Beverly LaHaye

Beverly LaHaye (b. 1929) is one of the most consequential and least credited figures in the Religious Right. Her significance is routinely underestimated because her organization was women's-focused in a movement dominated by male pastors — but Concerned Women for America performed functions that no male-led organization could replicate. LaHaye's account of CWA's founding: in 1977, she saw Betty Friedan interviewed on television stating she spoke for American women. LaHaye disputed this claim and decided to build a counter-organization. With 1,200 charter members recruited through her church network in San Diego, she founded CWA in 1978 and moved its headquarters to Washington D.C. in 1979 to become a direct lobbying presence. By the mid-1980s, CWA claimed a membership exceeding the National Organization for Women. By the early 1990s it claimed 600,000 members organized through chapters covering nearly every congressional district. This chapter-based, church-embedded organizing model created extraordinary durability: where Falwell's Moral Majority required a charismatic leader at the center, CWA's prayer chapter infrastructure could function locally without central direction. Her husband Tim LaHaye co-founded the Council for National Policy in 1981, linking Beverly's grassroots network directly to the secretive elite coordination infrastructure of the CNP. This made CWA simultaneously a mass membership organization and a component of the Religious Right's elite strategic apparatus. LaHaye's political theology rested on a specific and deliberate paradox: women should exercise enormous political power, but in service of traditional gender roles that circumscribed women's power. She argued that feminism made women miserable and that biblical complementarianism — male headship, female submission in marriage — was the path to women's flourishing. This framing allowed her to simultaneously oppose feminist political goals while presenting CWA as an organization that empowered women. CWA was among the most consistent and well-funded anti-LGBTQ lobbying organizations in Washington from its founding through the present day, opposing gay military service, same-sex marriage, and transgender rights with sustained legal and legislative campaigns. LaHaye stepped back from active CWA leadership in the early 2000s. She remains alive as of 2026.

Documented themes

• Patriarchy
• Anti-LGBTQ
• Political Strategy
• Abortion Politics
• Gender & Patriarchy

Connections from Beverly LaHaye

• founded → Concerned Women for America (1978) — Beverly LaHaye founded CWA in 1978 in direct response to second-wave feminism — specifically, Betty Friedan's claim on television that she spoke for American women. LaHaye recruited 1,200 charter members through her church network, moved the organization to Washington D.C. in 1979, and built it into the Religious Right's largest grassroots women's organizing structure.

Sources

• Righting Feminism: Conservative Women and American Politics — Ronnee Schreiber (2008), pp. 1–60
• Jesus and John Wayne — Kristin Kobes Du Mez (2020), pp. 122–140
• How the Religious Right Shaped Lesbian and Gay Activism — Tina Fetner (2008), pp. 44–78
• Thy Kingdom Come — Randall Balmer (2006), pp. 53–75