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“Year of the Bible, 1983”. Reframing the U.S. as a Christian Nation

“Year of the Bible, 1983”. Refaire un corps chrétien à la nation étasunienne
“Year of the Bible, 1983”. Reconformar la nación estadounidense como un cuerpo cristiano
Philippe Gonzalez
p. 27-62

Résumés

La proclamation de l’« Année de la Bible » par Ronald Reagan en 1983 marque un tournant dans l’imbrication du religieux et du politique aux États-Unis. À partir de sources d’archives nouvellement numérisées, notamment les dossiers du chargé des affaires religieuses de la Maison-Blanche, cette enquête retrace la campagne depuis ses origines évangéliques jusqu’à ses effets législatifs et symboliques. Croisant la sociologie des politiques symboliques de Joseph Gusfield et la philosophie politique de Claude Lefort, l’analyse montre comment la proclamation réaffirme une appropriation religieuse de la nation et érode subtilement le pluralisme constitutionnel. Loin d’un geste anecdotique, elle agit comme un acte symbolique de réincorporation, saturant l’espace démocratique d’une autorité théologique difficilement contestable.

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  • 1 P. Herbut (1983, February 5), “Religious Broadcasters Bring Christian Fervor to D.C.,”The Washingto (...)
  • 2 Armstrong Ben (1983, March 30), Letter to President Reagan, BMF. See sources at the end of the arti (...)
  • 3 This article is part of the study “Fundamentalism and Foundationalism: Crossed Perspectives” (10001 (...)

1On January 31, 1983, before an audience of 3,500 evangelical media leaders gathered in Washington D.C. under the theme “Christian Media Facing the Future with the Bible,”1 President Ronald Reagan delivered what the principal event’s organizers would later call “the most important religious speech since the beginning of our Republic by any American President.”2 In the opening minutes, he mentioned a measure that triggered thunderous applause.3

Facing the future with the Bible—that’s a perfect theme for your convention. You might be happy to hear that I have some “good news” of my own. Thursday morning, at the National Prayer Breakfast, I will sign a proclamation making 1983 the Year of the Bible.

  • 4 Reagan Library (2016, May 16), Remarks by President and Mrs. Reagan at the National Religious Broad (...)

2The standing ovation lasted for thirty seconds.4 The President resumed his speech, mocking those who accused him of being “simplistic,” and continued:

Within the covers of that single Book are all the answers to all the problems that face us today, if we’d only look there. “The grass withereth, the flower fadeth, but the Word of our God shall stand forever.” I hope Americans will read and study the Bible in 1983. It’s my firm belief that the enduring values, as I say, presented in its pages have a great meaning for each of us and for our nation. The Bible can touch our hearts, order our minds, refresh our souls.

3Not only did the President quote a verse from “that single Book” to describe the Bible as “the Word of our God” (Isaiah, 40: 8), he also conflated the Bible and the nation, fully aware that this was a sensitive matter. Anticipating a secular reaction, he launched a preemptive strike by criticizing a “fashionable” trend, “in some circles to believe that no one in government should order or encourage others to read the Bible.” Realizing he had departed from his script, Reagan quickly added: “Encourage—I shouldn’t have said ‘order.’” He then voiced the arguments raised by his opponents, implying that he and his audience were both subject to the same accusation: “We’re told that will violate the constitutional separation of church and state established by the Founding Fathers in the First Amendment.” Such an argument, he contended, ran against the Founding Fathers—George Washington, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin—, whose heritage he claimed.

So, when I hear the First Amendment used as a reason to keep the traditional moral values away from policymaking, I’m shocked. The First Amendment was not written to protect people and their laws from religious values; it was written to protect those values from government tyranny.

  • 5 Darman Richard G. (1983, January 27), Draft Presidential Remarks BMF.

4The President associated the concerns of his critics about the breach his proclamation would create in church-state separation with “government tyranny.” He invoked an interpretation of the First Amendment that predates the Supreme Court’s 1940 decision to extend its application to the states—thus disregarding the jurisprudence that had since dismantled institutional ties between religion and government, and that had prompted religious conservatives to mobilize in response (Sehat, 2011). Reagan’s discourse was a continuation of this crusade, the promise of recovering a lost Protestant hegemony. Against the specter of “tyranny,” he framed the U.S. political history within a providential narrative and came close to calling America “a new Israel,” as suggested by an earlier draft of his speech.5 But the idea remained:

I’ve always believed that this blessed land was set apart in a special way, that some divine plan placed this great continent here between the two oceans to be found by people from every corner of the Earth […] a country where man is not beholden to government, government is beholden to man.

  • 6 The picture can be seen here: Anonymous, (1983, March 4), “President Reagan and the Bible,” Christi (...)
  • 7 “Bright, a former candy manufacturer who sold his business in 1951 to evangelize full time to stude (...)

5A few days later, on February 3, Reagan signed “Proclamation 5018, Year of the Bible, 1983”. The evengelical magazine Christianity Today published a photograph capturing that moment.6 Three men are standing beside the President in the picture. On the left is Senator William Armstrong, who introduced the Senate resolution calling for the proclamation. On the right is Representative Carlos Moorhead, who promoted the same resolution in Congress. Behind the President stands the influential evangelist Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ—one of the world’s largest evangelistic organizations—and a personal friend of Reagan.7

6The introduction and conclusion of this proclamation offer a striking summary of its content. It begins thus:8

Of the many influences that have shaped the United States of America into a distinctive Nation and people, none may be said to be more fundamental and enduring than the Bible.

7And concludes with:

Now, therefore, I, Ronald Reagan, President of the United States of America, in recognition of the contributions and influence of the Bible on our Republic and our people, do hereby proclaim 1983 the Year of the Bible in the United States. I encourage all citizens, each in his or her own way, to reexamine and rediscover its priceless and timeless message.

8This proclamation established a unique bond between the Bible and the destiny of the American nation. It was crafted to serve a group of fundamentalist and evangelical actors intent on claiming the ownership of the culture and morals they believed to lie at the foundation of the United States as a nation. As we will see, this claim was denounced and sparked controversy.

9This episode is not merely a historical curiosity or a footnote in the history of the Reagan presidency. Rather, it embodies the convergence of symbolic politics, evangelical mobilization, and the contested redefinition of American national identity. Nonetheless, the Year of the Bible and its proclamation have tended to be overlooked in scholarship.

  • 9 This failure led to divergent strategies within the Christian Right. Jerry Falwell, founder of the (...)

10Most of the authors (Pierard, 1985; Marley, 2006; Williams, 2010; Dodds, 2012) mention the event only in passing, as an illustration of the Christian Right’s failed attempt to transform its access to Reagan into concrete policy gains on issues such as prayer in schools or abortion—topics the President addressed in his 1983 speech at the National Religious Broadcasters Conference. John G. Turner, author of the most thorough scholarly biography of Bill Bright, describes the Year of the Bible as a “minor revival of civil religion during the Reagan years” (Turner, 2008: 200). As we will see, Reagan ultimately failed to deliver on these so-called “moral” policies.9 Yet none of these scholars offers a detailed account of the event, except for Neil J. Young (2016), who devotes a handful of pages in his chapter on Reagan to the proclamation and its aftermath, but without exploring its preparation. But does the fact that the President responded with symbolic gestures necessarily mean that those gestures are without tangible effect? Matthew Avery Sutton perhaps best captured the broader implications of this question when he stated (2015: 2012):

  • 10 I quoted Turner’s and now Preston’s respective uses of civil religion without employing the concept (...)

Scholars mostly agree with William Martin that Reagan’s standard response to the Religious Right was “symbolic gestures with little follow-up action” (Martin, 2005: 233). But the gestures mattered. A lot. Reagan, according to Andrew Preston, “reconfigured the Judeo-Christian civil religion10 from what it had been since the 1930s—a way to foster inclusiveness—into a rhetorical device to attack liberalism and secularism” (Preston, 2012: 582). He masterfully used faith as a tool to bolster conservatism.

  • 11 Z. Montague (2020, June 2) “Holding It Aloft, He Incited a Backlash. What Does the Bible Mean to Tr (...)

11“[G]estures mattered. A lot.” Just like President Donald Trump holding up a Bible in front of St. John’s Church, in June 2020, as Black Lives Matter protests raged across Washington, D.C.—a silent, defiant signal that embodied his “law and order” candidacy and was immediately recognized as such by his evangelical base.11 My inquiry takes Sutton’s observation seriously. While I do not attempt to draw a direct line from the 1983 proclamation to the 2020 photo op, I argue that Trump’s silent gesture was preceded by Reagan’s words. By tracing this early convergence of symbolic politics, evangelical mobilization, and redefinition of American national identity in detail, this article aims to elucidate both the mechanics and the consequences of Reagan’s gesture.

12Hence, the Year of the Bible raises several empirical questions that I will try to address. Under what circumstances was it drafted? Which actors were involved, and what were their objectives? What kind of relationship did it establish between religion, politics, and the United States as a nation? What does this investigation reveal about evangelicalism and fundamentalism—and their claims not only to speak for the nation, but to embody it? And what impact did such claims have on pluralism?

13Beyond these empirical matters, the event highlights important issues, notably concerning the distinction that Joseph Gusfield (1963)—whose insights I will draw upon—makes between instrumental and symbolic politics. This distinction is closely tied to the status and prestige of a group, particularly as it alleges a moral superiority within a given society.

14Using the Reagan administration archives as a primary source, I will pay close attention to the details that led to the proclamation and how the Year of the Bible unfolded as an attempt to provide a divine—and thus unquestionable—moral, cultural, and political foundation for the United States as a nation. I will endeavor to construct a robust narrative of this sequence of events. Doing so will allow me to discuss a closely related matter: assessing the impact and the consequences of the symbolic dimension of Reagan’s gesture towards his evangelical base. This second task—which is by no means secondary—requires theoretical tools drawn both from Joseph Gusfield’s sociology of symbolic crusades and from Claude Lefort’s political philosophy. Lefort emphasized the way liberal democracies are always tempted to represent themselves in a substantial manner—as a compact body, grounded in a fixed, definitive conception of knowledge, law, or power.

15Thus, this investigation seeks to shed light on a recurring claim in liberal societies—that the political community must be founded on religion—and to examine its consequences for pluralism.

