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Florida Atlantic University Undergraduate Law Journal

Advisor

Anita Blowers

College

Arts and Letters

Keywords

1980 Election, First Amendment, Religious Neutrality, Evangelicalism, Moral Majority, Constitutionalism, Preferentialism, Evangelical Politics, Establishment Clause, Free Exercise, Campaign Rhetoric, Litigation Strategy, Judicial Appointments, Constitutional Interpretation, Legal Realignment, Majoritarianism, Legal Culture, Church-State, Conservative Christianity

Document Type

Article

Abstract

The 1980 election marked a constitutional turning point in the relationship between religion and American law. Prior to 1980, the First Amendment was largely interpreted through a neutrality framework in which the state could not privilege a particular religious worldview over another. With the ascent of the White Evangelical political movement, particular organizations such as the Moral Majority––a political advocacy group founded in 1979 to mobilize conservative Christians in electoral politics––this balance shifted: religious claims were reframed as constitutional claims, and cultural disputes were relitigated as questions of fundamental rights. This paper argues that the rise of the Moral Majority and its institutional successors did not merely influence electoral politics—it redefined the doctrinal boundaries of the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses by promoting a theory of religious preferentialism embedded within constitutional discourse. Through analysis of campaign rhetoric, litigation strategy, court appointments, and subsequent jurisprudence, this paper demonstrates that 1980 ushered in a new interpretive model in which evangelical moral theology increasingly informed the structure of First Amendment reasoning. The result was a lasting realignment in which religious majoritarian politics gained a constitutional foothold, reshaping American legal culture for decades to come.

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