Moral Majority

The term Moral Majority signifies the concept that there are often informal subgroups within many larger nations which pursues a strict moral agenda, usually based upon a deep belief in a religion such as Christianity Islam Judaism or Hinduism which is embedded to some extent within the national culture. Such people often perceive themselves to be, or act as, the custodian or representative of the culture's values, although they may in fact be a small minority of the people, and their views may therefore be given disproportionate emphasis in the news and other media, and in politics and other social decisions made by the government.

Related Topics:
Nation - Moral - Religion - Christianity - Islam - Judaism - Hinduism - Values - Media - Politics - Social - Government

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Moral Majority also refers to a political movement within the United States of this kind, which pursued an agenda of religiously-oriented political lobbying.

Related Topics:
United States - Agenda - Lobbying

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The rest of this article is about the latter meaning of the term.

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Started in 1979 by Jerry Falwell, the Moral Majority movement was an American organization made up of conservative Christian political action committees, which campaigned on issues it believed central to upholding its Christian conception of the moral law, a perception it believed represented the majority of people's opinions (hence the movement's name). The organization officially dissolved in 1989 but lives on in the Christian Coalition network initiated by Pat Robertson. With a membership of millions the Moral Majority was one of the largest conservative lobby groups in the United States. Among issues it campaigned on were:

Related Topics:
Jerry Falwell - Conservative Christian - Political action committee - Christian - Christian Coalition - Pat Robertson - United States

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• against legal abortion
• against homosexuality
• supporting its vision of family life
• censorship of media outlets that promote what it sees as an 'anti-family' agenda

The Moral Majority had adherents in the two major United States political parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, though it exercised far more influence on the former than the latter.

Related Topics:
Republicans - Democrats

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In 1981, a series of exposés (later nominated for the Pulitzer Prize) by Memphis reporter Mike Clark led to some condemning the interactions between the Moral Majority and the Republican Party. Despite the group's name, opinion polls as well as election and referendum outcomes suggest that it was less representative of public opinion than its name might have suggested.

Related Topics:
1981 - Pulitzer Prize - Memphis - Mike Clark - Opinion poll

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