16After outlining Gusfield’s insights on symbolic crusade and introducing my main archival sources—most notably the papers of Morton Blackwell, the White House’s liaison to religious actors and, in particular, the Christian Right—I will trace the origins of the Year of the Bible. Initiated in December 1981 by Bill Bright, the campaign already revealed underlying tensions among religious leaders competing for direct access to the President. This competition was further intensified by the White House’s own, at times conflicting, strategies for mobilizing major fundamentalist and evangelical organizations as a platform for the Reagan’s conservative agenda and electoral objectives, with significant implications for pluralism. I will then follow the legislative trajectory of Bright’s proposal, showing how Senator Armstrong, a key figure in the Christian Right, transformed it into a law mandating a presidential proclamation—and how this move provoked judicial backlash from people concerned with constitutional boundaries, rather than risking confrontation with the President’s evangelical base.

Politics Through Symbols

  • 12 I am deeply indebted to Daniel Cefaï, and his magnificent work (Cefaï, 2009), for introducing me to (...)

17“We do live in a forest of symbols, and within that forest there is disagreement, conflict, and disorder,” writes sociologist Joseph Gusfield in Symbolic Crusade (1963: 180).12 His phrase captures the intuition that runs through his entire book: there is more to politics than economic struggle, social classes, and instrumental action. Status matters, as cultural groups vie for prestige within society. Prestige is a matter of symbols, and thus of symbolic action.

18Gusfield draws heavily on Max Weber’s multidimensional approach to social stratification, distinguishing between social classes and status groups. The distinction is analytical, discriminating “separate orders of social structure:” “In the class order economic power and products are distributed. Men have their positions on the basis of functions in the division of labor. Prestige, however, is distributed within the status order on the basis of group qualities” (Gusfield, 1963: 15).

  • 13 See J. Coulter’s (1996) fascinating remarks on this subject.

19Still, the distinction goes beyond mere analysis. There can be an objective—or even objectified—appraisal of class, when a third party (for example, sociologists) categorizes a population using quantitative indicators, without its members necessarily being aware of this categorization. By contrast, “since the social status of a group consists in the evaluation and respect which it receives from others, the status structure is necessarily ‘subjective’” (Gusfield, 1963: 15). The difference reminds us of the Marxian distinction between “class for itself ” and “class for oneself.”13 There is a phenomenal quality to the display of status: it has to be manifested—that is, seen but also acknowledged—by the group itself and, even more importantly, by third parties.

  • 14 Contrary to what the title of his book suggests, Gusfield never offers a theoretical characterizati (...)
  • 15 See M. A. Sutton’s (2024) important clarification of the term “evangelicalism,” in dialogue with th (...)

20Symbolic Crusade is a theoretical inquiry into status conflicts, empirically grounded in the history of the temperance movement.14 The book reconstructs the trajectory of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, from the late 19th to the mid-20th century. Gusfield’s historical material is fascinating: it shows how an evangelical movement—one that must be carefully distinguished from what “evangelicalism” came to signify after the Second World War15—engaged in a full spectrum of reformist action, ranging from progressive to reactionary over the course of a century. As long as Protestant culture remained dominant in American society, the movement’s approach was assimilative: it invited its targeted population—drunkards—to adopt its religious norms of temperance. But as social pluralism increased and Protestant dominance was challenged, especially by the influx of Catholic immigrants who became the backbone of the urban working classes, the movement shifted toward coercive means. It sought to inscribe its norms into the law to compel obedience from the recalcitrant. The 1919 adoption of the Prohibition Amendment epitomizes this coercive turn.

  • 16 His major book, The Paranoid Style (Hofstadter, 1966), expanded on his initial chapter from 1955.

21Gusfield draws the idea of status politics from the collective volume edited in 1955 by Columbia sociologist Daniel Bell, The Radical Right. This editorial project grew out of a faculty seminar on political behavior that sought to assess the impact of McCarthyism on American politics. The contributions of historian Richard Hofstadter16 and of political sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset were key in defining status politics. Gusfield capitalizes on their insights, above all the fact that such politics is binary, confrontational, abhorrent to compromise, and thus at war with pluralism. The crusader is no pragmatist politician:

The “rules of the game” governing pluralistic politics are sharply antithetical to the “poor loser,” the “sorehead,” the intolerant ideologue who considers himself morally right and all others morally evil. He cannot accept the legitimacy of an institution in which even partial defeat occurs. For him politics is not a search for benefits in his work and life but a battleground between forces of good and evil. He reacts with passion in ways which contradict the rules of pluralistic politics. He rejects the presupposition that everybody in the political arena has a legitimate right to get something and nobody has a legitimate right to get everything. (Gusfield, 1966: 178)

22Gusfield diverges from his predecessors, and especially from Lipset, on a specific point: he refuses to equate symbolic politics with pure emotion—and thus with irrationalism. Symbolic activities are rational: they seek to enhance or degrade the prestige of a status group within society. Those activities rely on gestures of cohesion, which consolidate consensual aspects of a society, and on gestures of distinction, which glorify or diminish a given group in the public realm. Institutions, especially political ones, are decisive in this process.

Governments affect the distribution of values through symbolic acts, as well as through the force of instrumental ones. The struggle to control the symbolic actions of government is often as bitter and as fateful as the struggle to control its tangible effects. […] In such gestures [of differentiation], governments take sides in social conflicts and place the power and prestige of the public, operating through the political institution, on one side or the other. (Gusfield, 1963: 167, 172)

23It is precisely this kind of gesture that I will seek to elucidate by retracing how the Year of the Bible proclamation came into being through law—another form of symbolic action, according to Gusfield. Moreover, the proclamation was made by the most powerful political actor: the U.S. President himself. We shall now turn to the backstage arrangements that enabled the public performance of this proclamation, and to one of its key operatives.

In the Shadows, Morton Blackwell

24Senator Williams, Representative Moorhead, and evangelist Bill Bright shared the light of the stage with President Reagan, as he signed the proclamation declaring 1983 the Year of the Bible. Yet one man, whose work was decisive in making this symbolic event possible, remained in the shadows. His name is Morton C. Blackwell. From 1981 to 1984, Blackwell served in the Office of Public Liaison as Special Assistant to the President, where he was notably responsible for religious affairs.

25My account results from a thorough investigation of the Blackwell files at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, which have now been completely digitized.17 These files are more than a mere compilation of documents. They testify to an intention, a strategy—often encouraged, not always understood by the rest of the White House staff, and at crucial times disrupted. That is why, before describing the corpus I relied upon, it is important to articulate Blackwell’s agenda and vision. Let us start with his own words, drawn from a 2012 interview with the BBC, about his involvement in mobilizing a Christian Right since the 1970s.18

At one point, analyzing what is the largest, available resource that is currently unemployed in politics, that would be on our side with respect to public policy, we came upon the idea of activating theologically conservative Christians in the public policy process.
But in those days, most conservative pastors felt that it was not part of their calling to become involved in any way with the public policy process. (—Why not?)—Well, that was the history of conservative theological Christians, […] to focus on theology, and on saving souls. And the act of participation in politics, running for office, or even getting themselves registered in voting was just not part of what they did. So, we set about, in a very systematic way, to identify some prominent leader of conservative Christianity in order to see about awakening theologically conservative Christians to the importance of participation in politics. And we settled upon the pastor of the Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia, Reverend Jerry Falwell.
A number of us went down and met with Dr Falwell. And Paul [Weyrich] specifically said to him in the conversation that: “I believe, sir, that there is a moral majority waiting to be organized.”
It worked magnificently well, in the run-up to the 1980 elections, Falwell did a very simple, extraordinarily effective program. He had devoted years developing a list of something like 90,000 conservative pastors. And the pastors, in their tens of thousands that began to activate congregations in our political system for the first time, viewed that they were defending their views, their principles, their culture against assault.

  • 19 Since the late nineteenth century, conservative Protestants in the United States—variously identifi (...)

26Blackwell’s account aligns with the analysis offered by both contemporary analysts and later historians, and is consistent with the image that emerges of him through his files. As a Republican strategist, he played a key role in mobilizing the Christian Right, particularly through Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority, for the 1980 presidential election.19 Blackwell’s subsequent role in the White House was to keep this constituency “in a state of perpetual mobilization” (Blumenthal, 1987:276)—an analysis echoed by several authors (Pierard, 1985; Martin, 2005; Young, 2016). He used his position as Special Assistant to grant influential members of the Christian Right access to the President (Williams, 2010: 196). As the documents we will analyze make clear, Blackwell’s aims diverged—sometimes sharply—from those of Reagan’s close advisors. Theirs was a strategy of containment.

The flaw in this strategy was that the White House served as an incubator for the movement it was trying to contain. Reagan never wholeheartedly cooperated with the containment strategy; he encouraged Evangelicals whenever he was given the chance, and to do so he created opportunities, especially photo opportunities, against the advice of his staff. (Blumenthal, 1987: 276)

27Blackwell reassured his Christian Right interlocutors by talking about “incrementalism” (Young, 2016: 210). Such talk was not mere rhetoric. Since 1964, when he served as the youngest delegate to the Barry Goldwater campaign convention, Blackwell had believed in playing the long game. He saw Goldwater’s unsuccessful presidential campaign not as a defeat but as a victory, for it attracted new constituencies into politics, especially many conservative religious leaders who came to see the Republican Party as their home (Martin, 2005: 87-89).

28By the end of the 1970s, Blackwell was instrumental, with Paul Weyrich, in crafting the Moral Majority (Martin, 2005: 356), the movement that the fundamentalist pastor Jerry Falwell would lead to help defeat President Jimmy Carter, an evangelical, and elect Ronald Reagan to the presidency. Carter, though a Baptist himself, disappointed evangelical leaders as he advocated for the Equal Rights Amendment, homosexual rights, and did not take action on school prayer or abortion (Reichley, 1987: 78-79). This last issue was a departure from the evangelical positions that allowed for abortion under certain conditions. Within the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest evangelical body, this issue became decisive. Fundamentalist leaders, aided by Blackwell’s allies, took hold of the denomination’s institutions and departed from their defense of a strict separation between church and state (Hankins, 2002; Martin, 2005: 234).

29The Republican strategists saw this as an opportunity to win over this constituency, which was necessary to secure a decisive advantage for the conservatives in the 1980 elections (Martin, 2005: 191). Blackwell was struck by the enthusiastic reaction of the evangelical leadership to Reagan’s speech regarding values and the Bible (Martin, 2005: 218).

30In May 1981, Blackwell had already been Special Assistant to the President since February. He nonetheless organized the Council for National Policy with evangelical activist Tim LaHaye and New Right activists Paul Weyrich and Richard Viguerie. This think tank brought together Christian Right activists and members of the Reagan administration to discuss policy-making, including figures such as Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Phyllis Schlafly (Williams, 2010: 194).

