Margaret Lamberts, Fundamentalism and Gender, 1875 to the Present (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993)Google Scholar; Brasher, Brenda E., Godly Women: Fundamentalism and Female Power (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1998)Google Scholar; Marie Griffith, R., God's Daughters: Evangelical Women and the Power of Submission (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997).Google Scholar

17. None of the people that I reached at Revell would speak to the type or degree of editorial control under which these books were produced. Bryant worked with a well-known ghostwriter, but this should not be taken to mean that she relinquished authorial control. Indeed, the publisher's foreword to Bryant's second book suggests an atypical level of authorial autonomy: “[Amazing Grace] is like no other book published by the Fleming H. Revell company… . There was no outline, no suggested order of chapters, no specific material to be covered.” The conversational style of Bryant's books, Bryant's in-text discussions of her own creative process, and her mention of a transcriber in one book all suggest that Bryant played a significant role in producing the content for these books. Bryant, Anita, Amazing Grace (Old Tappan, N.J.: Revell, Fleming H., 1971), 9;Google Scholar Bryant, Anita and Green, Bob, Light My Candle (Old Tappan, N.J.: Revell, Fleming H., 1972), 40, 194;Google Scholar Bryant, , The Anita Bryant Story, 13, 15, 23, 57;Google Scholar Bryant, Anita, A New Day (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1992), x–xi.Google Scholar

18. See May, Elaine Tyler, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York: Basic Books, 1988).Google Scholar Of course, as influential as these emphases were, they were certainly not universal. See Meyerowitz, Joanne, “Beyond the Feminine Mystique: A Reassessment of Postwar Mass Culture, 1946-1958,” Journal of American History 79, (March 1993): 1455-82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19. See Self, Robert O., All in the Family: The Realignment of American Democracy since the 1960s (New York: Hill and Wang, 2013).Google Scholar

20. For more on the broader contexts of these developments, see Zaretsky, Natasha, No Direction Home: The American Family and Fear of National Decline, 1968-1980 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 7–17.Google Scholar

21. Dochuk, Darren, From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism (New York: W.W. Norton, 2011)Google Scholar; Dowland, , Family Values, 4;Google Scholar Phillips-Fein, Kim, “Conservatism: A State of a Field,” Journal of American History 98 (December 2011): 723-43;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Sutton, Matthew A., “Was FDR the Antichrist? The Birth of Fundamentalism Antiliberalism in a Global Age,” Journal of American History 98, (March 2012): 1052-74;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Williams, Dan K., God's Own Party: The Making of the Christian Right (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22. Sutton, American Apocalypse, 353-54; Foley, Front Porch Politics, 65-94.

23. Bryant, Mine Eyes, 94-96.

24. Ibid., 81, 97.

25. Ibid., 90.

26. Bryant and Green, Running the Good Race, 12.

27. Scott, Joan, “The Evidence of Experience,” Critical Inquiry 17 (Summer 1991): 779.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28. See also Davis, Rebecca L., More Perfect Unions: The American Search for Marital Bliss (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010), 176–213;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Rogatis, Amy De, “What Would Jesus Do? Sexuality and Salvation in Protestant Evangelical Sex Manuals, 1950s to the Present,” Church History 74 (March 2005): 97–137.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29. Of course, declension narratives were not new to the 1970s. For more on their long history in American religious and political rhetoric, see Nichols, Christopher McKnight and Mathewes, Charles, “Introduction: Prophesies of Godlessness,” in Prophesies of Godlessness: Predictions of America 's Imminent Secularization, From the Puritans to the Present Day, ed. Mathewes, Charles and Nichols, Christopher McKnight (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 3–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30. Falwell, Jerry, Listen, America! (Garden City, N.J.: Doubleday & Co., 1980), 117.Google Scholar

31. Dobson, James, Dare to Discipline: A Psychologist Offers Urgent Advice to Parents and Teachers (Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House, 1970), 167.Google Scholar

32. Bryant, , Mine Eyes, 8.Google Scholar

33. Bryant, Anita, Bless This House (Old Tappan, N.J.: Revell, Fleming H., 1972)Google Scholar, dust jacket.

34. Bryant, , Mine Eyes, 74.Google Scholar

35. Several scholars have pointed out the ways in which conservative concerns about urban spaces during this period were often racially coded, as suburbanization diminished urban tax bases and a variety of federal, municipal, and private-sector policies worked to trap low-income residents, especially African Americans, in rapidly declining cities. Bryant expressed similar assumptions about race, but the topic was rarely explicitly broached in Bryant's writing (being mentioned on fewer than ten pages over nine volumes), in keeping with conservatives’ “color-blind“ approach to issues of racial politics during this period. Due to constraints of space, this article focuses on Bryant's discussions of family roles and the gay-rights movement in order to assess the political commitments that she identified as most significant. For more on the racial politics of suburbanization and the development of a conservative rhetoric of “color blindness” during this period, see Kruse, Kevin M., White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005);Google Scholar Lassiter, Matthew D., The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2006);Google Scholar Self, Robert O., American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2003);Google Scholar Sugrue, Thomas J., The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996).Google Scholar For more on the racial politics of Bryant's campaign, see Frank, Gillian, “'The Civil Rights of Parents': Race and Conservative Politics in Anita Bryant's Campaign against Gay Rights in 1970s Florida,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 22 (January 2013): 126-60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

