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{{Infobox person
| name = Edward Eugene "Ed" McAteer, Sr.
| image =
| imagesize =
| caption =
| occupation =[[Business]]man; political activist
| yearsactive =
| party =[[Republican Party|Republican]]-turned-[[Independent (politicsw)|Independent]]
| birth_date =July 29, 1926
| birth_place =[[Memphis, Tennessee|Memphis]], [[Tennessee]], USA
| death_date =October 6, 2004
| death_place =East Memphis, Tennessee
| death_cause = Cancer
| resting_place =Robertson Cemetery in Memphis
| residence =East Memphis, Tennessee
| alma_mater =University of Memphis
| parents =
| spouse =Faye Carter McAteer
| children =Edward McAteer, Jr.<br>
Timothy McAteer<br>
Six grandchildren
| religion =[[Southern Baptist]]
}}
'''Edward Eugene McAteer, Sr.''', known as '''Ed McAteer''' (July 29, 1926 – October 6, 2004), was a [[business]]man from his native [[Memphis]], [[Tennessee]], who in 1979 founded the [[Religious Roundtable]], a group affiliated with the [[Christian right]] which sought to meld [[conservatives]] of faith into an active role in [[United States|American]] politics.
==Background==
McAteer was converted to [[Jesus Christ]] at the age of fourteen.<ref name=bpnews/> He attended but did not graduate from [[Memphis State University]] and briefly attended a law school.<ref name=nyt/> He served in the [[United States Navy]] during [[World War II]] and was a survivor of the first ship sunk by a [[Japan]]ese [[kamikaze]] plane in 1945. He was a former Golden Gloves boxer in Memphis.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.memphisflyer.com/JacksonBaker/archives/2004/10/06/ed-mcateer-christian-conservative|title=Ed McAteer: Christian Conservative: Genial activist had friendships across social and political lines|publisaher=''Memphis Flyer''|date=October 6. 2004|accessdate=May 27, 2016}]<ref>
For more than twenty years, McAteer was a sales manager for the southeastern states for [[Colgate-Palmolive]]. He left the firm in 1976 to devote full time to conservative causes.<ref name=nyt/>
McAteer and his wife, the former Faye Carter (born 1924), had two sons, Edward Jr., of Murfreesboro in Rutherford County, Tennessee, and Timothy McAteer of Bartlett in Shelby County, Tennessee, and six grandchildren.<ref name=nyt>{{cite web|url=http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/10/obituaries/us/edward-e-mcateer-78-empowered-christian-right.html?_r=0|title=Edward E. McAteer, 78; Empowered Christian Right|author=Margalit Fox|date=October 10, 2004|publisher=''[[The New York Times]]''|accessdate=May 26, 2016}}</ref>
==Conservative causes==
By the end of the [[Jimmy Carter]] administration, issues such as [[abortion]] and [[gay rights]] attracted major attention. At the "National Affairs Briefing" in [[Dallas]], [[Texas]], in 1980, [[Ronald W. Reagan]], Carter's successful re-election opponent, addressed the Religious Roundtable. According to ''Newsweek'' magazine, Reagan, then the former governor of California, said, "I know you can't endorse me. But I want you to know that I endorse you."<ref name=nyt/> In his 1999 memoir, ''A Hill on Which to Die: One Southern Baptist’s Journey,'' retired Judge Paul Pressler of [[Houston, Texas|Houston]] recalled attending the briefing:
<blockquote>
At the urging of some friends, I decided to go [to the briefing in Dallas]. I did not expect much, but when I arrived, I found a packed arena, full of enthusiastic individuals hearing great speakers. I went to the phone after the first few hours, called Nancy [his wife], and said, ‘Get a baby-sitter for the children. You must come up here and hear what is going on.’ She flew to Dallas, and we had the opportunity to attend together. This was the first time either of us had met Ronald Reagan. [Dallas businesswoman] Mary Crowley invited us to a reception for him at the [[Hyatt]]. Jimmy Carter had been invited to speak but did not attend.<ref name=bpnews/></blockquote>
In a 1981 interview with ''[[The New York Times]]'', McAteer said his group was committed to "public policy concerning moral issues," specifically support for [[school prayer]] and national defense as well as opposition to abortion, [[pornography]], and [[communism]]. John C. Green, a [[Political science|political scientist]] at the University of Akron in [[Akron]], [[Ohio]], said that McAteer and the better known [[Jerry Falwell]], a [[Baptist]] pastor from [[Lynchburg, Virginia|Lynchburg]], [[Virginia]],
<blockquote>
realized the potential of these folks to be more politically active. And then there were secular leaders who realized the advantage of courting this constituency. So the religious leaders and the secular conservative leaders came together.<br>
