[W]hat galvanized the Christian community was not abortion, school prayer, or the ERA [Equal Rights Amendment]...What changed their minds was Jimmy Carter's intervention against the Christian schools, trying to deny them tax-exempt status on the basis of so-called de facto segregation. In other words, as Randall Balmer has succinctly put it: "the religious right of the late twentieth century organized to perpetuate racial discrimination." Only after the movement was underway did it begin advocacy on abortion.
MORE: http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/sexandgender/6801/the_not_so_lofty_origins_of_the_evangelical_pro_life_movement_/
