There aren’t many people who know more about the relationship between white evangelicals and the Republican Party than Tim Goeglein. A former aide to George W Bush, he’s now a Vice President at the highly influential socially conservative Focus on the Family (FOTF). Founded by James Dobson in the 1970s, FOTF is one of the major organisations which helped shift white evangelicals from emphatic separatism to a strongly influential position in the White House.
Tim tells us about the journey of that mobilisation which, within a generation, has appropriated politics and used the electoral system to further their religious and social aims. With their own highly sophisticated media operations and now social media outfits, the Christian subculture is no poor relation to the mainstream media. Their media have huge resources and charismatic leaders, and their messaging capacity outstrips many commercial players.
There are a couple of surprises in his interview. Listen to our cutting room floor interview for his account of the way the abortion issue has become core to the white evangelical political agenda - it wasn’t always this way.
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