type: timeline_event
Paul Weyrich and conservative activists urge Jerry Falwell to establish the Moral Majority, creating the organizational vehicle that fuses the religious right with the corporate-funded conservative movement in a powerful political coalition. Weyrich coins the phrase "Moral Majority," and the organization is founded by an ecumenical group including three Catholics (Weyrich, Richard Viguerie, Terry Dolan), one Jew (Howard Phillips), and two fundamentalist Baptists (Falwell and Robert Billings), demonstrating the broad coalition strategy underlying the New Right. Startup funding comes from the Coors family - the same source that seeded Heritage Foundation in 1973 - while Viguerie provides direct-mail fundraising expertise using the old Goldwater mailing lists. Ed McAteer, a sales executive for Colgate-Palmolive who introduced Weyrich to Falwell at a February 1979 Dallas rally, represents the direct corporate connection to this ostensibly religious organization. The Moral Majority mobilizes evangelical Christians around social issues including abortion, school prayer, and traditional values while simultaneously advancing the corporate deregulation and tax-cutting agenda of Heritage, ALEC, and other Weyrich-affiliated institutions. This fusion of religious populism with plutocratic economics creates the winning coalition that will elect Reagan in 1980 and dominate American politics for decades, demonstrating Weyrich's genius for coalition-building across seemingly incompatible constituencies in service of coordinated conservative power.