31Blackwell left the Public Liaison Office in 1984 to run the Leadership Institute that he founded in 1979. Again, he was set on playing the long game. It was easier and more efficient for him to train 20-year-old activists, than to convince 60-year-old apparatchiks of the need to adopt new methods to fight conservative battles (Martin, 2005: 263). He taught these new generations how to run media, appear on television, work within an administration, and run a campaign. Ralph Reed and Grover Norquist, major activists of the Christian Coalition, were among Blackwell’s pupils.

32But we are not there yet. In Blackwell’s files, the account of the Year of the Bible begins in December 1981. As will become obvious, the Reagan Administration was not in a very good position regarding its evangelical constituency.

Into Blackwell’s Files

  • 20 See “Records of the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy,” on the Dallas Theological Seminar (...)

33I first encountered the Year of the Bible in February 2024, as I was working on the archives of the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy (ICBI) held at the Dallas Theological Seminary. Founded in 1977, ICBI was responsible for crafting and promoting the Chicago Statements on Biblical Inerrancy (1978), Biblical Hermeneutics (1982), and Biblical Application (1986).20 These declarations reclaimed the fundamentalist impulse to secure the authority of the Bible, redefine a narrow conservatism as evangelical orthodoxy, and wage old (notably creationism) and new (such as abortion and anti-gay rights) crusades.

  • 21 Bill Bright and James M. Boice (1981, April 29), Letter to Dr Edmund P. Clowney, ICBI Files.

34As I went through box 6 of the ICBI archives, I found Bill Bright’s “Bio-Data” folder, with correspondence dating from 1977 to 1984. In it, I was intrigued by a dozen standard letters sent to prominent members of the ICBI, all conservative theologians, among whom were Anthony A. Hoekema of Calvin College (Grand Rapids), President Edmund P. Clowney of Westminster Theological Seminary (Glenside), and the major figure of post-Second World War evangelicalism, Carl F. H. Henry. These letters were sent between April 29 and August 14, 1981. They started in this way:21

ICBI is asking President Reagan to proclaim 1982 the year of the Bible. Our purpose is to focus the world’s attention on the power of God’s Word to transform the individual, the Church, the society and the world. Our major event will be an international lay congress to be held March 2-7, 1982, in San Diego, California.

35The letters were meant to convince their addressees to “join us as part of the leadership team.” They were signed by Bright (“Congress Chairman”) and James M. Boice (“Council Chairman” of the ICBI).

36As I returned to Switzerland, I began investigating the Year of the Bible. I quickly discovered two things. First, the proclamation had taken place in 1983—not in 1982, as the ICBI correspondence had suggested. Second, a simple web search led me to the Morton Blackwell files, a goldmine of material.

37My account of the Year of the Bible, from its inception to its unfolding, is primarily based on the Blackwell files. There are 65 digitized boxes accessible through the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library website. My explorations enabled me to identify 234 occurrences of “Year of the Bible” within this archive, corresponding to 134 documents across 45 folders within 34 boxes.

38A close reading of this material prompted me to select nearly 60 documents, spread across eight boxes. I organized them chronologically to reconstruct the sequence I am about to present. In very rare cases, when a document shed an important light on the course of events and was not available in the Blackwell material, I drew from other files from the Reagan Library. These additional searches yielded 44 occurrences, corresponding to 25 folders within 14 boxes.

39Let us then start with the first chronological mention in the Year of the Bible corpus: Bright’s proposal.

Bill Bright’s Agenda

40The first mention of the “Year of the Bible” in the Blackwell files appears on December 18, 1981, near the end of President Reagan’s first year in office. It is found in two separate documents housed in different boxes. One is a “meeting report” produced under Morton Blackwell’s supervision. It describes, in a single page and with occasional detail, an encounter with Bill Bright. The other is a two-page letter addressed by Bright to the President, accompanied by a three-page draft of the proposed proclamation. The relationship between these two documents—the report and the letter—is complex. Both refer to Bright’s initiative, yet they do not mention each other. Still, when read together, they form a multifaceted picture of the early development of the “Year of the Bible” campaign.

  • 22 Morton Blackwell (1981, December 18), OPL Meeting report, BMF.

41The encounter took place in the Oval Office of the White House at 11:45 AM on December 18.22 Bright met with Blackwell and an assistant. He recounted a previous meeting with President Reagan, where he had assured the latter of his frequent prayers. The end of the final paragraph of the report elaborates on what happened after.

Dr Bright mentioned that he is working with members of Congress to have next year declared the year of the Bible to encourage Bible reading. Dr Bright asked the President if he would support this concept. The President said he would be very pleased to support it and wished Dr Bright well with Congress.

42At the moment of the Oval Office encounter, the initiative was moving forward within the halls of the Capitol. Bright was already working with Congressmen and planning to declare 1982 the Year of the Bible, with the President’s blessing. The objective stated was to “encourage Bible reading”—nothing transpired about the nation.

43This brings us back to the relationship between the two (or three) documents, and the chronology of their writing. Meeting minutes are usually written after the event, within hours or days. Letters, on the other hand, are often dated according to the day they are sent, not necessarily when they are written. It is therefore possible that Bright’s letter had already been written before his meeting with Blackwell, or that he wrote it afterwards. Did he show his letter, or the accompanying draft, to those present? The minutes make no mention of it.

44Let us take a look at the letter now. The course of action it describes is not identical to what emerges from the meeting minutes. One thing is striking: there is no mention of the encounter in the Oval Office, as if Bright had spontaneously decided to write to the President, without coordinating with his staff—although we have evidence to the contrary. In this sense, the letter creates a fiction: it operates as if no preparation had taken place with the Administration, giving the impression of hidden backstage dealings.

  • 23 William R. Bright (1981, December 18), Letter to President Reagan, BMF.

45When I began my inquiry, I first encountered the letter without knowing of the meeting report. I initially took it at face value—as a genuine initiative by Bright to write to the President, leveraging his personal connection with Reagan. But then I discovered the minutes of the Oval Office meeting. Suddenly, the letter took on a different meaning. Its referential quality began to fracture, revealing itself fictitious. The circumstances and motivations that Bright evokes in his formal correspondence appeared in a new light—one where decorum conceals stealth maneuvers.23 It felt like encountering someone well versed in managing appearances, and perfectly at ease navigating the corridors of power.

As chairman of the Congress on the Bible to be held in San Diego next year, and as a fellow American, I would like to request that you declare 1982 the Year of the Bible in our nation. In making this request, I am confident that I speak for millions of others in every state.

46Bright identifies himself through two social designations to address his request: one religious, “chairman of the Congress on the Bible,” and the other civic, “fellow American.” His letter does not elaborate further on this congress, nor does it provide information about which organization is behind this event. I shall return to the matter. Nonetheless, the religious aspect remains central and is consistently tied to the Bible throughout the letter.

47For now, let us focus on the other aspect: Bright’s claim to “speak for millions of others in every state” as a “fellow American.” The second paragraph of his letter elaborates on this point.

As you know, the Bible can legitimately be considered the cornerstone on which the United States was built. Those who settled the country drew inspiration, encouragement, and direction from the Bible. From it later came the most basic concepts and principles of the republic established by the Founding Fathers, especially the concept of man’s individual worth and dignity, rooted in his unique value in the sight of God.

48Bright positions himself as representative of millions of Americans—implicitly invoking an electorate worth courting. His request is framed as the recognition of a self-evident truth: that the nation’s entire edifice rests upon the Bible. To be truly American means to be a true Christian—that is, to believe that the Bible is the Word of God or, to quote Bright, “For me and for tens of millions of other Americans, of course, the Scriptures are God’s holy Word […].” Proclaiming the Year of the Bible would then be for the President to recognize and assert the obvious: that the United States is, in essence, a Christian nation.

49Bright couples his rhetoric of the foundation with a warning on the dangers that the nation is currently facing, without ever specifying what those risks are, yet with apocalyptic overtones.

Mr. President, we both know that the United States faces perhaps the most difficult and dangerous period of testing in its history. As a people, we are not, I feel, adequately prepared for that testing, and the remaining time may be fearfully short. In my judgment, it is urgent that at this critical moment we seek the priceless, proven resources of wisdom and direction contained in the Scripture. A statement from you, as the respected and beloved leader of the nation, expressing your confidence in God and His Word, would give great strength, encouragement, and credibility to the effort being made to help call America back to God.

50“As a people, we are not […] adequately prepared for that testing”—Bright is talking about the “American people,” that is, a political collectivity. The vocabulary is unmistakably religious: it is a “testing,” a crucial moment that will define the spiritual identity and destiny of the nation. Hence the resources needed to transcend these critical times are “contained in the [Christian] Scripture.” Importantly, the history and the fate of the USA are read through this religious prism. That is why the proclamation goes beyond stating the obvious as it is a saving act that is fully consistent with the mission of Bright’s organization, Campus Crusade for Christ—mass evangelism. But here, it is playing out on a national scale, with the President acting as a decisive institutional and political actor, enlisted to “help call America back to God.”

51I will later analyze the three-page draft accompanying Bright’s letter. For now, let us say that it carries no date—apart from the reference to 1982 as the envisioned Year of the Bible—and that its wording closely matches the final proclamation. The emphasis is unmistakable from the very first lines:

Of the many formative influences that have combined over the centuries to shape the United States of America into a distinctive nation and people, the role of the Bible has been and remains preeminent.

52At this point, I do not know who drafted this text. It might have been written by the Congressmen with whom Bright was in contact. All I can document is that Bright transmitted it to the White House. As the report of the meeting that took place in the Oval Office on the same day testifies, it was taken seriously.

  • 24 T. Minnery (1982, April 9), “The Battle for the Bible, 1982: A Report from the Front,” Christianity (...)

53Yet while I do not know who authored this first draft of the proclamation, my investigation in the archives of the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy (ICBI) reveals aspects of the initiative that were likely unknown to Bright’s interlocutors within the Reagan Administration. This brings us back to Bright’s self-presentation, at the outset of his letter, as “chairman of the Congress on the Bible.” The event, organized by the ICBI, took place in March 1982. It assembled the most prominent voices of conservative—if not outright fundamentalist—evangelical theology, including Francis Schaeffer, Norman Geisler, J. I. Packer, and drew an audience of 2,500 participants. “The one-time event was designed to infuse the evangelical movement with renewed enthusiasm for the authority and reliability of Scripture,” Christianity Today reported.24 The following excerpt, from the same article, is particularly telling:

Presidential counselor Edwin Meese delivered a forthright speech on the value of the Bible, calling it, “the foundation upon which our country was built,” and referring to it as a “reliable roadmap” for charting the direction of the country. Meese […] came at the request of an acquaintance, Campus Crusade’s Bill Bright, the chairman of the congress committee.

