IRS Revokes Bob Jones Tax Exemption
1978: The IRS revoked the tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University and other Christian schools that practiced racial segregation. This — not Roe v. Wade — was the actual galvanizing event of the Religious Right.
View in the interactive map →In 1978, the IRS moved to revoke the tax-exempt status of private Christian schools that practiced racial discrimination, including Bob Jones University. BJU prohibited interracial dating and maintained racially discriminatory admissions policies. This is the event that Paul Weyrich, Ed Dobson, and Ed Hindson later confirmed actually galvanized conservative evangelicals into political action — not Roe v. Wade. Randall Balmer documented this extensively: when he asked Weyrich what the real catalyst was, Weyrich identified the IRS action. Mobilizing white evangelical voters around racial segregation was politically untenable. Abortion was a far more palatable substitute issue. The substitution was deliberate. The Religious Right's origin story was rewritten almost immediately: by the early 1980s, Falwell and others were claiming they had always been motivated by abortion. The racial grievance was buried under a moral one. Bob Jones University fought the IRS ruling all the way to the Supreme Court (Bob Jones University v. United States, 1983), where it lost 8-1. The Reagan administration briefly attempted to restore BJU's tax exemption — until the political backlash forced a reversal.
Documented themes
Connections to IRS Revokes Bob Jones Tax Exemption
- Paul Weyrich exploited (1978) — Weyrich identified the IRS ruling as the actual galvanizing event but recognized that mobilizing evangelicals around racial segregation was politically untenable. He deliberately substituted abortion as the public-facing grievance.
Sources
- Thy Kingdom Come — Randall Balmer (2006), pp. 12-18
- Jesus and John Wayne — Kristin Kobes Du Mez (2020), pp. 90-96