Who speaks for the religious right? That used to be an easy question to answer. On matters of faith and politics, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and James Dobson were towering figures, opinionated, controversial, and vastly influential. But much of that leadership has suffered a, shall we say, fall from grace. After Falwell’s death in 2007 and Robertson’s outlandish comments about the 2010 earthquake in China and Hurricane Katrina, it seemed to some that the Christian right’s day in the sun had passed. But the culture wars reemerged this year, and new figures like Cardinal Timothy Dolan, archbishop of New York, took leading roles in a religious and political drama that has not yet been resolved. The changing faces are not entirely unexpected–for years, the movement on the religious right has been has been toward greater strategic, denominational, and ideological diversity. Since the 80s, Catholics and evangelicals have forged ties over shared priorities, like curtailing abortion rights, and Catholic Rick Santorum’s surge in the Republican primaries and the reaction to the White House’s contraception mandate may show that those relationships have born fruit. Other groups have different priorities altogether–sometimes so much so that while they may be “religious,” they’re not traditionally “right.” The following list doesn’t include all of the most influential conservative Christians–Dobson and Ralph Reed, for example, remain important–but it’s a snapshot of a movement that continues to shape American life and politics in unpredictable ways.
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