54The Congress was a place to reaffirm a maximalist theological—but also political—understanding of the authority of the Bible. It was consistent with some of the themes and even the wording present in the proclamation.

  • 25 Bill Bright (1982, June 28), Letter to Dr James M. Boice, ICBI Files.
  • 26 Carrie Perdue (Undated, probably June 1983), Carbon copy of letter to Dr William R. Bright, ICBI Fi (...)
  • 27 G. J. Griswold (Administrative Assistant to Bill Bright), (1983, July 18), Letter to Cary Perdue (E (...)

55Nonetheless, the relationship between Bright and ICBI grew uneasy. In June 1982, the evangelist wrote to James M. Boice, chairman of ICBI, promising news concerning the Year of the Bible.25 This news never came, despite multiple requests from the ICBI staff,26 which were eventually met with an evasive response from Bright’s administrative assistant.27 What prompted Bright’s decision to act unilaterally? There is no explicit answer to this question in the Blackwell files or in the ICBI archives. But the way the project had been framed since December 1981—in the meeting at the Oval Office and the letter from the same day—could indicate that Bright considered the proclamation part of his own very personal agenda, one that granted him special access to the President. An agenda Bright did not seem interested in sharing with the rest of his evangelical allies.

56As we are about to discover, Bright was far from alone in his desire to secure privileged access to the President—a theme that runs through the broader evangelical engagement with the Reagan Administration.

A Platform of Power: the National Religious Broadcasters

57President Reagan signed the proclamation during the National Prayer Breakfast, on February 3, 1983. Yet his major announcement had come a few days before, during his remarks at the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) annual convention, which were received with great enthusiasm. The occasion was carefully orchestrated and raises several questions. What was the NRB at the time? What was the nature of the relationship between the President and his conservative Christian constituency? And why did the Office of Public Liaison choose this venue, rather than other evangelical gatherings or organizations, for the announcement?

58Answering these questions leads us down a parallel track, one that initially ran alongside Bright’s initiative, before ultimately converging with it in 1983. This path sheds light not only on the kind of platform the NRB provided, but also on the challenges it posed for Reagan’s team. Cooperation with the NRB exposed internal tensions within the White House over how to engage with a fundamentalist and evangelical constituency—tensions that touched directly on the broader issue of pluralism.

59Above all, the struggle for presidential access was more than a quest for visibility: it served as a structuring principle within the religious sphere, particularly within the evangelical field, shaping internal hierarchies and redefining the boundaries of legitimate representation.

  • 28 Ben Armstrong (1981, December 7), Letter to Morton Blackwell, BMF.

60Our first document is a two-page letter from Ben Armstrong, Executive Director of the NRB, to Morton Blackwell, dated December 7, 1981.28 (As a reminder, Bill Bright’s Oval Office meeting would take place on the 18th.) The letter follows a visit Armstrong paid to Blackwell at the White House. It appears to be a formal renewal of a previously expressed—likely verbal—invitation for the President to speak at the upcoming NRB Annual Convention. Neither the location (Washington, D.C.) nor the date (February 1982) is mentioned, which tends to confirm that prior discussion had already taken place.

61The renewal of the invitation comes in the final paragraphs of the letter, following a note of regret that Reagan had not been available in 1981 due to the resolution of the U.S. hostage crisis in Iran. But before returning to the matter of the invitation, Armstrong forcefully makes his case from the very first paragraph, offering “some details regarding the background of our participation and support of President Reagan during the last election, going back to 1976.” This opening sentence sets the tone: the letter is about expressing loyalty to Reagan. The next three paragraphs outline the forces the NRB is ready to mobilize on his behalf for the political campaign.

As you already know, National Religious Broadcasters as a conservative organization has been in basic support of President Reagan’s principles going back to 1976 and before that time. It is not a point which has to be supported because everyone knows that conservatism in religion goes hand-in-hand with conservatism in politics.
Our Board consists of 60 outstanding leaders in the field of religion and religious broadcasting, including fundamentalists like Jerry Falwell but also more mainline conservatives such as Billy Graham and Bill Bright.
Our people have enormous respect in the Bible Belt areas of the U. S. A., but are increasingly reaching the major markets, such as Los Angeles, New York, Atlanta and Chicago, with up to 100 million listeners weekly for our religious radio and television programs

62“[C]onservatism in religion goes hand-in-hand with conservatism in politics”—the convergence, or even the pledge of allegiance, could hardly be stated more clearly. It is telling that Armstrong—himself a conservative evangelical—starts by mentioning “fundamentalists like Jerry Falwell,” the latter being known for his outspoken political engagement, before turning to more temperate figures such as Graham or Bright. No other Protestant traditions are cited, nor are Catholics. Yet the NRB’s offer is formidable: a potential audience of “100 million listeners weekly.” Founded in 1944, the NRB was back then—and remains—a media organization, bringing together evangelical radio and television broadcasters across the United States. Its members controlled vast amounts of airtime, making it one of the most powerful religious communication platforms in the country. This broadcasting reach was the NRB’s central asset: it positioned the organization not merely as a religious body, but as a key node in the evangelical communication infrastructure.

  • 29 Elizabeth H. Dole (1981, December 17), Memo to Gregory J. Newell, BMF.

63Within ten days, on December 17, a memo signed by Elizabeth H. Dole, head of the Public Liaison Office, proposed a schedule for the NRB Convention of February.29 The document noted that these religious broadcasters “represent large constituencies numbering into the millions”—a phrase that was edited by hand to read “tens of millions.” The memo draws directly on Armstrong’s letter, including this telling formulation describing “60 outstanding leaders in the field of religion and religious broadcasting, including fundamentalists like Jerry Falwell and mainline conservatives such as Billy Graham.”

  • 30 Elizabeth H. Dole (1982, January 12), NAE Memo to Gregory J. Newell, BMF.

64At this point, it is worth exploring how the Reagan administration perceived such evangelical organizations, and what effects this promised access to the President had on the religious sphere. Two memos from the Public Liaison Office, both dated January 12, 1982, just weeks before the NRB convention, shed light on the matter. The first, signed by Dole and addressed to Gary J. Newell, director of presidential scheduling,30 outlines a proposed appearance by the President at the annual convention of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), scheduled for March 1982. In support of the proposal, Dole provides some background information:

The National Association of Evangelicals is to evangelical Christians what the National Council of Churches is to ecumenical Christians. Gallup research indicates that there are approximately 45 million self-identified evangelicals in the nation. NAE membership includes 38,000 churches from 74 denominations. The leadership present at this convention represents the major theological force in the United States today, and possibly the developing new religio-political force as well. Most evangelicals were strong supporters of the President during his election, and officers of the NAE have been vigorously in support of this Administration.

65Interestingly, Dole contrasts “evangelical Christians” with “ecumenical Christians”—implicitly acknowledging that the former are generally adverse to ecumenism and, by extension, to pluralism. Yet through the NAE, these evangelicals are presented as both “the major theological force” in the country and, increasingly, as “the new developing new religion-political force,” firmly aligned with the Reagan’s conservative agenda.

  • 31 Morton Blackwell (1982, January 12), Memo to Elizabeth H. Dole, BMF.

66The second memo is a response from Blackwell to the question of which convention the President should prioritize: the NRB or the NAE?31 Blackwell’s answer is unequivocal: the NRB “meeting is more important,” even though he acknowledges that Bob Dugan, the director of the NAE, “has been more helpful to this office than any other person in the religious community.” What drives Blackwell’s preference is, first, the scale—3,000 NRB delegates versus 1,200 for the NAE—and, above of all, the media reach: since the “convention includes virtually all of the effective communicators in the religious community who actively supported the President.” Nonetheless, he recommends arranging another event with the NAE later in the year.

  • 32 Robert P. Dogan (1982, January 7), Letter to Billy A. Melvin (NAE Executive director), BMF.
  • 33 Robert P. Dogan (1982, January 8), Letter to Morton Blackwell, BMF.

67Both organizations were conservative and pledged allegiance to Reagan. Their conflict was all the more intense given that the NRB, founded in 1944, had originally been the media department of the NAE, established in 1942 (Hadden, Shupe, 1987: 64). Their interactions with the White House reveal a sometimes fierce competition to secure access to the President. One of Blackwell’s folders on the NRB contains an internal letter from the NAE, from January 1982, complaining that the NRB was advertising “a White House reception, with opportunity to meet the First Lady, for 200 women who would sign up at a $25 ticket price.”32 Dugan, director of NAE, added: “Frankly, I wondered how they had been able to secure such a commitment, when we could not get to first base with a like request last year.” He forwarded the letter to Blackwell with a handwritten note: “This business with NRB is a matter of conscience and chagrin with me.”33

68Access to the President conferred prestige while generating significant tension. Dugan’s note, interestingly, almost casts Blackwell in the role of arbiter. More broadly, it illustrates how symbolic access to the President could have concrete repercussions within the religious sphere: the White House acted not merely as an external political ally, but as a quasi-arbiter of religious credibility—elevating some actors over others through symbolic proximity, in a manner reminiscent of Gusfield’s (1963) analysis.

69The White House’ s preferential treatment of conservative religious organizations also reshaped the terms of pluralism in American society—an issue we now turn to.

A Speech on Pluralism?

  • 34 Elizabeth H. Dole (1982, January 5), Memo to Gregory J. Newell, BMF.

70While the NAE was voicing its frustration over the NRB’s privileged access to the First Lady, the White House was busy preparing the President’s remarks for the upcoming NRB convention. A memo from Elizabeth Dole, dated January 5, gave instructions regarding the speech’s content: “The convention’s theme is ‘Reaching the Family.’ This would provide an excellent forum for the President’s planned speech on ‘American Pluralism.’”34 Although Morton Blackwell had been designated as project officer, he appears not to have been consulted. This episode offers a glimpse into the internal tensions within the Office of Public Liaison over how to engage the evangelical constituency. It is also telling of how these religious actors perceived the very idea of pluralism.

  • 35 Elizabeth H. Dole (1982, January 12), NRB Memo to Gregory J. Newell, BMF.