If [one goes] back to the 1950's, 1960's and 1970's, evangelical Christians were not very active in politics. Reforming this world didn't seem to appeal much to people whose whole goal was to get to the next world. ... [Now] many people inside the movement and outside the movement recognized that something new was happening in American politics."<ref name=nyt.</blockquote>
In 1984, McAteer ran as an [[Independent voter|Independent]] for the [[United States Senate]] seat from Tennessee, a post vacated by the [[Republican Party|Republican]] Majority Leader, [[Howard Baker|Howard Henry Baker, Jr.]] McAteer opposed the Republican nominee, Victor Ashe, later the long-term [[mayor]] of [[Knoxville]], who like Baker was considered a [[Rockefeller Republican|Moderate Republican]]. The easy winner of the race was the [[Democratic Party|Democrat]] [[Al Gore]], then a [[United States House of Representatives|U.S. Representative]] for Tennessee's 4th congressional district and later the vice president under [[Bill Clinton]]. McAteer finished with 87,234 votes (5.3 percent) in the contest. Gore won handily despite the easy reelection of President Reagan and Vice President [[George Herbert Walker Bush]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.ourcampaigns.com/RaceDetail.html?RaceID=3707|title=TN U.S. Senate|publisher=ourcampaigns.com|accessdate=May 26, 2016}}</ref>
Falwell, who worked with McAteer and others in the organization of the former [[Moral Majority]], once said that what "the press today calls the 'religious right' was really McAteer's dream."<ref name=nbcnews/> McAteer was particularly known too as a defender of the nation of [[Israel]]. He was overshadowed in the national limelight by Falwell and other colleagues, such as televangelist [[Pat Robertson]], and [[Ralph E. Reed, Jr.]], the former head of the [[Christian Coalition of America]], who at the time of McAteer's death in 2004 was working in the successful re-election campaign of U.S. President [[George W. Bush]], who had defeated McAteer's former rival, Al Gore, in a close, contested match in [[U.S. presidential election, 2000|2000]].<ref name=nyt/>
McAteer's break with the Republicans came because the party delivered little of the conservative Christian agenda. “We were dropped like a hot potato once they got out of these Christians what they wanted,” McAteer said of the [[Republican Party|GOP]].<ref name=nbcnews>{{cite web|url=http://www.nbcnews.com/id/6276308/ns/politics/t/staying-right-sideof-political-movement/#.V0eyR4-cEa4|title=Staying on the right side of a political movement: Conservative Christians - and their ideas - threaded throughout Bush administration|publisehr=[[NBC News]]|date=October 27, 2004|author=M./ Alex Johnson|accessdate=May 26, 2016}}</ref>
==Legacy==
On McAteer's death of cancer in East Memphis at the age of seventy-eight, independent conservative journalist [[Joseph Farah]] said that he had never "met a more fervent and zealous friend of Israel than Ed McAteer – and that includes all of my Jewish acquaintances."<ref name=jfarah->{{cite web|url=http://www.wnd.com/2004/10/26980/|title=My Friend, Ed McAteer|publisher=[[WND]]|date=October 12, 2004|accessdate=May 26, 2016}}</ref> Farah said that McAteer should have been appointed United States Ambassador to Israel in 1989 or again in 2001, but he was snubbed by both Presidents Bush.<ref name=jfarah/> In 2001, McAteer was featured as "the godfather of the Christian right" in the segment "Zion's Christian Soldiers" of ''60 Minutes'', the [[CBS]] news magazine. At the time, conservatives were pushing without success for the second President Bush to name McAteer as the U.S. ambassador to Israel.<ref name=bpnews>{{cite web|url=http://www.bpnews.net/19304|title=Ed McAteer, pioneer for faith in public policy, dies at 78|date=October 7, 2004|publisher=''Baptist Press News''|author=Art Toalston|accessdate=May 26, 2016}}</ref>Thougn neither Bush appointed McAteer as an ambassador, George W. Bush named McAteer's former election rival, Victor Ashe, as United States Amabasador to Poland.
Andy Groveman, president of the Memphis Jewish Federation, described McAteer as "a close friend to the Memphis Jewish community, and his love and loyalty for the state of Israel is unequaled.” Each year, McAteer organized the “International Christian Prayer Breakfast in Honor of Israel,” held in Memphis. Featured speakers over the years included such conservative figures as [[Roy Moore]], the former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court<ref name=bpnews/>and a U.S. Senate candidate in the special election in [[Alabama]] in 2017.
