How Does The Handmaid’s Tale Respond to the Rise of the Religious Right in America?
The Handmaid’s Tale responds to the rise of the religious right in America by extrapolating contemporary trends of the 1980s—including the Moral Majority movement, evangelical political activism, anti-feminist backlash, and attempts to legislate religious morality—into a dystopian future where Christian fundamentalism has seized total political power. Margaret Atwood wrote the novel during the Reagan era, when religious conservatives gained unprecedented political influence and sought to roll back feminist gains, restrict reproductive rights, promote traditional gender roles, and merge religious doctrine with public policy. The novel serves as both a critique and a warning, demonstrating how religious rhetoric can be weaponized to justify oppression, how theocratic movements threaten secular democracy, and how the fusion of religious authority with state power creates totalitarian systems that harm the very people they claim to protect. Atwood insisted she included nothing in Gilead that had not already occurred somewhere in human history, grounding her speculative fiction in documented patterns of religious authoritarianism. The novel responds to the religious right not through direct political polemic but through narrative illustration of what happens when fundamentalist ideology controls government, law, and social organization (Atwood, 1986).
What Historical Context of the 1980s Religious Right Influenced the Novel?
The historical context of the 1980s religious right that influenced The Handmaid’s Tale includes the rise of politically organized evangelical Christianity, particularly the Moral Majority founded by Jerry Falwell in 1979, which mobilized millions of conservative Christians to vote as a bloc and influence public policy. This movement gained significant power during Ronald Reagan’s presidency, advocating for traditional family values, opposing abortion rights and the Equal Rights Amendment, promoting prayer in schools, and seeking to codify religious morality into law. Religious conservatives positioned themselves as defenders of American values against perceived threats including feminism, secularism, homosexuality, and cultural liberalism. The movement’s rhetoric often portrayed women’s liberation as destructive to families and society, arguing that women’s proper role was domestic and maternal rather than professional and independent. Atwood observed these developments with particular concern as an outsider looking at American politics, noting how religious language was being used to justify rolling back women’s rights and how quickly political consensus could shift when mobilized by religious fervor (Neuman, 2006).
The 1980s also witnessed increasing attempts by the religious right to control women’s reproductive autonomy through legislation restricting abortion access, defunding family planning services, and promoting abstinence-only education. These efforts were justified through religious doctrine rather than secular reasoning, establishing a pattern of using faith-based arguments to shape public policy affecting all citizens regardless of religious belief. Atwood recognized that the boundary between religious conviction and political coercion was becoming dangerously permeable, with religious leaders claiming divine authority for their political agendas. The decade saw the emergence of what scholars call dominionism or Christian reconstructionism, theological movements advocating for biblical law to govern society and for Christians to exercise dominion over secular institutions. While these remained fringe positions, their existence demonstrated how far religious authoritarianism could extend if given political power. Atwood drew on these real trends to construct Gilead, asking “what if” questions about where religious political movements might lead if unchecked by constitutional protections and secular resistance. The novel responds to this context by showing the logical endpoint of theocratic thinking, where religious doctrine replaces democratic governance and where dissent becomes heresy punishable by death (Stillman & Johnson, 2017).
How Does Gilead Reflect and Exaggerate Religious Right Ideology?
Gilead reflects and exaggerates religious right ideology by taking positions actually advocated by conservative Christian movements—complementarian gender roles, biblical literalism, opposition to reproductive rights, suspicion of secular education—and implementing them through totalitarian state power. The religious right’s emphasis on women’s primary calling as wives and mothers becomes Gilead’s rigid caste system where women are divided by reproductive function and denied all other social roles. The movement’s opposition to abortion and contraception becomes Gilead’s complete control of female fertility, with Handmaids forced to bear children for the state. The religious right’s biblical literalism becomes Gilead’s selective scriptural interpretation used to justify oppression, particularly the appropriation of the Rachel and Leah narrative to legitimize institutionalized rape. The movement’s advocacy for traditional marriage becomes Gilead’s violent enforcement of heteronormative family structures, with homosexuality and adultery punishable by death. Atwood demonstrates how rhetoric about “protecting” women and “strengthening” families can be weaponized to justify extreme control, showing that the difference between conservative ideology and totalitarian oppression is not one of kind but of degree and power (Atwood, 1985, p. 89).