71One week later, January 12, Dole wrote a second memo about “American Pluralism” that expanded on the initial proposal.35 The objective was to have the President reassure the Jewish leaders about “the right of Americans to dissent.” Her plan was to use the NRB convention to target multiple—conflicting—audiences, while likely downplaying the event’s fundamentalist dimension.

  • 36 Morton Blackwell (1982, January 13), Memo to Elizabeth H. Dole, BMF.

72But such tactics flatly contradicted Blackwell’s strategy for engaging the Christian Right. The next day, he responded to Dole with a pointed memo: “This is the wrong forum for the proposed topic.” He added that both the NRB and the NAE had chosen the American family as the theme of their respective annual conventions: “I consider it highly unlikely that we can get the President to speak before another pro-family group of this size and influence this election year.” His objective was clear: “constitute a call to arms for the 1982 election battles.” Blackwell concluded: “Please, let’s not lose this opportunity.”36

  • 37 Morton Blackwell (1982, February 3), Memo for Ben Elliott, BMF.

73Yet the dissensions within the White House staff were far from over. A couple of weeks later, Blackwell had to contend with Ben T. Elliott, Reagan’s speechwriter, who seemed intent on following Dole’s instructions.37 Blackwell’s plea offers a window into the challenges he was facing in dealing with these conservative Christians, as well as into the climate in which Bright’s Year of the Bible request emerged.

Because this administration has not undertaken many initiatives in the social issues which are primarily of concern to this segment of the President’s support, this is a delicate situation.

74Blackwell’s recommendations to Elliott were straightforward. First, he proposed emphasizing issues important to this electorate: voluntary prayer in schools, opposition to abortion, and the defense of parental rights against government overreach. Second, he advised avoiding certain topics—especially pluralism and antisemitism. He reminded his colleague that the NRB was overwhelmingly (conservative) Protestant and reinforced his point by highlighting the role of fundamentalist broadcasters, to deflect suspicions of antisemitism. After stressing their strong support for Israel, presented as a “biblical mandate,” Blackwell concluded his warning: “Thus your draft remarks on pluralism must be carefully drafted.”

  • 38 White House Office Of The Press Secretary, (1982, February 9), Remarks of the President to the Nati (...)

75Reagan’s address to the NRB, delivered on February 9, was a tentative compromise between Dole’s instructions and Blackwell’s recommendations.38 The first part of the speech followed Blackwell’s line: it spoke about God as “the hearthstone because that’s where all hope for America lies,” and of families as “the bedrock of our nation.” The frequent burst of applause made clear the audience’s enthusiastic approval.

It’s time to realize, I think, that we need God more than he needs us. (Applause.) […] And let me say, I do not agree with those who accuse you of trying to impose your views on others. (Applause)
[…] The First Amendment was not written to protect the people from religious values; it was written to protect those values from government tyranny. (Applause

76The contrast was striking in how the rest of the speech was received: there was no applause for the “ecumenical” initiatives (bringing together Roman Catholics, Baptists, and Mormons), nor for the denunciations of “racial discrimination and religious bigotry.”

77Blackwell knew his audience far better than Dole. And she learned her lesson: in Reagan’s subsequent addresses—whether to the NRB in 1983 and 1984 or to large evangelical audiences more broadly—there would be no further mention of “American pluralism,” nor any of topic remotely related to it.

A Law to Proclaim the Bible

78Let us return to the photograph of the proclamation signing. Bill Bright, almost hidden behind President Reagan, stands in the shadow of the more prominent figures in the foreground—Senator Armstrong and Congressman Moorehead, both Republicans. This image encapsulates how the entire process unfolded: Bright’s backstage efforts ultimately merged with a more visible legislative initiative. This third course of action—shaped within Capitol Hill and the White House—shows how the draft transmitted by Bright evolved into a law before becoming a Presidential proclamation.

  • 39 Liberty Baptist College (1982, February 8-9), “An Understanding Politics Conference,” BMF.
  • 40 This characterization is used by the Armstrong Project, an initiative led by Armstrong’s family, to (...)

79One key actor in this legislative process was Senator William Armstrong (Colorado), elected to the U.S. Senate in 1979. A devout evangelical, Armstrong championed the core causes of the Christian Right—voluntary school prayer, opposition to abortion, tuition tax credits for private schools—as many documents in the Blackwell files attest. In February 1982, he took part in the “An Understanding Politics Conference” held at Liberty Baptist College, Jerry Falwell’s institution. The list of speakers included major players of the Christian and the New Right, the Republican Party, and the Reagan Administration. Among them were Morton Blackwell and Paul Weyrich. In the conference brochure, Armstrong was described as: “a dynamic Christian and Chairman of this year’s National Prayer Breakfast. He is a nationally recognized conservative spokesman.”39 He was, in short, a quintessential conservative “Christian activist.”40

  • 41 “A joint resolution authorizing and requesting the President to proclaim 1983 as the ‘Year of the B (...)

80In March 1982, Senator Armstrong introduced a joint resolution in the Senate (S. J. 165),41 while Congressman Moorehead did the same in the House. Both chambers approved the text, and the President signed it into law on October 4, 1982.

81Who drafted this resolution remains uncertain. The archival record provides no definitive answer. Given Armstrong’s convictions, he may have authored it himself. What is beyond doubt, however, is that the language of the resolution closely mirrors the draft submitted by Bright. The following three excerpts from the official text are particularly significant:

Whereas the Bible, the Word of God, has made a unique contribution in shaping the United States as a distinctive and blessed nation and people; […]
Whereas Biblical teachings inspired concepts of civil government that are contained in our Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States; […]
Whereas this Nation now faces great challenges that will test this Nation as it has never been tested before; and
Whereas that renewing our knowledge of and faith in God through Holy Scripture can strengthen us as a nation and a people.

82The themes articulated in the resolution are similar to those found in Bright’s draft. The Bible is positioned at the very foundation of the American nation—described as the source of its founding documents and institutions. In a language verging on the apocalyptic, the text suggests that in times of “testing,” the nation must return to Scripture for guidance. In this rhetoric, the Bible functions almost as a covenant document—a substantial theological category, but also a political one, invoking the idea of a “blessed nation,” and gesturing towards a vision of America as a “New Israel.”

  • 42 Morton Blackwell (1982, October 20), OPL Meeting report, BMF.
  • 43 Elizabeth H. Dole (1982, October 21), Memo to Kenneth H. Duberstein, BMF.

83On October 4, Reagan signed Public law 97-280, which required him—and him alone (a crucial detail, as we shall see)—to declare 1983 the Year of the Bible. This legal mandate set in motion a discreet meeting on October 20, bringing together Bright, Senator Armstrong, and four Campus Crusade staffers.42 The following day, Dole sent a memo about the meeting to the White House Legislative Affairs team to begin preparing the proclamation.43 Bright’s draft text was attached.

84The comparison between Blackwell’s meeting report and Dole’s memo reveals a shared project and points of tensions—consistent with the internal dynamics my analysis has been tracing within the Office of Public Liaison. According to the meeting report, “Bright is organizing a Protestant—Catholic—Jewish coalition to properly observe the year. They will write asking the President to serve as Honorary Chairman.” Dole’s version differs on key points: she states that Bright had been asked to organize this interfaith committee by Senator Williams and Congressman Moorhead (without mentioning that the latter was not present at the meeting). She also omits any reference to Reagan serving as Honorary Chairman. Instead, she describes how and when the proclamation should be issued: “a signing ceremony, preferably in the first week of December [1982, that] would include a wide range of clergy and lay leaders.”

  • 44 Neil Young indicates that Bright’s letters of invitation to the three vice-chairmen were sent well (...)

85Before turning to the ceremony itself, let us consider the composition of this so-called interfaith committee. As of the October 20 meeting, Bright had neither begun the process of recruiting its members nor, perhaps, even conceived the idea of such a committee. John Cardinal Krol, Archbishop of Philadelphia, was approached only later—he received Bright’s formal invitation on October 29. A staunch conservative and close ally of Reagan on moral issues, Krol was a frequent guest at the White House and eventually accepted the position of Roman Catholic vice-chairman of the National Committee for the Year of the Bible. Securing a Jewish representative proved more difficult, as several leaders declined. By the late November, Rabbi Gerson D. Cohen, Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, agreed to serve. (There are scarce mentions of him in the Blackwell files.) The third vice-chairman, whom they invited on November 2, was Pastor Thomas F. Zimmerman, General Superintendent of the Assemblies of God, the largest Pentecostal denomination in the United States. Historian Neil Young notes the irony of this appointment, as Zimmerman “who had once coordinated his denomination’s efforts with other evangelicals against Kennedy’s bid for the White House in 1960, now found himself joining the ecumenical effort to honor the Bible” (2016: 223).44

86Despite the symbolic balance suggested by its three vice-chairmen, the National Committee eventually comprised over sixty members—most of them evangelicals, many of whom were affiliated with the NRB. Among them were Billy Graham (Advisory Chairman), Ben Armstrong of the NRB, James M. Boice of the ICBI, and evangelist Luis Palau. The “interfaith” label concealed a structure firmly anchored in the conservative Protestant world—effectively marginalizing the very pluralism it claimed to represent.

  • 45 William R. Bright (1982, October 21), Letter to Morton Blackwell, BMF.

87The call for an interfaith committee must also be contrasted with the enthusiastic letter Bright sent to Blackwell the very next day, on the same date Dole issued her memo. “My Dear Morton, Yesterday was an historic day and could well be the prelude to the greatest spiritual awakening this nation has ever known.” He signed off in unmistakably evangelistic terms: “Yours for fulfilling the Great Commission in this generation.”45 Bright’s tone leaves no doubt: his project stood worlds away from the spirit of an interfaith collaboration.

88This brings us back to Dole’s proposal. In the end, no interfaith ceremony with clergy took place in December 1982. Instead, the official announcement occurred in February 1983, with Reagan using the NRB convention as a platform to deliver a potent message to his evangelical base—one designed to resonate far beyond the room, across the airwaves.

  • 46 Ben Armstrong (1982, December 15), Letter to President Reagan, BMF.
  • 47 Krol Cardinal John (1983, February 7), Letter to Morton Blackwell, BMF.

