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Pluralism, Democracy, and Catholicism in the Era of World War II

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Philip Gleason
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Extract

After World War II bitter controversy broke out in the United States between Catholics, on the one hand, and Protestants and liberals on the other. Although important issues were involved, these controversies have attracted almost no scholarly attention. Donald Crosby's book on Catholics and McCar-thyism is the only full-scale monograph dealing with any aspect of the controversies of which I am aware. My intention here is to draw attention to two additional aspects of the controversy which touch on matters that are still of interest and in need of much more study by historians. These are: (1) ambiguities in the concept of pluralism; and (2) a tendency that emerged in the critique of Catholic authoritarianism to treat democracy as a civil religion. But before taking up these issues we must look briefly at the development of “the Catholic issue” between the A1 Smith campaign of 1928 and the end of World War II.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 49 , Issue 2 , Spring 1987 , pp. 208 - 230
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1987

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References

Notes

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11 An instance of offensive Catholic pressure used to prevent Margaret Sanger from speaking in a Congregational church in Holyoke, MA, was later made the focal point of an intensive study of interreligious tensions; see Underwood, Kenneth W., Protestant and Catholic: Religious and Social Interaction in an Industrial Community (Boston: Beacon Press, 1957).Google Scholar

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13 This discussion is based on Purcell, Edward A. Jr., The Crisis of Democratic Theory: Scientific Naturalism & the Problem of Value (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1973)Google Scholar; for reference to Catholic criticism of the naturalistic position, see pp. 164ff., 179–80, 203–204, 224–25, 241. See also, Meyer, Donald H., “Secular Transcendence: The American Religious Humanists,” American Quarterly 34 (Winter 1982): 524–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 For liberal irritation with Catholics, see The Scientific Spirit and Democratic Faith: Papers for the Conference on the Scientific Spirit and Democratic Faith, Held in New York City, May 1943 (New York, 1944)Google Scholar; The Authoritarian Attempt to Capture Education: Papers for the 2nd Conference on The Scientific Spirit and Democratic Faith (New York, 1945)Google Scholar; and “The New Failure of Nerve,” Partisan Review 10 (01–02 1943): esp. 11, 17–20, 28, 29, 50, 51, 53.Google Scholar

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16 Ryan, John A. and Boland, Francis J., Catholic Principles of Politics (New York: Macmillan and Co., 1940), chaps. 22–23, esp. pp. 316–21Google Scholar. This was a revision of a book published originally in 1922 and entitled The State and The Church, which had been a focal point of controversy in the A1 Smith campaign. See Broderick, Francis L., Right Reverend New Dealer: John A. Ryan (New York: Macmillan and Co., 1963), pp. 118–20, 170–79, 247–48.Google Scholar

17 After running in the magazine, the series was widely circulated as a pamphlet. A Congregational minister in Madison, Wisconsin, recommended it to his flock in the following terms: “Here is a carefully wrought study of the strategy by which Rome, weakened in Europe, hopes to make America a Catholic province, capturing Middletown, controlling the press, winning the Negro, courting the workers, invading rural America, and centralizing its power in Washington.” Quoted in advertisement for the Fey pamphlet in Christian Century 62 (28 02 1945): 287.Google Scholar

18 Fey, , “Catholicism Fights Communism,” Christian Century 62 (3 01 1945): 13Google Scholar; Fey, “The Center of Catholic Power,” ibid., 62 (17 January 1945): 75.

