Jimmy Carter’s evangelical downfall: Reagan, religion and the 1980 presidential election — salon.com

In October 1976, just prior to Jimmy Carter’s election as president, Newsweek had christened 1976 the “Year of the Evangelical.” Carter’s candidacy had introduced many Americans to the term evangelical, and his articulation of the themes of progressive evangelicalism—care for the poor, concern for human rights, and an aversion to military conflict—brought many evangelicals into the arena of politics, some of them for the first time. Nearly half of evangelical voters in 1976 favored Carter, which represented a significant increase from the showing of Democratic candidates in years past; white evangelicals, following the lead of Billy Graham and others, had generally tilted Republican in the postwar era. In 1980, four years after Carter’s victory, however, the evangelical vote was very much in play. Three candidates were competing for the presidency, and all three claimed to be evangelical Christians: Carter, the Democratic incumbent; Ronald Reagan, the Republican nominee; and John B. Anderson, Republican member of Congress from Illinois, running as an independent.

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