The modern, politically active, and Republican-committed Christian Right can be traced to the backlash against the Equal Rights Amendment, but it truly became a major factor in American politics with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. The Christian Right's brand of ideological, political, and social conservatism has been a significant force ever since, but is their power beginning to wane? That's the thinking among some political observers, and for a variety of reasons.

The Republican Party is only the most visible part of the American right. The right's hidden strength lies in its conservative base. America is almost unique in possessing a vibrant conservative movement. Every state boasts organisations fighting in favour of guns and against taxes and abortion. The Christian right can call upon megachurches and Evangelical colleges. Conservatives have also created a formidable counter-establishment of think-tanks and pressure groups.

And many Americans who are not members of the movement happily embrace the label “conservative”. They think of themselves as God-fearing patriots who dislike big government and are tough on crime and national security. In 2004 roughly a third of the voters identified themselves as conservatives; just over 20% identified themselves as “liberal” (as American left-wingers are somewhat strangely called). Conservatives have driven the policy debate on everything from crime to welfare to foreign policy.

Yet today this mighty movement is in deep trouble. Veteran activists are sunk in gloom (“I've never seen conservatives so downright fed up,” says Richard Viguerie, a conservative stalwart). And the other side is cock-a-hoop. Stanley Greenberg, a Democratic pollster, describes the shift from conservatism as “breathtaking”.

Source: The Economist

One of the more interesting reasons for this shift may be found in how Democrats are once again emphasizing policies and principles which should be important to Christians, but which the Christian Right has worked hard to oppose. As a consequence of this, increasing numbers of Christians — including otherwise conservative Christians — are becoming disillusioned with both the Christian Right generally and their intimate association with the Republican Party in particular.

The issues that people care about are also tipping the Democrats' way. A Pew Research poll in March discovered growing worry about income inequality combined with growing support for the social safety net. The proportion of Americans who believe that “the government should help the needy even if it means greater debt” has risen from 41% in 1994, at the height of the Republican revolution, to 54% today. The poll also revealed a decline in support for the things that drove the Republican resurgence in the mid-1990s, such as traditional moral values.

The Republican Party and Christian Right organizations have had a lot of success in portraying themselves as the only true representatives of genuine, traditional, and Christian morality. This has fit in nicely with their claims — also generally accepted by even many moderates and liberals — that religion (and preferably Christianity) are necessary for morality at all, that Christianity and American nationalism need each other, and so forth.

What this means is that undermining any one of these ideological positions will help with undermining them all. Indeed, simply revealing them as ideological or political positions is helpful because it can get people to recognize that they aren't revealed religious truths, but are instead contingent opinions which might be incorrect. Once people recognize an ideology for what it is — something contingent and possibly wrong rather than the "natural order of things" or "revealed truth" — we develop the possibility for revising or even overturning it.