Richard Land, then president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, said of McAtter in a statement to ''The Baptist Press'':
<blockquote>
Ed McAteer probably did as much as anyone to awaken the conscience of evangelical Christians and other people of faith to their obligation and responsibility to be the 'salt' and 'light' in society that Jesus commanded us to be. Ed had a tremendous vision for an informed and engaged Christian community in the life of our nation as well as Christians’ responsibility to the state of Israel, His boundless enthusiasm was infectious and energizing. In more than four decades of ministry, I have known no one more committed to our Savior.”<ref name=bpnews/></blockquote>
Jerry Falwell, three years before his own death, was quoted by the ''Memphis Commercial-Appeal'' as having said, "Ed, more than anyone else, is responsible for the emergence of the Religious Right in America. ... He encouraged me to use my pulpit to speak out on moral and social issues, and I loved and revered him.”<ref name=bpnews/>
At McAteer's funeral, former Independent presidential candidate Howard Phillips, another organizer of the Moral Majority said, "A giant has fallen. Ed was an example of what a Christian ought to be. He was a man who was unblemished in his personal life ... a man who showed character and compassion to others.”<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.bpnews.net/19327|title='A giant has fallen,' friend says at Ed McAteer funeral|date=October 11, 2004|publisher=''Baptist Press News''|accessdate=May 26, 2016}}</ref>
McAteer's pastor, Adrian Rogers of the large Bellevue Baptist Church in Cordova in [[suburb]]an Memphis, said of his friend:
<background>
Ed McAteer was one of the most remarkable men that I have ever met. A man is known by what he loves. Ed McAteer loved his Lord, loved his wife and family, loved his nation and loved the nation of Israel. His enthusiasm, zeal and convictions were contagious. We are going to miss him, but his influence will go on and on until it touches the shore of eternity.”<ref name=jfarah/>
McAteer is interred at Robertson Cemetery in Memphis.
==References==
{{reflist}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:McAteer, Ed}}
[[Category:Tennessee]]
[[Category:Business People]]
[[Category:Politicians]]
[[Category:Pro-life]]
[[Category:Conservatives]]
[[Category:Baptists]]
[[Category:Republicans]]
[[Category:Independents]]
[[Category:World War II]]
[[Category:United States Navy]]
Created page with " {{Infobox person | name = Edward Eugene "Ed" McAteer, Sr. | image = | imagesize ..."
{{Infobox person
| name = Edward Eugene "Ed" McAteer, Sr.
| image =
| imagesize =
| caption =
| occupation =[[Business]]man; political activist
| yearsactive =
| party =[[Republican Party|Republican]]-turned-[[Independent (politicsw)|Independent]]
| birth_date =July 29, 1926
| birth_place =[[Memphis, Tennessee|Memphis]], [[Tennessee]], USA
| death_date =October 6, 2004
| death_place =East Memphis, Tennessee
| death_cause = Cancer
| resting_place =Robertson Cemetery in Memphis
| residence =East Memphis, Tennessee
| alma_mater =University of Memphis
| parents =
| spouse =Faye Carter McAteer
| children =Edward McAteer, Jr.<br>
Timothy McAteer<br>
Six grandchildren
| religion =[[Southern Baptist]]
}}
'''Edward Eugene McAteer, Sr.''', known as '''Ed McAteer''' (July 29, 1926 – October 6, 2004), was a [[business]]man from his native [[Memphis]], [[Tennessee]], who in 1979 founded the [[Religious Roundtable]], a group affiliated with the [[Christian right]] which sought to meld [[conservatives]] of faith into an active role in [[United States|American]] politics.
