Judeo-Christian ethics

===Lyndon Johnson===
Biographer Randall B. Woods has argued that President [[Lyndon B. Johnson]] effectively used appeals to the Judeo-Christian ethical tradition to garner support for the civil rights law of 1965. Woods writes that Johnson undermined the Southern filibuster against the bill:
<blockquote>LBJ wrapped white America in a moral straight jacket. How could individuals who fervently, continuously, and overwhelmingly identified themselves with a merciful and just God continue to condone racial discrimination, police brutality, and segregation? Where in the Judeo-Christian ethic was there justification for killing young girls in a church in Alabama, denying an equal education to black children, barring fathers and mothers from competing for jobs that would feed and clothe their families? Was Jim Crow to be America's response to "Godless Communism"?<ref>Randall B. Woods, "The Politics of Idealism: Lyndon Johnson, Civil Rights, and Vietnam." ''Diplomatic History'' 31#1 (2007): 1-18, quote p 5; The same text appears in Woods, ''Prisoners of Hope: Lyndon B. Johnson, the Great Society, and the Limits of Liberalism'' (2016) p 89.</ref></blockquote>

Woods went on to assess the role of Judeo-Christian ethics among the nation's political elite:
<blockquote>Johnson's decision to define civil rights as a moral issue, and to wield the nation's self-professed Judeo-Christian ethic as a sword in its behalf, constituted something of a watershed in twentieth-century political history. All presidents were fond of invoking the deity, and some conservatives like Dwight Eisenhower had flirted with employing Judeo-Christian teachings to justify their actions, but modern-day liberals, both politicians and the intellectuals who challenged and nourished them, had shunned spiritual witness. Most liberal intellectuals were secular humanists. Academics in particular had historically been deeply distrustful of organized religion, which they identified with small-mindedness, bigotry, and anti-intellectualism. Like his role model, FDR, Johnson equated liberal values with religious values, insisting freedom and social justice served the ends of both god and man. And he was not loath to say so.<ref>Woods, ''Prisoners of Hope'' p 90.</ref></blockquote>

Woods notes that Johnson's religiosity ran deep: "At 15 he joined the Disciples of Christ, or Christian, church and would forever believe that it was the duty of the rich to care for the poor, the strong to assist the weak, and the educated to speak for the inarticulate."<ref>Woods, "The Politics of Idealism" p 3.</ref>