19 J. A. M. (MacKay, John A.), “Emergent Clericalism,” Christianity and Crisis 5 (19 02 1945): 1–2Google Scholar. MacKay, later described by his fellow Presbyterian, John Foster Dulles, as “violently anti-Catholic” (Crosby, , God, Church, and Flag, p. 136Google Scholar), issued the following warning in 1943: “No small part of the contemporary crisis is the imperiousness of the Roman Catholic hierarchy. The evidence of studied disregard for the sensibilities of non-Roman Christians in the United States is so great that, if a very serious situation is to be avoided, it will be necessary for the leaders of Roman Catholicism in this country to moderate their attitudes and alter their procedures. It is well that they should know that Protestant sentiment, more thoroughly united today on important issues than it has been for generations, will not tolerate indefinitely the arrogance of the new Catholic policy” (MacKay, , “Hierarchs, Missionaries, and Latin America,” Christianity and Crisis 3 [3 05 1943]: 2).Google Scholar

20 In a discussion of the “Protestant Reorientation” that led eventually to the formation of the National Council of Churches, the Christian Century 60 (27 10 1943): 1222Google Scholar, cited the growing power of the Catholic church as requiring a Protestant response and added: “Only by imagining American culture as predominantly informed by one or the other of these faiths will the significance of their differences appear. Protestantism cannot be true to itself and be indifferent to the character which American civilization would take on in the event that Catholicism became the preponderant spiritual force in the nation's life.” In a paper entitled “Protestantism and Democracy,” originally presented in 1945, the well-known historian of American religion, William Warren Sweet, asserted that the basic freedoms enjoyed by Americans “are to a large degree Protestant accomplishments. And if they are to be retained, they must be preserved by a united and intelligent Protestantism” (Sweet, , American Culture and Religion [Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1951], p. 39Google Scholar). See also Morrison, Charles Clayton, Can Protestantism Win America? (New York: Harper and Bros., 1948), esp. chaps. 1 and 6Google Scholar (this book, expanded from a series of articles in the Christian Century, was inspired by Fey's series in the same journal); Nichols, James Hastings, Democracy and the Churches (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1951), esp. pp. 243–79Google Scholar; and Boggs, Ronald James, “Culture of Liberty: History of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, 1947–1973” (Ph.D. diss., Ohio State University, 1978), esp. 1:63–68Google Scholar, which outlines the POAU's “culture of liberty” ideology as it was drawn up in 1947 by Charles Clayton Morrison.

21 For evidence from public opinion polls, see Erskine, Hazel Gaudet, “The Polls: Religious Prejudice, Part I,” Public Opinion Quarterly 29 (Fall 1965): 486–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 The Catholic tendency to interpret all criticism from non-Catholics as bigotry is reflected in the way the Jesuit weekly, America, reacted to Fey's series: it dismissed the articles in a brief note that characterized them as giving the “green light to Ku Kluxism” (America 72 [17 02 1945]: 382Google Scholar). The same article quoted Time, 26 01 1945Google Scholar, on how Protestants were launching “a slam-bang crusade against the Roman Catholic Church.”

23 The degree to which this view was widely shared among intellectuals is suggested by the fact that Lynn T. White, Jr., considered it relevant to a wartime discussion of the future of the humanities. See White, , “Conflicting Forces in the United States,” in The Humanities Look Ahead: Report of the First Annual Conference held by the Stanford School of Humanities … 1943 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1943), 1:38.Google Scholar

24 For general treatments see Curry, , Protestant-Catholic Relations, chap. 2Google Scholar; Boggs, , “Culture of Liberty,” chap. 1Google Scholar; Kane, John J., Catholic-Protestant Conflicts in America (Chicago: Regnery, 1955)Google Scholar; Stokes, Anson Phelps and Pfeffer, Leo, Church and State in the United States, rev. ed. (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), pp. 278–79, 436–40Google Scholar; Fuchs, Lawrence H., John F. Kennedy and American Catholicism (New York: Meredith Press, 1967), chap. 4, esp., pp. 130–42Google Scholar; Bowie, W. Russell, “Protestant Concern over Catholicism,” American Mercury 69 (09 1949): 261–73Google Scholar; John Courtney Murray, “The Catholic Position – A Reply,” ibid., 274–83; Shuster, George N., “The Catholic Controversy,” Harper's Magazine 199 (11 1949): 25–32Google Scholar; D. W. Brogan, “The Catholic Church in America,” ibid., 200 (May 1950): 40–50; Williams, George Huntston, Beach, Waldo, and Niebuhr, H. Richard, “Issues Between Catholics and Protestants at Midcentury,” Religion in Life 23 (Spring 1954): 163–205.Google Scholar