==Background==
McAteer was converted to [[Jesus Christ]] at the age of fourteen.<ref name=bpnews/> He attended but did not graduate from [[Memphis State University]] and briefly attended a law school.<ref name=nyt/> He served in the [[United States Navy]] during [[World War II]] and was a survivor of the first ship sunk by a [[Japan]]ese [[kamikaze]] plane in 1945. He was a former Golden Gloves boxer in Memphis.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.memphisflyer.com/JacksonBaker/archives/2004/10/06/ed-mcateer-christian-conservative|title=Ed McAteer: Christian Conservative: Genial activist had friendships across social and political lines|publisaher=''Memphis Flyer''|date=October 6. 2004|accessdate=May 27, 2016}]<ref>
For more than twenty years, McAteer was a sales manager for the southeastern states for [[Colgate-Palmolive]]. He left the firm in 1976 to devote full time to conservative causes.<ref name=nyt/>
McAteer and his wife, the former Faye Carter (born 1924), had two sons, Edward Jr., of Murfreesboro in Rutherford County, Tennessee, and Timothy McAteer of Bartlett in Shelby County, Tennessee, and six grandchildren.<ref name=nyt>{{cite web|url=http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/10/obituaries/us/edward-e-mcateer-78-empowered-christian-right.html?_r=0|title=Edward E. McAteer, 78; Empowered Christian Right|author=Margalit Fox|date=October 10, 2004|publisher=''[[The New York Times]]''|accessdate=May 26, 2016}}</ref>
==Conservative causes==
By the end of the [[Jimmy Carter]] administration, issues such as [[abortion]] and [[gay rights]] attracted major attention. At the "National Affairs Briefing" in [[Dallas]], [[Texas]], in 1980, [[Ronald W. Reagan]], Carter's successful re-election opponent, addressed the Religious Roundtable. According to ''Newsweek'' magazine, Reagan, then the former governor of California, said, "I know you can't endorse me. But I want you to know that I endorse you."<ref name=nyt/> In his 1999 memoir, ''A Hill on Which to Die: One Southern Baptist’s Journey,'' retired Judge Paul Pressler of [[Houston, Texas|Houston]] recalled attending the briefing:
<blockquote>
At the urging of some friends, I decided to go [to the briefing in Dallas]. I did not expect much, but when I arrived, I found a packed arena, full of enthusiastic individuals hearing great speakers. I went to the phone after the first few hours, called Nancy [his wife], and said, ‘Get a baby-sitter for the children. You must come up here and hear what is going on.’ She flew to Dallas, and we had the opportunity to attend together. This was the first time either of us had met Ronald Reagan. [Dallas businesswoman] Mary Crowley invited us to a reception for him at the [[Hyatt]]. Jimmy Carter had been invited to speak but did not attend.<ref name=bpnews/></blockquote>
In a 1981 interview with ''[[The New York Times]]'', McAteer said his group was committed to "public policy concerning moral issues," specifically support for [[school prayer]] and national defense as well as opposition to abortion, [[pornography]], and [[communism]]. John C. Green, a [[Political science|political scientist]] at the University of Akron in [[Akron]], [[Ohio]], said that McAteer and the better known [[Jerry Falwell]], a [[Baptist]] pastor from [[Lynchburg, Virginia|Lynchburg]], [[Virginia]],
<blockquote>
realized the potential of these folks to be more politically active. And then there were secular leaders who realized the advantage of courting this constituency. So the religious leaders and the secular conservative leaders came together.<br>
If [one goes] back to the 1950's, 1960's and 1970's, evangelical Christians were not very active in politics. Reforming this world didn't seem to appeal much to people whose whole goal was to get to the next world. ... [Now] many people inside the movement and outside the movement recognized that something new was happening in American politics."<ref name=nyt.</blockquote>
In 1984, McAteer ran as an [[Independent voter|Independent]] for the [[United States Senate]] seat from Tennessee, a post vacated by the [[Republican Party|Republican]] Majority Leader, [[Howard Baker|Howard Henry Baker, Jr.]] McAteer opposed the Republican nominee, Victor Ashe, later the long-term [[mayor]] of [[Knoxville]], who like Baker was considered a [[Rockefeller Republican|Moderate Republican]]. The easy winner of the race was the [[Democratic Party|Democrat]] [[Al Gore]], then a [[United States House of Representatives|U.S. Representative]] for Tennessee's 4th congressional district and later the vice president under [[Bill Clinton]]. McAteer finished with 87,234 votes (5.3 percent) in the contest. Gore won handily despite the easy reelection of President Reagan and Vice President [[George Herbert Walker Bush]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.ourcampaigns.com/RaceDetail.html?RaceID=3707|title=TN U.S. Senate|publisher=ourcampaigns.com|accessdate=May 26, 2016}}</ref>
Falwell, who worked with McAteer and others in the organization of the former [[Moral Majority]], once said that what "the press today calls the 'religious right' was really McAteer's dream."<ref name=nbcnews/> McAteer was particularly known too as a defender of the nation of [[Israel]]. He was overshadowed in the national limelight by Falwell and other colleagues, such as televangelist [[Pat Robertson]], and [[Ralph E. Reed, Jr.]], the former head of the [[Christian Coalition of America]], who at the time of McAteer's death in 2004 was working in the successful re-election campaign of U.S. President [[George W. Bush]], who had defeated McAteer's former rival, Al Gore, in a close, contested match in [[U.S. presidential election, 2000|2000]].<ref name=nyt/>
