In 1981, I was in my third year of seminary at Perkins School of Theology, SMU, Dallas, TX.  I was noticing a trend among television evangelists: the beginning of political involvement from a group which had traditionally eschewed politics as a corrupting influence on faith. I had no idea exactly where this trend would lead. I did know that I was uncomfortable with the likes of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson leading the charge under the banner of the Moral Majority. As we were soon to discover, the Moral Majority was neither very moral or a majority. But they WERE loud. And obnoxious. And not very interested in good scriptural exegesis. 

In those respects, and others, the Moral Majority of the 1980's is much like today's Tea Party and the Dominionist Movement which accompanies them. They are definitely loud and definitely want the country to be run by theological standards which are set in stone, if not the Bible. There is a overwhelming tendency for these folks to ignore great chunks of the Bible in order to knock others over the head with the parts they deem applicable. They will totally ignore the major themes of scripture: Love God and walk justly. Instead they focus on individual verses, usually taken out of context to support their prejudice against homosexuals or whatever other social issue bug they have their collective butts. 

What all these fundamentalist folks fail to fathom is that Americans are a pragmatic and liberty loving bunch and will not easily give in to the Christian Taliban any more than they will to any outside terrorist group. My advice to them is to read the WHOLE Bible and if that is too much for them, read just the verses in red. THEN come back and tell me what Jesus would do.