Hello and thank you for downloading Witness on the BBC World Service with me Claire Bowes.

Today we're going back to a moment in America's history when religion found a new place in politics.

In June 1979 the moral majority was launched. Its aim was to

encourage religious conservatives to register to vote and to vote Republican.

I've been speaking to a man who helped change the course of

American politics. Dr Johnson said nothing focuses the mind like an impending

hanging. Richard Vigory, a lifelong Republican.

We felt in those days we were not far away from being hanged, literally, not figuratively,

but literally by the communist because if they took over the world we were going to be on a

short list to be executed. The fear of communism had hung over Richard Vigory for

his whole lifetime. Playing games with children in the neighborhood outside of Houston,

cowboys and Indians.

I wasn't in my with the other kids shooting Indians or shooting robbers.

Didn't tell anybody, but I or shooting robbers.

Didn't tell anybody, but I was shooting communists.

And it wasn't just the issue of communism.

In 1979, he and other conservatives

felt that the USA was going in the wrong direction. There was

concerned frustration with America losing its place we felt in the world. With the

Iran hostages we were impotent with losing one country after another to the Soviet

Union.

The Supreme Court gave the right to abortion. the abolished prayer in school, the IRS under Jimmy Carter attempted

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