McAteer's break with the Republicans came because the party delivered little of the conservative Christian agenda. “We were dropped like a hot potato once they got out of these Christians what they wanted,” McAteer said of the [[Republican Party|GOP]].<ref name=nbcnews>{{cite web|url=http://www.nbcnews.com/id/6276308/ns/politics/t/staying-right-sideof-political-movement/#.V0eyR4-cEa4|title=Staying on the right side of a political movement: Conservative Christians - and their ideas - threaded throughout Bush administration|publisehr=[[NBC News]]|date=October 27, 2004|author=M./ Alex Johnson|accessdate=May 26, 2016}}</ref>
==Legacy==
On McAteer's death of cancer in East Memphis at the age of seventy-eight, independent conservative journalist [[Joseph Farah]] said that he had never "met a more fervent and zealous friend of Israel than Ed McAteer – and that includes all of my Jewish acquaintances."<ref name=jfarah->{{cite web|url=http://www.wnd.com/2004/10/26980/|title=My Friend, Ed McAteer|publisher=[[WND]]|date=October 12, 2004|accessdate=May 26, 2016}}</ref> Farah said that McAteer should have been appointed United States Ambassador to Israel in 1989 or again in 2001, but he was snubbed by both Presidents Bush.<ref name=jfarah/> In 2001, McAteer was featured as "the godfather of the Christian right" in the segment "Zion's Christian Soldiers" of ''60 Minutes'', the [[CBS]] news magazine. At the time, conservatives were pushing without success for the second President Bush to name McAteer as the U.S. ambassador to Israel.<ref name=bpnews>{{cite web|url=http://www.bpnews.net/19304|title=Ed McAteer, pioneer for faith in public policy, dies at 78|date=October 7, 2004|publisher=''Baptist Press News''|author=Art Toalston|accessdate=May 26, 2016}}</ref>Thougn neither Bush appointed McAteer as an ambassador, George W. Bush named McAteer's former election rival, Victor Ashe, as United States Amabasador to Poland.
Andy Groveman, president of the Memphis Jewish Federation, described McAteer as "a close friend to the Memphis Jewish community, and his love and loyalty for the state of Israel is unequaled.” Each year, McAteer organized the “International Christian Prayer Breakfast in Honor of Israel,” held in Memphis. Featured speakers over the years included such conservative figures as [[Roy Moore]], the former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court<ref name=bpnews/>and a U.S. Senate candidate in the special election in [[Alabama]] in 2017.
Richard Land, then president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, said of McAtter in a statement to ''The Baptist Press'':
<blockquote>
Ed McAteer probably did as much as anyone to awaken the conscience of evangelical Christians and other people of faith to their obligation and responsibility to be the 'salt' and 'light' in society that Jesus commanded us to be. Ed had a tremendous vision for an informed and engaged Christian community in the life of our nation as well as Christians’ responsibility to the state of Israel, His boundless enthusiasm was infectious and energizing. In more than four decades of ministry, I have known no one more committed to our Savior.”<ref name=bpnews/></blockquote>
Jerry Falwell, three years before his own death, was quoted by the ''Memphis Commercial-Appeal'' as having said, "Ed, more than anyone else, is responsible for the emergence of the Religious Right in America. ... He encouraged me to use my pulpit to speak out on moral and social issues, and I loved and revered him.”<ref name=bpnews/>
At McAteer's funeral, former Independent presidential candidate Howard Phillips, another organizer of the Moral Majority said, "A giant has fallen. Ed was an example of what a Christian ought to be. He was a man who was unblemished in his personal life ... a man who showed character and compassion to others.”<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.bpnews.net/19327|title='A giant has fallen,' friend says at Ed McAteer funeral|date=October 11, 2004|publisher=''Baptist Press News''|accessdate=May 26, 2016}}</ref>
McAteer's pastor, Adrian Rogers of the large Bellevue Baptist Church in Cordova in [[suburb]]an Memphis, said of his friend:
<background>
Ed McAteer was one of the most remarkable men that I have ever met. A man is known by what he loves. Ed McAteer loved his Lord, loved his wife and family, loved his nation and loved the nation of Israel. His enthusiasm, zeal and convictions were contagious. We are going to miss him, but his influence will go on and on until it touches the shore of eternity.”<ref name=jfarah/>
McAteer is interred at Robertson Cemetery in Memphis.
==References==
{{reflist}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:McAteer, Ed}}
[[Category:Tennessee]]
[[Category:Business People]]
[[Category:Politicians]]
[[Category:Pro-life]]
[[Category:Conservatives]]
[[Category:Baptists]]
[[Category:Republicans]]
[[Category:Independents]]
[[Category:World War II]]
[[Category:United States Navy]]