36. Ammerman, Baptist Battles, 50-59.

37. Bryant, Bless This House, dust jacket.

38. See also Griffith, God's Daughters, 15-16.

39. Bryant, Mine Eyes, 5-6.

40. Bryant, Anita and Green, Bob, Fishers of Men (Old Tappan, N.J.: Revell, Fleming H., 1973), 48, 113.Google Scholar

41. Feminist theories of embodiment have generally responded to this paradox by eschewing the notion of sex and gender as “natural“ categories and insisting instead that both are culturally constructed and individually constituted through performances of culturally determined identities. Particularly influential here are Butler, Judith, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990)Google Scholar; Butler, Judith, Undoing Gender (New York: Routledge, 2004).Google Scholar

42. Bryant, Anita and Green, Bob, Raising God's Children (Old Tappan, N.J.: Revell, Fleming H., 1977), 30–31.Google Scholar

43. Of course, Carter's positions on abortion, homosexuality, and women's rights ultimately disappointed conservative evangelicals and contributed to their mobilization against his reelection in 1980. See Flippen, J. Brooks, Jimmy Carter, the Politics of Family, and the Rise of the Religious Right (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2011).Google Scholar

44. Harding, Susan Friend, The Book of Jerry Falwell: Fundamentalist Language and Politics (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000), 22–25,Google Scholar 112-13.

45. Dowland, , Family Values, 16.Google Scholar

46. Ammerman, , Baptist Battles, 67.Google Scholar

47. “Family Life Seminar Scheduled June 4-5,” Freeport Journal-Standard (Freeport, Ill.), May 24, 1976, 8; Lewis H. Arends, Jr., “Pastor Preaches Principles of Family,” Stateman Journal (Salem, Oreg.), October 6,1978, 29. Although Family Life Seminars began in 1971, Beverly LaHaye did not begin co-leading them until 1976, when the couples’ youngest child reached adulthood.

48. LaHaye, Beverly, Who but a Woman? (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1984), 29.Google Scholar

49. Bryant, , Bless This House, 45.Google Scholar

50. Maralee Schwartz and Kenneth J. Cooper, “Equal Rights Initiative in Iowa Attacked,” New York Times, August 23,1992, A1 5.

51. “Cast Your Vote to Clean Up America,” Pittsburgh Press, May 13,1978, A-4; “Action,” Springfield Leader and Press (Springfield, Mo.), September 24,1977, 1.

52. “Christians Retaliate,” Las Cruces Sun-News (Las Cruces, N.M.), November 7,1977, 3.

53. “Falwell Defends Lobbying Group,” News Leader (Staunton, Va.), July 17,1980, B15; Dalhouse, Mark Taylor, An Island in the Lake of Fire: Bob Jones University, Fundamentalism, and the Separatist Movement (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996), 105-8.Google Scholar

54. Tiede, Tom, “Must Good Christians Shun Politics?” Reporter (Fond Du Lac, Wisc.), October 4, 1984, 6.Google Scholar

55. Bryant, The Anita Bryant Story, 14-15.

56. Kerber, Linda, “The Republican Mother: Women and the Enlightenment -An American Perspective,” American Quarterly 28 (Summer 1976), 187–205;Google Scholar Koven, Seth and Michel, Sonya, “Womanly Duties: Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States in France, Germany, Great Britain, and the United States, 1880-1920,” American Historical Review 95 (October 1990): 1076–1108;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Rymph, Catherine, Republican Women: Feminism and Conservatism from Suffrage through the Rise of the New Right (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006).Google Scholar

57. The question of “equality” and “difference” as disparate approaches to feminism became a major point of contention for feminists in the 1980s, but this debate developed from earlier splits among feminists. For a discussion of the history and complexity of this debate, particularly with relation to American feminism and maternalism, see Carole Pateman, “Equality, Difference, Subordination: The Politics of Motherhood and Women's Citizenship,” in Beyond Equality and Difference: Citizenship, Feminist Politics, and Female Subjectivity,” ed. Gisela Bock and Susan James (New York: Routledge, 1992), 17-31.

58. Lauri Umansky, Motherhood Reconceived: Feminism and the Legacy of the Sixties (New York: New York University Press, 1996), 30; Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex (New York: Bantam Books, 1970). See also Echols, Daring to Be Bad, 160-63.

59. Umanksy, Motherhood Reconceived, 16.

60. Bryant and Green, Raising God's Children, 39.

61. Ibid., 38.

62. Fetner, “Working Anita Bryant,” 411-28; Fetner, Tina, How the Religious Right Shaped Lesbian and Gay Activism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008).Google Scholar

63. For example, Pennacchia, Robyn, “LGBT Groups, Dan Savage, Gay Bars Call for Boycott of Russian Vodka,” Death and Taxes Magazine, July 25, 2013 Google Scholar; Jonathan Rauch, “The Case for Hate Speech,“ Atlantic, November 2013.

64. Barry Bearak, “Turmoil within Ministry: Bryant Hears 'Anita,.. . Please Repent,'” Miami Herald, June 8,1980; Jeff Golden, “Anita Bryant Asks Court for Divorce,” Miami Herald, May 23, 1980.

65. Ken Campbell, letter to Anita Bryant (1982), National Religious Broadcasters Collection, Billy Graham Center Archives, Wheaton, Ill., BGC 309, Series III.