Castelfranco Lecture Series: Randall Balmer "Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the Religious Right"

Campus Location: Manetti Shrem Museum
Room: Magnetti Shrem Museum
Location of Event: UC Davis Campus
Cost: Free
Contact Phone #: 916-717-0659
Event Type: Lectures and Seminars
Presented by: Department of Religious Studies
Sponsored by: Organized by Professor Allison Coudert, Department of Religious Studies. Co-sponsored by the Manetti Shrem Museum.

Randall Balmer is a distinguished historian whose work focuses on Christianity's interrelationships with American politics. He has written widely on this topic in books such as God in the White House: How Faith Shaped the Presidency from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush, The Making of Evangelicalism: From Revivalism to Politics and Beyond, and Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: A Journey into the Evangelical Subculture in America — the latter adapted into an award-winning documentary for PBS. His most recent book is Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the Religious Right. 

Balmer will speak about how one of the Religious Right’s most durable myths is its myth of origins. American evangelicals, the story goes, long dormant as a political entity, began to mobilize politically in the 1970s in response to the Roe v. Wade decision of January 22, 1973. Balmer claims this story is simply not true; what actually galvanized the Religious Right as a political force was the elimination of tax-exempt status for racially discriminatory Christian institutions.