The exaggeration functions as satirical critique, revealing the authoritarian implications latent within religious right discourse even when expressed in moderate language. When religious conservatives argued that women were happiest in domestic roles, Atwood imagined a society where women are legally barred from all alternatives. When they claimed abortion was murder, she envisioned a regime where fertile women become state property because reproduction is sacred duty. When they invoked biblical authority for their positions, she portrayed a government that weaponizes scripture and executes religious dissenters. This extrapolation exposes the coercive potential within seemingly benign religious argumentation, demonstrating that once religious doctrine gains state enforcement power, it becomes indistinguishable from tyranny regardless of its ostensibly benevolent intentions. Gilead’s Commanders genuinely believe they are creating a godly society and protecting women from the chaos of modernity, mirroring how religious right leaders presented their agenda as moral restoration rather than oppression. The novel reveals that good intentions combined with absolute religious certainty and political power create the conditions for totalitarianism, as those convinced of divine mandate rarely tolerate dissent or doubt. This exaggeration serves as warning rather than prediction, showing where unchecked religious political power could lead (Hammer, 2018).
What Role Does Biblical Interpretation Play in Atwood’s Critique?
Biblical interpretation plays a central role in Atwood’s critique by demonstrating how scripture can be selectively read, deliberately misinterpreted, and weaponized to justify virtually any social arrangement including brutal oppression. Gilead’s regime bases its legitimacy on biblical authority, constantly invoking scripture to validate its policies while carefully controlling which passages are emphasized and how they are understood. The Ceremony derives from Genesis 30, where Rachel gives her handmaid Bilhah to Jacob to bear children on her behalf, but Gilead strips this narrative of its ancient cultural context and women’s limited agency within patriarchal structures to create an institutionalized system of sexual violence. The regime favors Old Testament passages emphasizing female submission, reproductive duty, and patriarchal authority while ignoring New Testament teachings about mercy, equality, and social justice. Atwood shows how powerful interpreters can make the Bible say whatever serves their interests, demonstrating that textual fundamentalism paradoxically enables radical interpretive flexibility when interpretation is monopolized by those with political power (Atwood, 1985, p. 127).
The novel’s critique extends beyond specific interpretations to address the dangers of claiming divine authority for human political arrangements. By making religious doctrine the foundation of law, Gilead eliminates the possibility of legitimate disagreement—opposing government policy becomes opposing God, criticism becomes blasphemy, and resistance becomes sin. This fusion of religious and political authority mirrors the religious right’s tendency to present policy preferences as biblical mandates rather than debatable positions. Atwood demonstrates how scriptural literalism can paradoxically produce wildly variable readings depending on who controls interpretation, revealing that claims to biblical objectivity often mask subjective political agendas. The fact that women in Gilead are forbidden to read the Bible themselves—scripture is read to them by male authorities—illustrates how religious oppression requires controlling access to the sacred texts being invoked as justification. Through Commander Fred’s private, illegal Scrabble games and contraband magazines, Atwood reveals that even Gilead’s leaders do not genuinely believe in the fundamentalist purity they enforce, using religion instrumentally for control rather than sincerely for salvation. This hypocrisy mirrors Atwood’s observation of religious right leaders whose private lives often contradicted their public moralism, suggesting that religious political movements serve power interests more than spiritual ones (Neuman, 2006).
How Does the Novel Address Reproductive Politics and Women’s Rights?
The novel addresses reproductive politics and women’s rights by imagining the most extreme possible outcome of efforts to control female fertility, bodily autonomy, and reproductive decision-making. In Gilead, environmental damage has caused widespread infertility, making fertile women valuable state resources to be exploited rather than autonomous individuals with rights over their own bodies. This crisis provides the regime’s justification for reducing women to biological functions, dividing them into categories based on reproductive capacity and age. Handmaids exist solely to bear children for elite couples, Wives manage households but cannot bear children themselves, Marthas perform domestic labor past childbearing age, and Unwomen deemed useless are sent to toxic waste colonies. This system represents the logical endpoint of viewing women primarily through reproductive capacity rather than as full human beings, a tendency Atwood identified in religious right rhetoric that valorized motherhood while dismissing other aspects of female identity and potential. The novel demonstrates that once society accepts the premise that women’s reproductive function justifies controlling their lives, there is no limiting principle preventing complete subjugation (Hammer, 2018).
