During the last three decades of the 20th century, evangelical leaders and conservative politicians developed a political agenda that thrust "family values" onto the nation's consciousness. Ministers, legislators, and laypeople came together to fight abortion, gay rights, and major feminist objectives. They supported private Christian schools, home schooling, and a strong military. Family values leaders like Jerry Falwell, Phyllis Schlafly, Anita Bryant, and James Dobson became increasingly supportive of the Republican Party, which accommodated the language of family values in its platforms and campaigns. The family values agenda created a bond between evangelicalism and political conservatism.

Family Values and the Rise of the Christian Right chronicles how the family values agenda became so powerful in American political life and why it appealed to conservative evangelical Christians. Campaigns against abortion and feminism coalesced around a belief that God created women as wives and mothers - a belief that conservative evangelicals thought feminists and pro-choice advocates threatened. Movements like the Promise Keepers called men to take responsibility for leading their families. Christian right political campaigns and pro-family organizations drew on conservative evangelical beliefs about men, women, children, and authority. These beliefs - known collectively as family values - became the most important religious agenda in late 20th-century American politics.

The book is published by University of Pennsylvania Press.

"A fresh and valuable contribution to a densely populated literature." (Journal of Southern Religion)

"A remarkably perceptive analysis of White conservative evangelicals' beliefs about the family, the state, and American society." (Reading Religion)

"It's a story that Dowland tells carefully and fairly." (Christian Century)