89In December 1982, the Executive director of the NRB wrote to the President indicating that the convention’s theme, “Christian Media Facing the Future with the Bible,” had been selected “following the passage of Congressional legislation” on the Year of the Bible. He added that he had been “instrumental in a personal way” in helping Bright “secur[e] the services” of Zimmerman, Krol and Cohen for the committee.46 The NRB convention thus became one of the major symbolic events tied to the proclamation. Significantly, Cardinal Krol did not attend: he had to request a transcript of the President’s remarks from Blackwell a few days later.47

  • 48 Launched in 1953, under Eisenhower’s presidency, the National Prayer Breakfast is an annual event h (...)
  • 49 White House “Schedule for the President for Thursday, February 3, 1983,” President, Office of the: (...)
  • 50 Reagan Library (2016, December 15), President Reagan’s Remarks at the Annual National Prayer Breakf (...)

90What about the National Prayer Breakfast,48 where the proclamation was officially signed a few days later? My investigation uncovered a surprising detail: Bright was not scheduled to appear on stage alongside Senator Williams and Congressman Moorehead.49 Tellingly, Reagan’s concluding remarks thanked the two politicians and “all those inside and outside of Congress who assisted them,” without mentioning Bright. Yet in the footage of the event, we clearly see Bright following Moorehead onto the platform, with Williams behind him, gesturing with open arms, as if to permit or legitimize his presence.50

91Whether this moment was improvised, opportunistic, or tacitly approved remains unclear. But in retrospect, Bright’s unexpected appearance—despite his absence from the official program—speaks volumes. It visually reasserted his religious and evangelical claim over an initiative that was becoming increasingly institutionalized, civic, and labeled as “interfaith.” In this sense, his presence in the frame reclaimed the evangelical imprint of the entire campaign.

Facing Court Rather than the Evangelicals

  • 51 James Cicconi (February 1, 1983), Memo “Year of the Bible,” Cicconi, James W. Files.

92On February 1, 1983—the day after President Reagan addressed a cheering NRB audience and two days before the National Prayer Breakfast—James Cicconi, Special Assistant to the Chief of Staff, responded tersely in a memo to two urgent questions regarding the Year of the Bible.51 The queries had been raised by Richard G. Darman, White House Staff Secretary. Although I did not have access to Darman’s files, Cicconi’s answers offer a clear glimpse of the careful balancing of interests the White House was then negotiating.

Question 1- The proclamation should be issued. Failure to do so would subject the President to far more criticism than he might draw from the court for issuing it.
Question 2- The proclamation drafted is satisfactory. The way it has been written will make it easier to defend than might otherwise have been the case.

93These answers suggest that the White House was fully aware that the Year of the Bible might provoke a legal backlash. At one point, rescinding the proclamation appears to have been considered—though this had become politically unviable once the President had made his announcement at the NRB. The memo likely reflects earlier internal deliberations, and the date it bears should be read more as an indicator than the precise moment of decision. Faced with a choice between alienating his evangelical constituency or risking a constitutional challenge, the President was advised to proceed. This episode reveals how, when confronted with competing claims, the White House prioritized symbolic alignment with the Christian Right over strict constitutional restraint.

94This raises a crucial question: why would Reagan risk legal action over a presidential proclamation? Quite simply, because it touched on sensitive constitutional issues, particularly the Establishment Clause, as we shall see. The President’s legal team was fully aware of the situation, yet chose to proceed. Cicconi’s second answer reveals more than legal caution: it reflects a deliberate preemptive strategy. Anticipating potential litigation, the White House undertook a careful rephrasing of Bright’s draft. The objective was not to remove its religious content, but to rearticulate it in language that could better withstand constitutional scrutiny while preserving its ideological core.

95Rather than recounting all the events that unfolded during 1983 around the proclamation, I will focus on two legal challenges brought against it. Both invoked the principle of church-state separation and the risks it entailed for pluralism. Though ultimately dismissed—each for different reasons—these lawsuits shed light on the implications of the White House’s decision to prioritize its conservative base using a powerful religious symbol. That choice carried significant consequences for the secular character of both the public sphere and of the American nation.

96Let us begin with Bright’s draft. How was it reformulated to “make it easier to defend” in court? Although the final proclamation retained its original structure, it was reduced by approximately one-third. The following excerpts illustrate some of the editorial revisions made by the Legislative Affairs team, likely in close coordination with Senator Williams.

Draft 1981 Proclamation 1983
Deep religious convictions springing from the Holy Scriptures inspired much of the most admirable early settlement of what was to become our country. Deep religious beliefs stemming from the Old and New Testaments of the Bible inspired many of the early settlers of our country, (…)
Of the utmost significance is the fact that it was the Bible that provided the ultimate basis for insistence by the nation’s Founding Fathers on the inalienable rights of the individual (…) The Bible and its teachings helped form the basis for the Founding Fathers’ abiding belief in the inalienable rights of the individual, rights (…)

NOW, THEREFORE, I, RONALD

REAGAN, President of the United States of America, do hereby pro-claim 1982 the Year of the Bible in the United States. I call upon all citizens, each in his or her own way, to search this Book of Books for the wisdom and direction that have been a blessing to mankind for centuries and have played so significant a role in the origins and development of our own nation and form of government.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, RONALD

REAGAN President of the United States of America, in recognition of the contributions and influence of the Bible on our Republic and our people, do hereby proclaim 1983 the Year of the Bible in the United States. I encourage all citizens, each in his or her own way, to reexamine and rediscover its priceless and timeless message.

  • 52 “There could be no more fitting moment than now to reflect with gratitude, humility, and urgency up (...)

97The final proclamation preserved most of the draft’s structure and language. The revisions were aimed at softening the most overtly religious—explicitly evangelical—formulations (“Holy Scriptures,” “Almighty Father,” etc.). Unlike the draft, the proclamation never presents God as the grammatical subject of a sentence—except in a quotation attributed to Abraham Lincoln.52 Some of the more maximalist statements, which depicted the Bible as the exclusive foundation of the American nation, were attenuated. Certain passages were also shortened for concision.

98Overall, the editors engaged in what could be described as cosmetic revisions. The core message remained intact: that the Bible stands at the foundation of the American nation, and that the United States require scriptural guidance in times of “testing.” What changed was the mode of expression. References to God became indirect, and the notion of the United States as a “blessed” nation was rendered implicit—though President Reagan would later underscore it emphatically when addressing his conservative Christian base.

  • 53 Glenn A. Jones (1983, October 23), Letter to Morton Blackwell (with minutes of the October 11 Natio (...)

99Before turning to the legal challenges, it is worth briefly considering the activities conducted in 1983 by the National Committee for the Year of the Bible. In a “fact sheet” sent to Morton Blackwell following their final meeting on October 11,53 the committee reported having distributed over “six million pieces of publicity such as bumpers stickers, posters, church bulletins, buttons, TV spots, and radio spots.” More strikingly, they attributed recent national improvements—economic recovery and first decline in crime rates since 1977—to the widespread dissemination of the Bible.

100At the same October 11 meeting, the committee agreed to hold a final wrap-up session in February 1984, at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention in Washington, D.C. More significantly, it resolved to continue its activities into 1984. However, the interfaith dimension of these ongoing efforts was put to a vote—by a membership overwhelmingly composed of evangelicals. As historian Neil Young (2016: 225-226) confirms, the members ultimately chose to abandon the interfaith framework while pursuing the same evangelistic agenda. The interfaith posture had largely served a political function from the outset: it was introduced to meet institutional and public expectations rather than to reflect genuine pluralism.

  • 54 James E. Doyle Judge (1982, December 23), “Anne Gaylor v Ronald Reagan. Opinion and order 82-C-985- (...)

101By 1983, the National Committee was fully engaged in evangelistic efforts, with President Reagan serving as its honorary chairman. Yet even before the committee was officially formed, the first legal challenge had already been filed. On November 22, 1982,54—just six weeks after Reagan had signed Public Law 97-280—a lawsuit was initiated in Wisconsin. This law was based on Senate Joint Resolution 165, “authorizing and requesting the President to proclaim 1983 as the ‘Year of the Bible.’” The plaintiff was Anne Gaylor, a non-theist and president of the Freedom from Religion Foundation, an organization dedicated to defending the separation of church and state. She argued that her “First Amendment right to be free from laws respecting the establishment of religion w[ould] be violated.”

102In his opinion dated December 23, 1982, Judge James E. Doyle, emphasized that “the boldness and aggressiveness of P.L. 97-280 cannot be ignored. It pronounces the Bible [sic] to be ‘the Word of God’ and it calls for the presidential designation of 1983 in recognition of our national need to ‘apply the teachings of the Holy Scriptures.’” Nonetheless, adopting a liberal stance, the judge declined to issue an injunctive order against the President’s proclamation, arguing that there was no “virtual certainty” that Reagan would actually choose to designate 1983 as the Year of the Bible—or to do so in “an unconstitutional manner.” In his final paragraph, offered in the tone of an admonition, the judge noted that for the President to both proclaim 1983 Year of the Bible and still respect “those wonderfully rich and various wellsprings of tradition—ethnic, regional, religious, and non religious—[…] would be a remarkable feat.” The remark implicitly cast doubt on the administration’s ability—or willingness—to preserve pluralism in the process.

  • 55 ACLU (1984, April 21), “Zwerling v Reagan. No. 83-2504-R,” BMF.

103This leads us to the second suit. On April 21, 1983, sixteen individuals filed a complaint in a California court.55 They were represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Among the plaintiffs were twelve clergy—four Christian and eight non-Christian—as well as two Buddhist laypeople, one atheist, and one agnostic. Each had a different relationship to the Bible: some considered it the Word of God, others did not. Yet all opposed its political instrumentalization. Most were engaged in interfaith dialogue. According to the plaintiffs, both Public Law 97-280 and the Presidential proclamation constituted “a violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.” The Bible—and thus Christianity—had been positioned in a dominant, hegemonic role that obstructed this dialogue.

  • 56 See Judge Real’s ruling, “Zwerling v. Reagan, 576 F. Supp. 1373 (C.D. Cal. 1983)”: https://law.just (...)
  • 57 See Associated Press (1983, December 23), “Judge Upholds Bible Proclamation,” The New York Times.

104On December 22, 1983, the plaintiffs’ case was dismissed. Judge Manuel Real ruled that the proclamation did not constitute a law: “Neither P.L. 97-280 nor the President’s Proclamation require or compel any kind of action concerning religion.”56 His opinion suggested that the proclamation held only symbolic status. Yet in his concluding remarks, the judge asserted that “Reagan simply state[d] in his proclamation matters of unimpeachable historical fact concerning the place the Bible and Judeo-Christian philosophy has in our national heritage.” By affirming this claim, the ruling itself effectively enshrined the notion of “Judeo-Christian philosophy” as a defining element of the national heritage—thus endorsing the very hegemonic narrative promoted by the proclamation’s advocates.57

105On January 30, 1984, Reagan returned to the stage of the NRB Convention and declared:

I was pleased last year to proclaim 1983 the Year of the Bible. But, you know, a group called the ACLU severely criticized me for doing that. Well, I wear their indictment like a badge of honor.

