We Gather Together: The Religious Right and the Problem of Interfaith Politics by Neil J. Young (review)

As Donald Trump gained momentum in the 2016 Republican primary race, many wondered how religious conservatives could vote for a man whose personal life and political views seemed so distant from their own. Neil J. Young’s We Gather Together: The Religious Right and the Problem of Interfaith Politics answers this question by making two interrelated arguments. First, he compellingly demonstrates that the Religious (Christian) Right was a shaky political, rather than sturdy theological, alliance. Second, he highlights that the fractious and precarious confederation of evangelical, Catholic, and Mormon interests meant that its constituents are neither uniform nor consistently in line with their institutional leadership. “Their union,” he reflects, “more closely resembled a loose braid than the indestructible cord: separate threads brought together in tension, they overlapped in some places and rested closely but independently aside each other in others” (p. 8). Conviction and pragmatism strained to find a middle ground on which conservative Christians could mobilize to fight late-twentieth-century culture wars and social change; the political force of this uneasy alliance was weaker than typically assumed.

We Gather Together begins in mid-century with conservative religious resistance to interfaith unity. There was some interest in subgroup cooperation, but the underlying threat of loosening doctrinal certainty pushed evangelicals, Catholics, and Mormons toward separation and isolation rather than cooperation and partnership. The problem, Young shows, was theological: competing exclusive truth claims left little room for collaboration. While suspicion of early-twentieth-century liberal Protestant ecumenism and mid-century tri-faith pluralism lingered, the value of political networks grew as American cultural politics shifted in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. In fact, when this religious trio “perceived themselves as outsiders fighting the cultural and political consensus” (p. 3), they could collaborate.

The Second Vatican Council played a crucial role in creating the possibility of conservative interfaith activity. The “Decree on Ecumenism” not only relaxed the long-standing Catholic view of other Christians as heretics but also insisted on inviting “separated brethren” to worship and work together to fulfill Christ’s mission. Evangelicals and Mormons each saw a little potential and a lot of problems in this new direction. But constitutional challenges to school prayer, “God is Dead” theology, abortion, and the Equal Rights Amendment fertilized the soil of ecumenical conservatism and pollinated the buds of the Moral Majority. These fights also highlight Young’s point: even as conservative Christians united to pursue political action in line with their values, distinctive theological commitments challenged, cracked, and eroded coalitions. Phyllis Schlafly’s successful campaign to unite against the ERA, which brought together Catholics, Mormons, evangelicals, and fundamentalists, looked more diverse “from a national vantage point [and] obscure[ed] the divisions that remained at the grassroots” (p. 156). And if the Reagan years represented a harsh right turn for liberals, they were a disappointingly slow veer rightward for this league of religious conservatives. The 1990s Christian Coalition picked up the pieces and tried again to puzzle out conservative interfaith unity; the Clinton years brought evangelicals and Catholics closer together, while Mormons remained on the edge. Gay marriage offered a tantalizing opportunity to ally, while Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign again exposed the limits of cooperation. A teetering affinity has proved more constant than a stable alliance.

Writing about a triangle of religious groups that engaged in dialogues but rarely interacted simultaneously is a massive task, made even more so by the theological gulfs that informed and strained the developing relationships. Overall, Young handles this task deftly, although at times the extensive detail overwhelms the narrative. Nevertheless, this is a significant reinterpretation of the rise and frailty of the Religious Right that deserves the attention of religious, political, and cultural historians. It also helps explain the present moment, implicitly reminding us that Trump’s “Make America Great Again” motto streamlines Pat Robertson’s clunky...