ABSTRACT
In 1980, the Polish Catholic church joined forces with the workers in the Solidarity Movement, and, in the United States, Jerry Falwell tried to control presidential politics with his Moral Majority organization. Churches in the United States in the past have stressed their healing, comforting role. In the United States, nuns have traded in their religious habits for skirts, slacks, and Gucci bags. The remarkable feature of the eighties, however, is that churches have increasingly taken up the challenge presented by secularization. Probably the clearest indication of the Christian Right movement as a counterreaction to secularization is their condemnation of secular morality. The role of US Catholicism in US politics needs to be understood in relation to the place of Catholicism in the modern world system. Equally surprising as the rise of the Christian Right has been the emergence of the Roman Catholic church as a political force in US politics.
