The Religious Right is a political movement organizing religious constituencies around family, education and social policy. Its working unit is the national advocacy organization, and that structure is visible in public filings.
The two-entity structure
Organizations in this space typically file as a pair: a 501(c)(3) that does research and public education, and a separate 501(c)(4) that lobbies. The two are legally distinct, subject to different rules on political activity, and report separately.
The Family Research Council is the clearest example, filing under two EINs at the same Washington address. FRC Inc. (52-1792772) reported 22.0 million in FY2023; FRC Action (52-1805562) reported 1.7 million over the same years — about 7% of the pair’s combined revenue.
The split matters and is routinely collapsed in descriptions of this movement. It determines what each entity may legally do and which of its money is disclosed.
Measuring the constituency
There is no membership figure for this movement, and the positions it organizes around are held well beyond any organization’s donor list.
PRRI’s 2023 survey of 6,212 U.S. adults, using a five-item scale on Christianity and American identity, classified 10% of Americans as Adherents, 19% as Sympathizers, 39% as Skeptics and 29% as Rejecters. Whitehead and Perry’s earlier study established this survey-based method, and its main contribution is a distinction that matters here: religious observance and the political positions this movement organizes around are separate variables, and many devout Americans fall in the Skeptic and Rejecter categories.
What was removed
The previous version carried a chronology from the late 1990s with unsourced accounts of email-list organizing, megachurch digital adoption and pastor networks, and asserted impacts on voter mobilization. None was cited.
The founded field, which read 1999, has been removed. The date came from that chronology and
described when the movement adopted email, not when it began; the movement’s organizations predate
it by decades, as the 1993 ruling date on FRC Action shows.
Sources
- 01.
Internal Revenue Service, via ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer. Family Research Council Inc. and Family Research Council Action, IRS Form 990 filings (EINs 52-1792772 and 52-1805562). Two separate filers at the same Washington, D.C. address, with rulings dated July 2020 and January 1993 respectively. Source for the reported financials: Family Research Council Inc. reported $24.3M revenue in FY2022 and $22.0M in FY2023; Family Research Council Action reported $2.3M and $1.7M over the same years. Retrieved through the ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer API; each EIN was checked against the filer's name and address before use.
- 02.
Whitehead, A. L. & Perry, S. L. (2020). Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States. Oxford University Press. Cited for the survey-based approach to measuring religious political positions, and for the distinction between religious observance and the political positions this movement organizes around. Metadata confirmed against the Crossref record for the DOI.
- 03.
PRRI and the Brookings Institution. A Christian Nation? Understanding the Threat of Christian Nationalism to American Democracy and Culture. (2023). Published February 8, 2023; surveyed November 21 - December 14, 2022, n=6,212 U.S. adults. Cited for the measured distribution of positions on Christianity and American identity: 10% Adherents, 19% Sympathizers, 39% Skeptics, 29% Rejecters. This page cites the report for its measurements, not for its stated conclusion about threat.