Establish no religion: Faith, law, and public education in Mobile, Alabama, 1981--1987

This dissertation contributes to the fledgling historiography of post-1960s American politics and culture. It attempts to fill two lacunae by focusing on the roles of religion and constitutional politics in Reagan-era conservatism. This dissertation finds that the Christian Right of the late-1970s and 1980s emerged largely in resistance to the post-WWII minority-rights revolution. The school-prayer movement, in particular, utilized antiliberal, majoritarian rhetoric, with religious conservatives painting themselves as "real Americans" entitled to make laws reflecting "the people's" moral preferences. In advocating for religious conservatives, key figures such as William Rehnquist, Jesse Helms, and Edwin Meese accused activist judges of violating popular will by remaking public institutions in their own secularist image.;Supreme Court decisions protecting religious minorities would prove difficult to undo, however. By the mid-1980s the Christian Right would shift its political strategy and rhetoric. Rather than continuing their majoritarian battle against the Court, religious conservatives increasingly utilized the rights revolution to advance their own interests. More and more, they painted themselves as yet another minority group entitled not to be marginalized within the political process. While still critical of judicial activism, they nonetheless sought recourse in the First Amendment protections offered by the federal courts.;This dissertation focuses on attempts during the 1980s to restore religious content to American public education. On center stage is a Mobile, Alabama, legal conflict featuring two interrelated federal court cases, Jaffree v. Board and Smith v. Board. The former, which ended in the Supreme Court as Wallace v. Jaffree, dealt with classroom prayer; the latter considered the promotion, by textbooks, of the "religion" of secular humanism. The trajectory of the Mobile conflict resembled developments nationwide, as religious conservatives shifted from a majoritarian strategy to one stressing the civil rights of religious traditionalists. Central to this story was the identity politics engaged in by the protagonists, who, like conservative Christians generally, perceived their interests primarily in terms of their authoritarian biblical worldview. This dissertation argues that this morally-orthodox worldview provided an important component in the identity politics of the Reagan era.