I am so glad someone has finally raised the fact that it was the fight for racial equality that created the anger that led to the rise of the Christian Right. It was a necessary, but not (however) sufficient condition. I do think Roe V. Wade was the straw that broke that particular camel's back, however, because this was now about equal rights for women; with legalized abortion, especially on the sweeping scale allowed by Roe, women were finally (potentially) emancipated from their "traditional" role as the bearer of children. The threat to male dominance was a threat that hit closer to home to more Americans that the fight for civil rights for African-Americans.
The Council for National Policy arrived after Richard Viguerie had given the name "Moral Majority" (working on Nixon's "silent majority") to Jerry Falwell's organization, an organization jump-started by Viguerie's direct-mail list. It was Flawell's self-promotion as thekey to Ronald Reagan's 1980 defeat of President Carter that put the Christian Right on the mainstream media's list of players to get to know better. The Council was more a way for a variety of groups - some separated by serious theological differences - to have a unified voice in DC than a policy study center or a co-ordination center for Christian Right political tactics.

There are an interesting couple of sentences in Tom Edsall's New Politics of Inequality published in 1984, I had the good fortune to ask President Carter about at the CBF Convo in Bham in 1993.
Edsall said it was the independent oil community who go as far back as Joe McCarthy in finding ways to demagogue a working class constituency. Michelle Goldberg gets close to explaining the CNP's political DNA through the Birch Society in her book, Kingdom Coming; and Rice U's Chandler Davidson is looking in the right places when he explored WA Criswell's affinity for the Birch right of the Hunt Brothers in Chandler's Race and Class in Texas Politics.
Paul Pressler's Dad was a vice president of Exxon Oil. Look at what Edsall reports about the election cycle of 78; then go figure the takeover of the SBC from that perspective, with the religious right galvanizing the SBC against Carter after Carter hit Oil with a windfall profits tax in 78 or so.
That is why Pressler plays the visionamerica.us card for CNP. Ronnie Floyd is just a useful idiot in it all.
Even so my fundamentalist friend John Killian, a supporter of George Wallace Jr. does have some honest populism to him; and professes to be a dispensationalist but not a Reconstructionist.
The self name fundamentalist chair of the Bama Alsbom, MikeShaw, is for Constitutional and Tax Reform in the State.
Balmer is great. I think he should be a primetime featured speaker for the CBF convo in DC next year.
In meantime however, both he and Prescott and Mercer's Buddy Shurden should google up Furman proff Jim Guth 2000 article in the Christian Century about Bob Jones U; and all of you should temper Balmer's prescriptions with the notions of James Ault's final chapters in Spirit and Flesh, a book endorsed by the Henry Ford line of AmericanProtestantism,Reinhold's Great Nephew, Gus Niebuhr.
What say youins?
Stephen Fox
Collinsville, Alabama

And of course there is Amy Sullivan's April 06 Washington Monthly article easily googled Up: "When Would Jesus Bolt?"
Quite likely it has come across your radar and been widely discussed here, but if not it is great fodder for nuanced updated discussions with Balmer and Prescott and Brent Walker, and Mercer's Buddy Shurden.
Randy Brinson's Disenchantment with the Christian Coalition in Alabama is the guts of the story.

I happen to have a copy of a book called The Farther Shores of Politics: The American Political Fringe Today, published in 1968 by George Thayer. The second Part of the book, subtitled "The Far Right", includes a chapter called "The Christian Right". There are a number of figures, early on in the formation of the CHristian Right, who are described here - and the connections are drawn between the corporations (Exxon is not listed, but Adolph Coors and "Bucky" Hunt are), the Birchers, and such groups as Campus Crusade for Christ are drawn out. The connections were made a decade before the stunning appearance of Falwell, Viguerie, Swaggart, and others. To my mind, the strangest thing is the way what was fringe rhetoric is now a staple of our public discourse; the warping of our political and social debates by what can only be described as an extreme vocabulary makes it almost impossible to be heard anymore.
Of course, it goes without saying that the perversion of political rhetoric, the convergence of groups with wildly disparate theological positions, and the desire for political power has also warped much of our discussion, not only about religion, but within Christianity itself. That is one sad result of all this. A return to our diverse roots, honoring our differences - even rekindling old arguments! - is an essential part of reclaiming our rich religious heritage in America.

While I agree with the general analysis of the trend of conservatives leaving the Democratic Party in the late seventies, the report from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life on May 22, 2006 gives some good reasons not to overstate the early role of the "race" or "gender" reasons. While they factor in, Galston suggests [with convincing stats) that it took awhile - until Clinton - for religious conservatives to really leave the Democratic party.

Mr. Galston points out:

"My view is that [evangelicals] began by thinking of [Carter] as an alternative to the “McGovernized� Democratic Party, and by the end of his term they saw him as having become a captive of that party. That was a process, by the way, that started very early. If you look at what happened in the Democratic Convention of 1976 — what the platform looked like, what the negotiations with the traditional interest groups looked like, what the Carter campaign in the general election as opposed to the primaries looked like — and the fact that Carter lost support steadily through the general election campaign, and if it had lasted another 10 days, he probably would have lost it.

So, you can already see signs that the very personal religious appeal that Carter had was beginning to wane. When his administration associated itself with the progressivism push on a number of gender and social issues, I think many evangelicals said to themselves, well, his personal views may be wonderful, but he is doing absolutely nothing to buck the tide of the party; and that convinces us that if he can’t or won’t do it, who could or would; so maybe we ought to turn elsewhere. Then there was a massive shift among white evangelicals, between 1976 and 1980, away from the Democrats and toward the Republicans.

The fact that the bottom didn’t fall out for Democrats until 1992 suggests to me that maybe the racial dimension of this is not as dispositive as some people thought it was. If it had really been dispositive, then the bottom should have fallen out a lot earlier than it did. Also, the religiosity gap, as late as 1988, is really very narrow if you look at those two charts I presented, and then there is a large shift. With the first boomer president, all of these cultural, social and religious issues suddenly become the basis of a deep schism in the electorate. That’s what I had in mind."

Thanks for speaking to Richard Viguerie's important role in the conservative movement, as I think a lot of people are not aware of what an influence he's had--helping bring on the Reagan revolution in 1980, etc. He actually has a fascinating new book out called "CONSERVATIVES BETRAYED: How George W. Bush and Other Big Government Republicans Betrayed the Conservative Cause." I thought about getting it when I heard him on Bob Edwards a few weeks ago, and then a friend just recommended it to me, so I broke down and ordered a copy. I'm so glad I did, as it's right on the money about so many things...the collapse of moral values, Bush's total and complete betrayal of conservatives...right on target. IT SHOULD BE REQUIRED READING, spread the word! You can pick up a copy on Amazon - her'es the link:

http://www.amazon.com/Conservatives-Betrayed-Government-Republicans-Conservative/dp/1566252857/sr=8-1/qid=1158102671/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-4985221-8852658?ie=UTF8&s=books