25 Ravitch, Diane, Troubled Crusade: American Education, 1945–1980 (New York: Basic Books, 1983), pp. 29–41Google Scholar; Boggs, , “Culture of Liberty,” chaps. 2–5Google Scholar; Sanders, Thomas G., Protestant Concepts of Church and State: Historical Backgrounds and Approaches for the Future (New York: Rinehart and Winston, 1964), pp. 161–65, 257ffGoogle Scholar; Benjamin, Walter W., “Separation of Church and State: Myth and Reality,” Journal of Church and State 11 (Winter 1969): 93–109, esp. 97–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26 Blanshard, Paul, American Freedom and Catholic Power (Boston: Beacon Press, 1949)Google Scholar; Blanshard, , Communism, Democracy, and Catholic Power (Boston: Beacon Press, 1951)Google Scholar. The most comprehensive Catholic reply to Blanshard was O'Neill, James M., Catholics in Controversy (New York: McMullen Books 1954)Google Scholar. Of particular interest in view of his revisionist work in the area of Catholic church-state theory is Murray, John Courtney's critique, “Paul Blanshard and the New Nativism,” The Month 191 (1951): 214–25.Google Scholar

27 Crosby, , God, Church, and Flag, esp. chap. 6.Google Scholar

28 Herberg, WillProtestant-Catholic-Jew: An Essay in American Religious Sociology, rev. ed. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1960), esp. chap. 10.Google Scholar

29 For a fuller development of these points, see Gleason, Philip, “American Identity and Americanization,” in Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups, ed. Thernstrom, Stephan et al. (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1980), pp. 43–46Google Scholar; Gleason, , “Pluralism and Assimilation: A Conceptual History,” in Linguistic Minorities, Policies and Pluralism, ed. Edwards, John (London: Academic Press, 1984), pp. 223–25, 228–30Google Scholar; and Higham, John, “Ethnic Pluralism in Modern American Thought,” in his Send These To Me: Jews and Other Immigrants in Urban America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975), pp. 196–230.Google Scholar

30 Gleason, , “Pluralism and Assimilation,” pp. 230–32Google Scholar; Gleason, , “Americans All: World War II and the Shaping of American Identity,” Review of Politics 43 (10 1981): 483–518, esp. 498–505CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the quotation, see Adamic, Louis, “This Crisis Is an Opportunity,” Common Ground 1 (10 1940): 66Google Scholar; see also Adamic, , From Many Lands (New York: Harper and Row, 1940), pp. 298–99Google Scholar. Note also the following statement, the context of which links it closely to Kallen and cultural pluralism: “We perceive that the very diversity which is the creative principle in American life is made possible by a unifying faith in the dignity and value of the individual, a unifying aspiration toward equality of opportunity and freedom for all” (Foreword to issue devoted to “Intercultural Education,” in English Journal 35 [06 1946]: 286.).Google Scholar

31 Gleason, , “Pluralism and Assimilation,” pp. 233–34.Google Scholar

32 For examples of Catholic usage of the term, see O'Reilly, Bryan M., “Catholic America Comes of Age,” Catholic World 166 (01 1948): 347Google Scholar; and Donahue, Charles, “Freedom and Education: The Pluralist Background,” Thought 27 (Winter 1952): 542–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The modulation of ethnic into religious identity is implied in Kennedy, Ruby Jo Reeves, “Single or Triple Melting Pot? Intermarriage Trends in New Haven, 1870–1940,” American Journal of Sociology 49 (01 1944): 331–39Google Scholar; is explicitly identified as a trend in Lee, Alfred McClung, “Sociological Insights into American Culture and Personality,” Journal of Social Issues 7 (1951): 10–14Google Scholar; and is made the basis of Herberg's interpretation of the religious situation of the 1950's in Protestant-Catholic-Jew, esp. chaps. 2–3. See also Gleason, , “Pluralism and Assimilation,” pp. 241–44.Google Scholar