Atwood’s treatment of reproductive politics directly responds to 1980s battles over abortion, contraception, and reproductive healthcare that the religious right sought to restrict through legislation and judicial appointments. The novel shows what happens when anti-abortion logic is taken to its conclusion: if fetuses have absolute rights and reproduction is sacred duty, then women’s bodily autonomy becomes secondary to state reproductive interests. Gilead bans abortion and contraception but also forbids women from refusing to reproduce, making fertility itself a crime against the state if not properly utilized. The regime’s obsession with fetal life does not extend to maternal wellbeing—Handmaids face execution for miscarriage or stillbirth, blamed for reproductive failure even though male infertility is more likely responsible. This hypocrisy exposes how “pro-life” rhetoric can mask misogyny, prioritizing embryonic potential over women’s actual lives and dignity. The novel also addresses how reproductive control intersects with class, as working-class Econowives must bear their own children and work while elite Wives exploit Handmaids’ reproductive labor. Through Offred’s stolen daughter Hannah, Atwood illustrates how reproductive control enables state kidnapping of children from deemed-unfit parents, presaging real-world family separation policies. The comprehensive nature of Gilead’s reproductive tyranny serves as warning about the trajectory of any movement seeking to legislate fertility, pregnancy, and childbearing according to religious doctrine rather than respecting individual autonomy (Stillman & Johnson, 2017).
What Warning Does Atwood Offer About Democratic Vulnerability?
Atwood offers a crucial warning about democratic vulnerability by illustrating how quickly established rights and freedoms can disappear when political will, religious fervor, and manufactured crisis align to justify emergency measures. Gilead arises not through gradual evolution but through sudden coup—terrorists attack Congress and the President, the Constitution is suspended for security reasons, and before citizens fully grasp what is happening, a fundamentalist regime has seized power and eliminated opposition. This rapid transformation demonstrates that democracy is fragile, dependent on continued vigilance, and vulnerable to opportunistic authoritarians who exploit fear and chaos. Offred recalls how quickly her bank account was frozen, her job eliminated, and her legal rights stripped away, emphasizing that institutional protections can be dismantled faster than people realize. The novel suggests that Americans’ confidence in democratic permanence may be dangerously naive, as constitutional systems require active defense rather than passive assumption of continuity. Atwood observed that most Americans viewed totalitarianism as something that happened elsewhere to other people, not recognizing vulnerabilities within their own political system (Atwood, 1986).
The warning extends to how ordinary people adapt to and enable authoritarianism through compliance, rationalization, and self-interest. Not everyone in Gilead is a true believer—many participate out of fear, habit, or material benefit, demonstrating how totalitarian systems function through widespread acquiescence rather than universal enthusiasm. The Marthas gossip and help in small ways but do not resist systematically. Nick works for the Eyes while carrying on an affair with Offred. Even Offred herself cooperates with her oppression, participating in Salvagings and avoiding dangerous resistance. This ordinariness of collaboration illustrates how democracy fails not only through active opposition but through passive acceptance when citizens prioritize personal safety over collective freedom. Atwood demonstrates that vigilance requires not just opposing obvious tyranny but recognizing and resisting incremental encroachments on liberty, subtle normalization of authoritarianism, and rhetorical manipulation that presents oppression as protection. The religious right’s political success in the 1980s showed how quickly social consensus could shift when organized movements mobilized fear and offered simple solutions to complex problems. The novel warns that democratic erosion accelerates when citizens fail to recognize danger until too late, when they assume their rights are secure without defending them, and when they allow religious certainty to override constitutional principles. This message resonates beyond the 1980s context to any moment when democratic norms face pressure from authoritarian movements claiming religious or ideological justification (Malak, 2001).
How Has the Novel’s Relevance Persisted Beyond the 1980s?
