32 Ducere Est Servire: THE LEADERSHIP JOURNAL OF DALLAS BAPTIST UNIVERSITY STOP ERA, halted the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the Constitution and articulated what Middle America thought about liberalism.5 There is little question among scholars about Phyllis Schlafly's influence in transforming the Republican Party into a conservative, right-wing powerhouse.6 One can argue that Schlafly’s academic credentials, books, and newsletter, The Phyllis Schlafly Report, intellectually defended and laid the foundation for the Republican Right.7 However, Beverly LaHaye, influenced and mobilized by Schlafly’s rhetoric, had the power to unite evangelical women around conservative values and introduce them to the political activist arena.8 LaHaye’s book, The Spirit-Controlled Woman, and her organization, Concerned Women for America, organized white evangelical women around reclaiming pro-family values and condemning feminists seeking to destroy the American family.9 Therefore, this paper’s central question is: If it were not for Schlafly and LaHaye organizing women around a common cause, would the Religious Right possess the power it currently has over the Republican Party? This paper argues that Phyllis Schlafly, a political activist, and Beverly LaHaye, a homemaker, using their conservative, pro-family values as a catalyst to organize women against the feminist movement and the ERA, established white evangelical women as a powerful voting bloc for the Republican Party, solidifying the Religious Right’s control over the Republican Party. RISE OF THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT: COLONIAL AMERICA TO 1980 Two factors contributed to the historical context of the Religious Right. The first factor was the Puritans’ arrival from England.10 In 1630, John Winthrop, a Puritan preacher and the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony stated, “we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people will be upon us.”11 The “city upon a hill” reference came from Matthew 5:14, where Jesus told His disciples that they were “the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.”12 The Christian Right capitalized on Winthrop’s quote and suggested that the Founding Fathers were Christians and desired to set up a Christian nation-state. Furthermore, in 1989, during his presidential farewell speech, Ronald Reagan used the phrase
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