'High on Jesus'

The political mobilization of conservative Protestants in the United States since the 1970s is commonly viewed as having resulted from a “backlash” against the alleged iniquities of the 1960s, including the excess-es  of  the  counterculture.  In  contrast,  this  article  maintains that  conservative  Protestant  efforts  to  infiltrate  and  absorb  the  counterculture  contributed  to  the  organizational  strength,  cultural attractiveness,  and  politi-cal  efficacy  of  the  New  Christian  Right.  The  essay  advances  three  arguments:  First,  that  evangelicals did  not simply  reject  the  countercultural  ideas  of  the  1960s,  but  absorbed  and  extended  its  key  sentiments.  Second,  that  conservativeProtestantism’s appropriation of countercultural rhetoric and organizational styles played a significant role in the right-wing  political mobilization  of  evangelicals.  And  third,  that  the  merger  of  evan-gelical  Christianity  and  countercultural  styles,  rather  than  their antagonism,  ended  up  being  one  of  the  most  enduring  legacies  of  the  sixties.  In  revisiting  the  relationship between  the  counterculture and evangelicalism, the essay also explores the larger implications for understanding the relationship between religion and poli-tics. The New  Christian  Right  domesticated  genuinely  insurgent  impulses  within  the  evangelical  resurgence.  By  the  same  token,  it  nurtured  the conservative  components  of  the  counterculture.  Conservative  Protestant-ism  thus  constituted  a  political  movement  that  channeled insurgencies into a cultural form that relegitimized the fundamental trajectories of liberal capitalism and consumerist society.