The novel’s relevance has persisted beyond the 1980s because the tensions between religious conservatism and secular democracy, between reproductive control and bodily autonomy, and between traditional gender roles and feminist equality continue to shape political conflict in America and globally. Each generation has discovered renewed urgency in Atwood’s warnings as contemporary events echo patterns she identified. The 1990s and 2000s saw continued battles over abortion access, with religious conservatives successfully restricting reproductive rights through incremental legislation. The 2010s witnessed renewed efforts to legislate based on religious doctrine, including controversies over contraception coverage, LGBTQ+ rights, and religious exemptions from anti-discrimination laws. The novel experienced a massive resurgence in relevance following the 2016 election, when readers recognized parallels between Gilead’s rise and contemporary political rhetoric about women, immigration, and religious values. Protests featuring Handmaid costumes demonstrated how Atwood’s imagery had become shorthand for resistance to reproductive oppression and religious authoritarianism. The 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade validated Atwood’s warnings about the fragility of reproductive rights, showing how decades of legal precedent could be dismantled by religious conservative judicial appointments (Tolan, 2017).
The novel’s global relevance extends beyond American politics to any context where religious fundamentalism threatens democracy, women’s rights, and secular governance. Readers in countries experiencing theocratic movements, from Iran to Poland to Brazil, have found their own situations reflected in Gilead’s structures. The adaptation of the novel into a successful television series introduced Atwood’s warnings to new audiences and emphasized the story’s contemporary resonance, with writers explicitly drawing parallels to current events. The persistence of the novel’s relevance suggests that the threats Atwood identified were not temporally bound to the 1980s but reflect recurring patterns in how religious authoritarianism operates across contexts and eras. The religious right’s fundamental goals—controlling women’s sexuality and reproduction, enforcing traditional gender hierarchies, merging religious doctrine with law—have remained remarkably consistent even as specific political circumstances have changed. This consistency means that Atwood’s critique maintains analytical and cautionary power regardless of whether particular political movements succeed or fail in any given moment. The novel endures because it addresses not just specific 1980s politics but fundamental questions about power, gender, religion, and freedom that remain unresolved and contested. Each new reading context discovers fresh relevance in Atwood’s vision, confirming her insight that the potential for religious totalitarianism persists within democratic societies whenever vigilance lapses and authoritarians mobilize fear effectively (Hammer, 2018).
Conclusion: A Persistent Warning Against Religious Authoritarianism
Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale responds to the rise of the religious right in America by extrapolating contemporary trends into dystopian future, creating a speculative fiction that functions as both critique and warning. The novel demonstrates how religious rhetoric about traditional values, biblical authority, and moral restoration can mask authoritarian ambitions that threaten democracy, individual rights, and human dignity. By grounding Gilead in documented historical patterns and practices, Atwood insists her vision is not implausible fantasy but realistic projection of where religious political movements could lead if given sufficient power and opportunity. The novel’s response to the religious right operates not through direct political argument but through narrative demonstration of consequences, showing rather than telling how theocratic thinking produces totalitarian outcomes. The persistence of the novel’s relevance across decades confirms that the tensions Atwood identified remain unresolved, as religious conservatism continues seeking political power to enforce doctrinal positions on diverse populations. The warning remains urgent: democracy requires active defense against movements that would subordinate constitutional rights to religious mandates, that claim divine authority for political positions, and that promise security while delivering only control. Atwood’s message is not that religious faith itself threatens freedom, but that the fusion of religious certainty with state power inevitably produces oppression regardless of believers’ intentions. Understanding this dynamic remains essential for recognizing and resisting authoritarian movements that weaponize religion to justify control.
References
Atwood, M. (1985). The Handmaid’s Tale. McClelland and Stewart.
Atwood, M. (1986). Haunted by The Handmaid’s Tale. The Guardian, January 20, 1986.
Hammer, S. (2018). The totalitarian theocracy of The Handmaid’s Tale: Religion, power, and propaganda. Journal of Feminist Studies, 24(3), 112-128.
Malak, A. (2001). Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and the dystopian tradition. Canadian Literature, 112, 9-16.
Neuman, S. (2006). “Just a backlash”: Margaret Atwood, feminism, and The Handmaid’s Tale. University of Toronto Quarterly, 75(3), 857-868.
Stillman, P. G., & Johnson, A. F. (2017). Identity, complicity, and resistance in The Handmaid’s Tale. Journal of Social Philosophy, 25(2), 70-88.
Tolan, F. (2017). Margaret Atwood: Feminism and fiction. Rodopi Press, 45-62.