| The purpose of this study was to evaluate the meanings of intellectual freedom within conservative Christian religious and political organizations. The study focused on analyzing the concepts and issues of intellectual freedom from the perspectives of these groups through a grounded theory analysis of their own literature.; The data for this study encompassed information from six conservative Christian advocacy organizations: The Alliance Defense Fund, The American Center for Law and Justice, The American Family Association, Concerned Women for America, Family Research Council, and Focus on the Family. Because of the prominence of the Children's Internet Protection Act as a watershed event in these organizations' thinking and actions regarding intellectual freedom issues, the study focused on data generated in the months immediately preceding and following the Supreme Court decision on CIPA from January 2003 to January 2004. Among the documents that met the time period established for this study, there were four different document styles---the legal brief, the news feature article, the editorial or commentary article, and the appeal to membership.; A sentence-by-sentence analysis of each document was conducted utilizing the principles of grounded theory. The codes generated by this analysis were hierarchically organized into categories and sub-categories based on their level of specificity. The concepts embodied by the codes were also connected relationally to one another in this scheme according to how one concept affected or influenced another.; The concepts in the data centered around four key themes that inform the way these organizations view intellectual freedom issues: a narrow definition of censorship, a view of human nature as corrupt and corrupting, a preference for majority rules over individual rights, and a distrust of outsiders or opponents to their philosophies on intellectual freedom. Connections to fundamentalist and evangelical doctrines and traditions appear frequently in these groups' attitudes on intellectual freedom issue. Recognizing the contributions a fundamentalist and evangelical culture to these groups' views provides insight into potential methods of generating productive dialog between the library profession and these organizations. |