  • 58 Reagan Library (2023, January 30), President Reagan’s Remarks at the National Religious Broadcaster (...)
  • 59 I thank Timothy Gloege for drawing my attention on this point.
  • 60 L. Cannon (1984, January 31), “Reagan Starts Running with Appeal for School Prayer, Anti-Abortion A (...)

106Again, the standing ovation lasted for thirty seconds.58 The operation was executed with remarkable acumen. Rather than risk alienating his evangelical base, Reagan chose to face the prospect of judicial backlash—a calculated gamble. By endorsing a proclamation that skirted the boundaries of constitutional neutrality, he undertook a politically costly act: devoid of coercive force, yet rich in symbolic yield. He had suffered for the “good cause”59—defending the Bible and a conservative Christian vision of the nation—thus reinforcing his alliance with the Christian Right. This speech marked the launch of his re-election campaign.60 While he failed to secure voluntary school prayer, he succeeded in placing the Bible at the heart of American public life. Though symbolic in form, the proclamation delivered tangible political dividends by galvanizing his most loyal supporters.

Bright’s Body in the Frame

107Let us return one final time to the photograph of Ronald Reagan signing the declaration. We now know that Bill Bright was not meant to appear in the frame. And yet, his body is there—positioned just behind the seated President, flanked by two conservative U.S. Representatives. This image will serve as a guiding thread for our concluding reflections, revealing both what Joseph Gusfield’s analysis brings to light and what it leaves in shadow. I have come to believe that while Gusfield’s framework is illuminating, it needs to be complemented by Claude Lefort’s normative insights to fully grasp what this image reveals.

108Prestige was central to my account of the Year of the Bible campaign, central because it mattered deeply to the main actors in the story. For Bright, prestige was secured through privileged access to the President, which he sought to preserve for himself. Yet prestige was not only personal; it was also collective, as the organizations involved—the National Religious Broadcasters, the National Association of Evangelicals—competed to represent evangelicals as a whole. Their shared aspiration to access the circles of political power rested on a common vision of America’s destiny: a nation belonging to God, according to their own theological understanding, and therefore to them.

109The law, the proclamation, and the events surrounding the Year of the Bible—beginning with the NRB Conventions and the National Prayer Breakfast—were powerful symbolic instruments to reassert this religious ownership of the nation. True, the Reagan Administration failed to deliver on key policy goals such as voluntary prayer in public schools or abortion restrictions. But it nonetheless granted a foundational—not to say fundamentalist—claim. This move proved consequential, subtly eroding the constitutional principle of church-state separation. Gestures ostensibly designed to celebrate cohesion and civic virtue, such as the proclamation ceremony, functioned instead as gestures of distinction, legitimizing hegemonic claims in the name of pluralism itself—strategically instrumentalized by both the Year of the Bible’s promoters and the Reagan Administration.

110Interestingly, the crafters of the proclamation managed to position it in a no man’s land between assimilative and coercive reform. The Year of the Bible campaign was unmistakably evangelistic and, in that sense, assimilative: it invited Americans to embrace the Bible as the source of religious, moral, and political normativity. Yet it was also subtly coercive, in the sense that it imposed a conservative and exclusive understanding of the Bible—not through legislation, but through the next best thing—a presidential proclamation. This maneuver transcended the binary opposition proposed by Gusfield.

111Symbols matter. As historian Michel de Certeau writes, “narratives procession forward, paving the way for social practices” (1990: 185, my translation). Although the proclamation did not yield immediate policy outcomes, it nonetheless altered the relationship between political institutions and the principles of neutrality and secularity that underpin the same institutions. It contributed to the polarizing of the political field through dogmatic assertions, which derived their force from an indisputable authority: God’s, projected into a presidential declaration that mimicked the authority of law.

112At this point, I must part ways with Gusfield. Although he defends himself against accusations of “sociological reductionism” regarding the “religious motives” of his actors (1963: 57-60), he nonetheless treats these motives as the manifest side of a latent function: the pursuit for prestige. In doing so, the sociologist eludes a crucial dimension of the phenomenon under study—namely, how particular religious beliefs and actions generate political consequences. In Gusfield’s framework, status functions as a symbolic, rather than material, commodity, but a finite one nonetheless. His approach tends to treat any value as simply another token in the symbolic economy of prestige. In such a model, values lack intrinsic consistency; they could just as well be a lifestyle choice or a divine imperative.

113Put differently, Gusfield pioneered a bold approach to analyzing symbolic actions in the political life, but he stopped halfway. To grasp what was at stake with the Year of the Bible, we must go further. The consequences of this episode extend beyond policy or political maneuvering; they touch on how a society configures its seat of power—and, through it, its very self-understanding. What is required is a more robust account of the symbolic. Here, philosopher Claude Lefort offers a way to address Gusfield’s limitations. As he writes:

there is no power durably anchored in a community that does not have a symbolic function, in the same way that there is no political society whose constitution does not have a symbolic signification. (Lefort, 2007: 142)

114Here we come closer to grasping what Bright’s presence in the photograph signifies: a triple assertion—personal, communal, and national—of religious ownership. Positioned behind the President and flanked by U.S. Representatives, Bright’s body saturates a space that, in Lefort’s terms, should have remained “empty,” or better, unfigurable (Lefort, 1993). This space—the symbolic seat of power—is, in the liberal democratic tradition, a space without fixed foundation, anchored not in absolute truths but open to contingent, contestable deliberation. Lefort names this principle disincorporation: the recognition that power, knowledge, and law no longer rest on an embodied source of truth, but on the fragile, ever-revised process of public reasoning and conflictuality. He writes:

The disincorporation of power did not only have the effect of undermining the representation of an organic society. By the same token, the source of the law became unlocalizable. […] Similarly, the fact that none could present themselves as having a monopoly on knowledge of the social order and the ends of human conduct resulted in the disintrication of the theological and the political. This was a significant event, since it led to admitting the legitimacy of diverse and even conflicting beliefs, opinions, and interests, provided such conflict did not imperil public safety. Rather than effacing the dimension of the other in the experience of life, democracy unveiled it. ln reducing dogmatic beliefs, whether theological or philosophical, to the status of particular beliefs, democracy lent a kind of visibility to discord within the framework of a common world. (Lefort, 2007: 144, translation modified)

115Bright’s body in the frame is the very trace of a counter-movement: reincorporation of power. It seeks to reoccupy—and saturate—the seat of power with an indisputable authority. What many observers dismissed as mere symbol was, in fact, the product of a deliberate strategy, orchestrated by seasoned operatives like Morton Blackwell, who always kept the long game in sight. In doing so, Bright and his allies succeeded in imposing their religious foundation upon American society and its political institutions—without ever needing to pass formal legislation or face judicial scrutiny. A speech cloaked in divine authority, immune to challenge: this, perhaps, is the ultimate fantasy of the fundamentalist.

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Bibliographie

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Bright William R., (1981, December 18), Letter to President Reagan to declare 1982 Year of the Bible, Box 33, Campus Crusade for Christ.

Bright William R., (1982, October 21), Letter to Morton Blackwell, Box 33, Campus Crusade for Christ.

Darman Richard G., (1983, January 27), “Draft Presidential Remarks: Annual Convention of National Religious Broadcasters, Monday, January, 31, 1983,” Box 38, National Religious Broadcasters (1 of 4).

Dogan Robert P., (1982, January 7), Letter to Billy A. Melvin (NAE Executive director), Box 38, National Religious Broadcasters (1 of 4).

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Dole Elizabeth H., (1982, January 12), Memo to Gregory J. Newell, Schedule proposal to address the National Association of Evangelicals annual convention, Box 38, National Religious Broadcasters (2 of 4).

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Doyle James E. Judge, (1982, December 23) “Anne Gaylor v Ronald Reagan. Opinion and order 82-C-985-D,” Box 12, Mailing – Year of the Bible – Law Suit.

Jones Glenn A., (1983, October 23), Letter to Morton Blackwell (with minutes of the October 11 National Committee meeting, and “fact sheet”), Box 41, Year of the Bible (2 of 2).

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Other Reagan Library Files

Cicconi James, (1983, February 1), Memo “Year of the Bible,” Cicconi, James W. Files, JW Coccini Memos, Jan-Jun 1983 (4 of 11), OA 10793.

White House, “Schedule for the President for Thursday, February 3, 1983”, President, Office of the: Presidential Briefing Papers: Records, 1981-1989, Box 26, 02/03/1983 (Case File: 121703).

International Council on Biblical Inerrancy Files, Box 8, Bright Bio-Data

Bright Bill, (1982, June 28), Letter to Dr James M. Boice.

Bright Bill, Boice James M., (1981, April 29), Letter to Dr Edmund P. Clowney.

Griswold G. J., (1983, July 18), Letter to Cary Perdue.

Perdue Carrie, (Undated, probably June 1983), Carbon copy of letter to Dr William R. Bright.

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Cefaï Daniel, 2009, “Posface. – La fabrique des problèmes publics. Boire ou conduire, il faut choisir !,” in Joseph Gusfield, La culture des problèmes publics, Paris, Économica, p. 219-318.

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Coulter Jeff, 1996, “Human Practices and the Observability of the ‘Macrosocial,’” Zeitschrift Für Soziologie, 25, 5, p. 337-345.

Dodds Graham G., 2012, “Crusade or Charade?: The Religious Right and the Culture Wars,” Canadian Review of American Studies, 42, 3, p. 274-300.

Gloege Timothy E. W., 2015, Guaranteed Pure: The Moody Bible Institute, Business, and the Making of Modern Evangelicalism, Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press.

Gonzalez Philippe, Roca i Escoda Marta, 2022, “La ‘liberté de conscience’ en croisade contre l’homosexualité : les embarras d’un référendum populaire en Suisse,” Pragmata, 5, p. 162-217.

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Jacobs Nancy J., 2018, “American Evangelicals and African Politics: The Archives of the Fellowship Foundation, 1960s–1987,” History in Africa, 45, p. 473-482.

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Lefort Claude, 2007 (1999), Complications: Communism and the Dilemmas of Democracy, Translated by Julian Bourg, New York, Columbia University Press.