33 Donahue begins his article by saying: “‘Divisive’ has come to be a favorite word among those who believe that all American education … should be tax-supported, secular, and entirely under public control.” Donahue, , “Freedom and Education,” 542Google Scholar. Efforts to arouse “divisive passions” were deprecated in 1920 in what has been called “the first united expression of opposition to religious and racial prejudice in the history of the United States.” See Pitt, James E., Adventures in Brotherhood (New York: Farrar, Straus, 1955), pp. 12–13Google Scholar. See also Williams, J. Paul, The New Education and Religion (New York: Association Press, 1945), p. 13Google Scholar; and Brumbaugh, T. T., “How Religion Divides Us,” Christian Century 62 (31 01 1945): 138–39.Google Scholar

34 Conant, James B., Education and Liberty (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953), pp. 80–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See Conant, , My Several Lives (New York: Harper and Row, 1970), chap. 34 and appendix 3.Google Scholar

35 This theme runs through the Fey series cited earlier. See also Farrell, James T., “The Pope Needs America,” Nation 143 (17, 24 10 1936): 440–41, 476–77Google Scholar; Saunders, D. A., “Liberals and Catholic Action,” Christian Century 54 (20 10 1937): 1293–95Google Scholar; Seldes, , Catholic Crisis, pp. 53–54Google Scholar; Blanshard, , American Freedom, pp. 29–31.Google Scholar

36 “Pluralism — National Menace,” Christian Century 68 (13 06 1951): 701–11Google Scholar. Herberg, , Protestant-Catholic-Jew, pp. 236–38, 241Google Scholar, discusses this “much-noted editorial” at some length. It is also referred to, specifically in the context of “the semantic confusion current in the term ‘cultural pluralism,’” by Cunneen, Joseph, “Catholics and Education,” in Catholicism in America: A Series of Articles from The Commonweal (New York, 1954), pp. 153–54Google Scholar. For another reference to the confusing way in which “cultural pluralism” was talked about by religious leaders, see Seeley, John R. et al. , Crestwood Heights (New York: Basic Books, 1956), p. 379.Google Scholar

37 Kallen, Horace M., Cultural Pluralism and the American Idea (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1956), pp. 98, 50, 55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38 Ibid., esp. pp. 51–52.

39 Ibid., pp. 86ff.

40 Ibid., pp. 206–207.

41 The paradigmatic formulation of the Catholic understanding is that of John Courtney Murray: “The American Proposition makes a particular claim upon the reflective attention of the Catholic insofar as it contains a doctrine and a project in the matter of the ‘pluralist society,’ as we seem to have agreed to call it. The term might have many meanings. By pluralism here I mean the coexistence within one political community of groups who hold divergent and incompatible views with regard to religious questions — those ultimate questions that concern the nature and destiny of man within a universe that stands under the reign of God. Pluralism therefore implies disagreement and dissension within the community. But it also implies a community within which there must be agreement and consensus. There is no small political problem here. If society is to be at all a rational process, some set of principles must motivate the general participation of all religious groups, despite their dissensions, in the oneness of the community. On the other hand, these common principles must not hinder the maintenance by each group of its own different identity” (Murray, , We Hold These Truths: Catholic Reflections on the American Proposition [New York: Sheed and Ward, 1960], pp. x, 15–24).Google Scholar

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43 For this precise point, see Gleason, , “Pluralism and Assimilation,” pp. 230–32Google Scholar; for a more general treatment of the revival of democracy in World War II, see Gleason, Philip, “World War II and the Development of American Studies,” American Quarterly 36 (Bibliography issue, 1984): 343–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For Myrdal and the “American Creed,” see his An American Dilemma (New York: Harper and Row, 1944), 1:3, 25.Google Scholar

44 In this I differ from the editors of the American Quarterly's 1984 Bibliography issue, who said of my contribution that its implications might be “devastating” for students of American culture (p. 341).

