Daniel Williams God's Own Party Summary

In the book, God’s Own Party: The Making of the Christian Right, Daniel Williams describes the important role played by the Christians at the 1980 Republican convention. He discussed things such as Conservative Christians and their political activeness during this time; the fundamentalists and their little to no access to the political campaign; the two stages of the alliance between the Republican Party and the fundamentalist; the creation of the “New Christian Right”, along with many other things.
Williams’ argument was that evangelicals were inactive during the middle of the twentieth century. He stated, “Conservative Christians had been politically active since the early twentieth century, and they never retreated from the public square”

(Williams, p.2). He continued by saying, “Evangelicals gained prominence during Ronald Reagan’s campaign not because they were speaking out on political issues—they had been doing that for decades—but because they were taking over the Republican Party” (Williams, p.2).
Williams also talks about things like how the Republican’s and evangelicals related on social issues such as: being against abortion, feminism, pornography, and gay rights.

He continues to explain by saying “Republican leaders of the 1970s decided that adopting more conservative positions on abortion and other cultural issues would be a wise strategic move” (Williams, p.7). He later brings up the topic of abortion again when he speaks about the Roe v. wade decision by saying, “In a 7-2 decision, the Court declared that women’s “right to privacy” gave them a constitutional right to abortion during the first and second trimesters of pregnancy, up to the point of fetal viability” (Williams, p. 116-117). The impact of the Roe decision created things such as the new pro-life organization that Billy James Hargis created, David Noebel and his publishing of Slaughter of the Innocent; which talked down on the Court’s decision. David Noebel also does many speeches, and Williams lists some of the memorable speeches Noebel did that spoke against abortion with titles like “Murder of Babies: It’s a Major Issue in New York”, “Does a Woman Have a Right to Murder?”, and “The Sacrifice of Human Life Goes

On”.
The 1954 case of Brown vs.

Board of Education is brought up when he is making the point of how the Southern evangelicals were against it in the beginning but then said that the “end of the civil rights movement facilitated the formation of a new Christian political coalition, because it enabled fundamentalists and evangelicals who had disagreed over racial integration to come together” (Williams, p.6).
The case of Green v. Connolly from 1971 was mentioned in the book as William’s tells the reader about how this related to the revocation of the tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University on January 19, 1976.
This is the same date that Former President Carter has won the Democratic nomination, so Paul Weyrich tried to blame the loss of the tax-exempt status on Carter. He also speaks about Ronald Reagan’s presidency by saying, “The election of Ronald Reagan, who allied himself with the Christian Right, gave conservative evangelicals the political influence that they needed to increase their control over the Republican party, especially in the South” (Williams, p.7). Then later on discredited Reagan by saying “While Reagan presided over a nearly 300 percent increase in the national debt” (Williams, p. 216)
Lastly, the author briefly mentions George W. Bush’s 1988 presidential election when Bush said that Jesus Christ was his favorite philosopher when it came to

politics.
Williams gets most of his information from the National Association of Evangelicals such as Evangelical Action! A Report of the National Association of Evangelicals for United Action. He uses journals about fundamentalists and Republicans. He also uses facts from court cases and many readings on Billy Graham. Williams uses a host of books that speak about Christianity and the Republicans. When reading the book, in the endnotes, the reader will see many resources on Southern Religion.
The reader will also see many resources about Ronald Reagan, who the introduction begins talking about his nomination in July of 1980. He also names a couple of his resources within the text such as “The Rise and Fall of the Christian Right: Conservative Protestant Politics in America, 1979-1988 (1988) and Fall from Grace: The Failed Crusade of the Christian Right (1989)” (Williams, p. 222). Lastly, he mentions many names such as Carl McIntire, John R. Rice, Bob Jones Jr., and Bob Shuler throughout the book.
The book, in general, is a controversial book because most readers may find that this information was somewhat biased. Other readers may think that he speaks too highly of some people and their work. For example, a lot of his information seems to come from the National Association of Evangelicals, leading the reader to possibly feel like the source is overrated. Overall, it is a book with plenty of resources and information to learn a lot from.
This book is important because it lets the readers look at things from a different perspective of the political process in the 1920s and 1930s. However, the book does have much relevance to contemporary America because he talks about many court cases that have made a major impact on today’s society.