Lienesch Michael, 2009, In the Beginning Fundamentalism, the Scopes Trial, and the Making of the Antievolution Movement, Chapell Hill, University of North Carolina Press.

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Martin William C., 2005 (1996), With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America, Rev. ed., New York, Broadway Books.

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Notes

1 P. Herbut (1983, February 5), “Religious Broadcasters Bring Christian Fervor to D.C.,”The Washington Post.

2 Armstrong Ben (1983, March 30), Letter to President Reagan, BMF. See sources at the end of the article.

3 This article is part of the study “Fundamentalism and Foundationalism: Crossed Perspectives” (10001AE-218970) funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation and the French National Agency for Research. I am grateful to Stéphane Ancel, Joan Stavo-Debauge, Yannick Fer, Matthew A. Sutton, and the editors of this special issue for their incisive and constructive feedback on a previous draft.

4 Reagan Library (2016, May 16), Remarks by President and Mrs. Reagan at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention at the Sheraton Washington Hotel, Washington DC, January 31, 1983, (Video), YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkmkCAxoSO4

5 Darman Richard G. (1983, January 27), Draft Presidential Remarks BMF.

6 The picture can be seen here: Anonymous, (1983, March 4), “President Reagan and the Bible,” Christianity Today, https://www.christianitytoday.com/1983/03/president-reagan-and-bible/

7 “Bright, a former candy manufacturer who sold his business in 1951 to evangelize full time to students at UCLA, is well-known in evangelical circles. His Campus Crusade for Christ now reports a $90 million a year budget, a full-time staff of 8,000 (another 8,000 donate part-time work) and 20 different ministries in college campuses and on Capitol Hill to evangelical programs in more than 100 countries.” P. Herbut, (1983, February 12), “Bible Year Hailed With Varying Degrees of Enthusiasm”, The Washington Post.

8 The proclamation can be found here: https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/ proclamations-february-3-1983

9 This failure led to divergent strategies within the Christian Right. Jerry Falwell, founder of the Moral Majority, ultimately withdrew from the political field—despite enjoying privileged access to the President—whereas Pat Robertson, through his Christian Coalition, succeeded in exerting pressure on the Republican Party, particularly during his own presidential bid (Marley, 2006).

10 I quoted Turner’s and now Preston’s respective uses of civil religion without employing the concept myself. A thorough discussion of Robert Bellah’s 1967 formulation, in relation to the Year of the Bible, would warrant an article of its own. It is worth noting, following James A. Mathisen’s (1989) study of the reception of “American civil religion” within the social sciences, that scholarly engagement with the concept largely disappears after 1983. One might wonder whether it lost its appeal due to the mounting pressure the Christian Right was exerting on the public sphere. Notably, both Turner and Preston frame their use of civil religion around the issue of a threatened pluralism.

11 Z. Montague (2020, June 2) “Holding It Aloft, He Incited a Backlash. What Does the Bible Mean to Trump?,” The New York Times; E. Diaz, (2020, August 9), “‘Christianity Will Have Power,’” The New York Times.

12 I am deeply indebted to Daniel Cefaï, and his magnificent work (Cefaï, 2009), for introducing me to Gusfield’s sociology.

13 See J. Coulter’s (1996) fascinating remarks on this subject.

14 Contrary to what the title of his book suggests, Gusfield never offers a theoretical characterization of “crusade” that would elevate the term to the status of a sociological concept. Neither does he provide an analysis of its ordinary uses by the actors he studies. For an attempt to conceptualize crusade, see Ph. Gonzalez and M. Roca i Escoda (2022).

15 See M. A. Sutton’s (2024) important clarification of the term “evangelicalism,” in dialogue with the contributions gathered by Noll, Bebbington, Marsden (2019). T. Gloege (2015) offers an outstanding history of the Fundamentals and the rise of modern evangelicalism, while M. Lienesch (2009) provides a vivid account of the major role played by fundamentalism in the Scopes trial.

16 His major book, The Paranoid Style (Hofstadter, 1966), expanded on his initial chapter from 1955.

17 See “Blackwell, Morton C.: Files 1981-1984,“ Reagan Library, https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/research/finding-aids/blackwell-morton-c-files-1981-1984

18 I reconstituted his speech, drawn from a single interview, shot as Blackwell was driving in his car, and spread across the 9-minute documentary. Adam Curtis, (2012, March 6), “Adam Curtis shot interviews of Paul Weyrich and Morton Blackwell,” (Video), BBC, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00prt39

19 Since the late nineteenth century, conservative Protestants in the United States—variously identified as “Christians,” “Fundamentalists,” or “Evangelicals”—have engaged in numerous symbolic crusades: from Prohibition (Gusfield, 1963), to anti-evolutionism (Lienesch, 2009), to the defense of White supremacy and resistance to desegregation (Hawkins, 2021), and to militant anti-communism (Ruotsila, 2016). By the end of the 1970s, the Republican Party’s strategic marketing of abortion as a political issue had succeeded in turning it into a litmus test for “authentic” (i.e., conservative) Christian identity.

20 See “Records of the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy,” on the Dallas Theological Seminary website: https://library.dts.edu/Pages/TL/Special/ICBI.shtml

21 Bill Bright and James M. Boice (1981, April 29), Letter to Dr Edmund P. Clowney, ICBI Files.

22 Morton Blackwell (1981, December 18), OPL Meeting report, BMF.

23 William R. Bright (1981, December 18), Letter to President Reagan, BMF.

24 T. Minnery (1982, April 9), “The Battle for the Bible, 1982: A Report from the Front,” Christianity Today.

25 Bill Bright (1982, June 28), Letter to Dr James M. Boice, ICBI Files.

26 Carrie Perdue (Undated, probably June 1983), Carbon copy of letter to Dr William R. Bright, ICBI Files.

27 G. J. Griswold (Administrative Assistant to Bill Bright), (1983, July 18), Letter to Cary Perdue (Executive Director ICBI), ICBI Files.

28 Ben Armstrong (1981, December 7), Letter to Morton Blackwell, BMF.

29 Elizabeth H. Dole (1981, December 17), Memo to Gregory J. Newell, BMF.

30 Elizabeth H. Dole (1982, January 12), NAE Memo to Gregory J. Newell, BMF.

31 Morton Blackwell (1982, January 12), Memo to Elizabeth H. Dole, BMF.

32 Robert P. Dogan (1982, January 7), Letter to Billy A. Melvin (NAE Executive director), BMF.

33 Robert P. Dogan (1982, January 8), Letter to Morton Blackwell, BMF.

34 Elizabeth H. Dole (1982, January 5), Memo to Gregory J. Newell, BMF.

35 Elizabeth H. Dole (1982, January 12), NRB Memo to Gregory J. Newell, BMF.

36 Morton Blackwell (1982, January 13), Memo to Elizabeth H. Dole, BMF.

37 Morton Blackwell (1982, February 3), Memo for Ben Elliott, BMF.

38 White House Office Of The Press Secretary, (1982, February 9), Remarks of the President to the National Religious Broadcasters, BMF.

39 Liberty Baptist College (1982, February 8-9), “An Understanding Politics Conference,” BMF.

40 This characterization is used by the Armstrong Project, an initiative led by Armstrong’s family, to describe the Senator: https://www.thearmstrongproject.org/bio/christian/

41 “A joint resolution authorizing and requesting the President to proclaim 1983 as the ‘Year of the Bible,’” https://www.congress.gov/bill/97th-congress/senate-joint-resolution/165/actions

42 Morton Blackwell (1982, October 20), OPL Meeting report, BMF.

43 Elizabeth H. Dole (1982, October 21), Memo to Kenneth H. Duberstein, BMF.

44 Neil Young indicates that Bright’s letters of invitation to the three vice-chairmen were sent well after the October 20 meeting: to Cardinal Krol on October 29, to Pastor Zimmerman on November 2, and to Rabbi Cohen by the end of November (2016: 369). This timeline suggests that the “interfaith” framing preceded the actual formation of the committee.

45 William R. Bright (1982, October 21), Letter to Morton Blackwell, BMF.

46 Ben Armstrong (1982, December 15), Letter to President Reagan, BMF.

47 Krol Cardinal John (1983, February 7), Letter to Morton Blackwell, BMF.

48 Launched in 1953, under Eisenhower’s presidency, the National Prayer Breakfast is an annual event held in Washington, D.C., hosted by members of the United States Congress and organized by the Fellowship Foundation, a secretive Christian organization. Each year, it brings together national and international elites around the US President to pray together and network. Its founder, Abraham Vereide, was an evangelical businessman sometimes referred to as the “stealth Billy Graham.” The group’s opacity has drawn scrutiny (Sharlet, 2008; Jacobs, 2018).

49 White House “Schedule for the President for Thursday, February 3, 1983,” President, Office of the: Presidential Briefing Papers.

50 Reagan Library (2016, December 15), President Reagan’s Remarks at the Annual National Prayer Breakfast at the Washington Hilton Hotel, Washington, DC, February 3, 1983, (Video), YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sc6Ciyp_PNI&t=2s

51 James Cicconi (February 1, 1983), Memo “Year of the Bible,” Cicconi, James W. Files.

52 “There could be no more fitting moment than now to reflect with gratitude, humility, and urgency upon the wisdom revealed to us in the writing that Abraham Lincoln called ‘the best gift God has ever given to man… But for it we could not know right from wrong.’”

53 Glenn A. Jones (1983, October 23), Letter to Morton Blackwell (with minutes of the October 11 National Committee meeting, and “fact sheet”), BMF.

54 James E. Doyle Judge (1982, December 23), “Anne Gaylor v Ronald Reagan. Opinion and order 82-C-985-D,” BMF.

55 ACLU (1984, April 21), “Zwerling v Reagan. No. 83-2504-R,” BMF.

56 See Judge Real’s ruling, “Zwerling v. Reagan, 576 F. Supp. 1373 (C.D. Cal. 1983)”: https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/576/1373/2593412/

57 See Associated Press (1983, December 23), “Judge Upholds Bible Proclamation,” The New York Times.

58 Reagan Library (2023, January 30), President Reagan’s Remarks at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention on January 30, 1984, (Video), YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8HABVv3_8k

59 I thank Timothy Gloege for drawing my attention on this point.

60 L. Cannon (1984, January 31), “Reagan Starts Running with Appeal for School Prayer, Anti-Abortion Action,” The Washington Post.

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Philippe Gonzalez

Institut des sciences sociales, Université de Lausanne

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