Events at Reed

Karen K. Seat, associate professor of religious studies at the University of Arizona, will examine the evolution of one the most commonplace political platforms in the United States today: a platform promoting wide-ranging government deregulation, except in the areas of marriage and reproduction. Ever since the rise of the new religious right in the ’70s, the partnership of the Republican Party’s “social” and “fiscal” conservatives has been popularly portrayed as a marriage of convenience. Social conservatives, so the story goes, joined the Republican Party en masse during the late 20th century because fiscal conservatives promised to take up their “values” agenda around sex and reproduction; fiscal conservatives joined forces with social conservatives to get more votes for their neoliberal economic platform around deregulation and free market. This talk will demonstrate that there are deeper resonances between social and fiscal conservatives, however, beyond mere political expediency. In fact, as Prof. Seat’s field research has shown, most conservative evangelicals involved in Republican politics today would argue that the goals of “fiscal” and “social” conservatives fit together “like hand in glove,” with a seamless logic. Examining the symbiosis of conservative religion with neoliberal politics highlights how ideologies/theologies of family and market have long been interconnected and perpetuated in American life. Sponsored by the religion department.