Destroying a Nation from Within: Ecumenical Prophecies in the Age of Legal Abortion

In the 1970s, pro-life activists of many Christian faiths regularly claimed the United States was on the cusp of divine retribution because of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.  Activists at turns referenced the collapse of Rome, God’s punishment of the Egyptians in the Old Testament, and the demise of the Nephites in the Book of Mormon. All references pointed towards the same lesson: immorality and social decadence had caused societies to decay internally, eroding their institutions and the privilege of God’s protection.  Casting feminism and legal abortion as the ultimate immorality, these activists believed Americans needed to protect their nation against a similar demise. Their solution was to develop a common ecumenical language that placed the United States in that prophetic imaginary. In particular, anti-abortion activists resurrected an outdated term—“Judeo-Christian”—to claim that monotheism was at the heart of the American past and that opposition to abortion was central to all monotheism. In order to forestall God’s impending wrath, activists had to reassert such values, make abortion illegal again, and bring the country back from the brink. They had to save the nation from feminism. The term “Judeo-Christian” provided a political and theological umbrella under which many conservative Protestants, Mormons, and Catholics could comfortably stand, while denying the moral authority of their liberal counterparts. Ultimately, I argue that anti-abortion activists claimed monotheistic religion as the domain of the Right while placing pro-life and Christian politics at the heart of American history.