45 Purcell, , Crisis of Democratic Theory, pp. 211–17, and chaps. 13–14Google Scholar. For an interesting one-page example of making democracy a “folkway or mode of behavior,” see Friedrich, C. J., “Comment: Democracy and Dissent,” Review of Politics 2 (07 1940): 379.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

46 See Silk, Mark, “Notes on the Judeo-Christian Tradition in America,” American Quarterly 36 (Spring 1984): 65–85, esp. 66–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Johnson, F. Ernest commented on the spiritualization of democracy in “Democracy and Discipline,” Christianity and Crisis 3 (13 12 1943): 1–2Google Scholar. Agar, Herbert et al. , The City of Man: A Declaration of World Democracy (New York: Viking Press, 1941)Google Scholar, is explicit in proposing a “universal religion of Democracy”; see esp. pp. 80–85. For a Catholic critique, see Parsons, Wilfrid, “Even to Contempt of God,” Commonweal 33 (24 01 1941): 352–54Google Scholar. Lewis Mumford, who was a signer of the “City of Man” statement, quoted an English correspondent on how democracy seemed, in the crisis of war, to be evolving toward a new kind of religion. See Mumford, Lewis to Brooks, Van Wyck, 14 09 1940Google Scholar, in Spiller, , Brooks-Mumford Letters, pp. 192–93.Google Scholar

47 Kallen, , “Democracy's True Religion.”Google Scholar

48 Ibid., pp. 6–7, 29.

49 Ibid., p. 7.

50 Ibid., pp. 7, 29.

51 Ibid., pp. 29–39.

52 Ibid.

53 Ibid., p. 30.

54 Ibid.

55 Kallen, , Secularism Is the Will of God (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1954)Google Scholar, and Kallen, , “Secularism as the Common Religion of a Free Society,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 4 (1965): 145–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

56 Williams, J. Paul, What Americans Believe and How They Worship (New York: Harper and Row, 1952), p. 371Google Scholar, and Williams, , “The Schoolmen and Religion,” School and Society 70 (13 08 1949): 97–100Google Scholar. Williams's 1952 book had later editions in 1962 and 1969. For earlier statements by Williams along the same line, see his “Religious Education, Ignored but Basic to National Weil-Being,” School and Society 57 (22 05 1943): 598–600Google Scholar, and his New Education and Religion, cited above in note 33. For Herberg's assertion, see his “The Sectarian Conflict over Church and State,” Commentary 14 (11 1952): 459.Google Scholar

57 See Thayer, V. T., Public Education and Its Critics (New York: Macmillan Co., 1954), pp. 65–69, 142–44, 159–60.Google Scholar

58 Mead, Sidney E., “Thomas Jefferson's ‘Fair Experiment’—Religious Freedom,” Religion in Life 23 (Autumn 1954): 566–79Google Scholar, as reprinted in Mead, , The Lively Experiment: The Shaping of Christianity in America (New York: Harper and Row, 1963), pp. 55–71, esp. 68–71Google Scholar. Lawrence H. Fuchs seems to take a similar position concerning the desirability of American civil religion; see his John F. Kennedy at the pages cited under the index heading, “Americanism, culture-religion of.”

59 In 1953 a prominent liberal-Catholic journalist, William P. Clancy, drew an explicit parallel between Catholic authoritarianism and doctrinaire secularism, and described them both as “the fruit of that totalitarian spirit which hating diversity, demands that all existence be made over to conform to its own vision.” See Catholicism in America, pp. 11–12.Google Scholar

60 For an early appreciation by a Protestant observer of the importance of Murray's work, see Williams, George H.'s contribution to “Issues Between Catholics and Protestants,” esp. pp. 176–86 (see note 24 for citation).Google Scholar