Hillary Clinton

Hillary Rodham Clinton entered national public life as First Lady in January 1993 with a profile that was genuinely unusual for a presidential spouse: she was a Yale-educated attorney with an independent career, policy expertise, and political views she expressed openly. President Clinton gave her a substantive policy role, including leading the 1993–1994 health care reform effort. She was, in every meaningful sense, a co-governing partner — which made her precisely the kind of woman that the Religious Right's entire political project had been built to oppose. The Religious Right's response was immediate and sustained. Direct mail fundraising letters from the Moral Majority's successor organizations, the Christian Coalition, Focus on the Family, and the Family Research Council named Clinton as a threat to Christian families, Christian education, and American values. The speed and intensity of the reaction was not accidental: Clinton embodied everything the movement had mobilized against since 1972. She was educated, professionally accomplished, publicly feminist, and unwilling to perform traditional wifely deference. She was, in Phyllis Schlafly's terms, exactly what the Stop ERA campaign had warned American women not to become. Her 1996 book It Takes a Village, which argued for collective responsibility for children's welfare, was attacked from pulpits across America as an assault on parental rights and family sovereignty — a socialist vision incompatible with Christian family values. The book's actual content, which was moderate and community-focused, was almost irrelevant: it had become a symbol. Clinton's 2000 Senate campaign, her 2008 presidential primary campaign, her tenure as Secretary of State, and above all her 2016 presidential campaign each produced fresh waves of Religious Right mobilization against her. The 2016 election generated the largest single-cycle white evangelical voter turnout in history: 81% voted for Donald Trump, a thrice-married former casino magnate who had bragged on tape about sexual assault. The contrast tells the story. Clinton was not opposed because she was corrupt or dangerous. She was opposed because she was a woman who believed she was entitled to hold power — and the Religious Right had spent four decades building the infrastructure to ensure that such women did not. Hillary Clinton served as a United States Senator, as a serious presidential candidate who won the popular vote in 2016, and as Secretary of State. She spent her career fighting for health care access, children's welfare, and democratic governance. The Religious Right used her as an organizational engine for thirty years.

Documented themes

• Opposition / Resistance
• Christian Nationalism
• Gender & Patriarchy

Connections from Hillary Clinton

• triggered → Trump Evangelical Advisory Board (2016) (2016) — Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign was the single most effective evangelical mobilization tool the Religious Right had ever possessed. Eighty-one percent of white evangelicals voted for Donald Trump — a thrice-married former casino magnate who had bragged on tape about sexual assault — specifically because of their opposition to Clinton. The Trump Evangelical Advisory Board was assembled in part to formalize this alignment and give evangelical leaders institutional access to the campaign in exchange for their mobilization capacity. Clinton embodied everything the Religious Right had spent four decades organizing against: a feminist woman who claimed the right to hold power. The movement had built its voter infrastructure for precisely this election.

Connections to Hillary Clinton

• Christian Coalition opposed (1993) — From the moment Hillary Clinton became First Lady in January 1993, the Christian Coalition named her as a primary political enemy in its voter guides, fundraising materials, and political communications. Clinton's health care reform effort, her public policy role, and her unapologetic feminist identity made her the perfect foil for the Christian Coalition's mobilization apparatus. Ralph Reed's voter guides distributed through churches consistently framed Clinton-adjacent policy positions as threats to Christian families. Her presence in the White House was one of the Christian Coalition's most reliable fundraising and mobilization tools through the 1990s.

Sources

• Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation — Kristin Kobes Du Mez (2020), pp. 180-220