The Case for Christian Nationalism
10. The Foundation of American Freedom | IV. Conclusion
Previously:
The notion that the United States is, or has previously been, a “Christian nation” is a longstanding belief in American Evangelicalism, and has much truth to it. The overwhelming majority of Americans during the Revolutionary era identified as Protestant Christians and, even today, slightly over half self-identify as Christian (though that does not mean what it used to). Be that as it may, the rose-tinted view of a bygone age of a great, peaceful, Protestant America is nostalgic at best, and downright historically illiterate at worst.
Anti-Catholicism reached its pinnacle in New England in the 1850s, with the rise of the Know Nothing party, which swept the 1854 elections for the Massachusetts legislature on their promise to defend Protestantism against the rise of Catholicism in the Commonwealth and beyond. Known for their belligerent behavior towards all who opposed them, the Massachusetts Know Nothings committed one of their more notorious actions the following year. After passing a bill allowing a select committee to inspect all manner of Catholic institutions (on the premise that they were secret dens of evil), a committee of seven, plus an unofficial thirteen more, trounced through Holy Cross college in Worchester, harassing students and nuns while they turned the building over, looking for evidence of debauchery and vice. Though they found nothing, the group afterwards threw themselves a party, complete with a prostitute for entertainment, and charged the entire affair to the state.1
Around the nation, at that time, mob violence against Catholics was still not an uncommon occurrence, and was not limited to attacks on church infrastructure. Michael Williams describes how a Papal nuncio, who was making a tour of the United States before heading to his post in South America, was received in Cincinnati, Ohio:
On Christmas Day, 1853, an attempt was made on the life of [Archbishop] Bedini by a mob six hundred strong who marched upon the Bishop Purcell residence where he was staying, ‘armed with clubs, swords, knives, and pistols and carrying torches with which they meant to set fire to the cathedral and ropes with which they intended to hang the Nuncio.’ The police, having been apprised of the criminal purpose of the demonstration, rushed upon the mob, and arrested some fifty of the rioters. A number of shots were fired and numerous persons wounded.2
After the quick national demise of the Know Nothings in the mid-1850s, anti-Catholicism retreated to its previous residence in various nativist “Protestant associations”, but it would see a sharp resurgence in the early-20th century, particularly in the South and Midwest; by the 1920s anti-Catholic activism was led by the Ku Klux Klan, most active in those regions. The sparse remaining records of the second era of that secretive organization show that not only were Protestant ministers active participants, but they were often high-ranking leaders. From one of the few surviving Klan membership lists, it is known that the rolls of Klan No. 108 of Monticello, Arkansas, contained thirteen Protestant ministers, and its Exalted Cyclops was the pastor of the town’s Methodist Church.3 The first imperial commander of the Women of the Ku Klux Klan, Lula Markwell, was previously president and treasurer of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union in Arkansas for twenty years.4 Otis Spurgeon, who made a name for himself nationwide as a particularly vitriolic anti-Catholic lecturer and debater - he was once driven outside of Denver, beaten, and left naked by members of the Knights of Columbus after a speech - was pastor of First Baptist Church in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, until he resigned to be the Exalted Cyclops of Missouri Klan No. 48.5
In 1928, when Catholic Democrat Al Smith ran for president, the Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution against voting Catholics into public office.6 The Missionary Baptist Association in Arkansas adopted a more strongly worded resolution, which stated, “We recommend that the members of the Churches of this Association, the pastors and the missionaries use their utmost influence as citizens against the political encroachments of the Papacy… And in order to preserve our religious and civil liberties let us preach, pray, teach and work against our common enemy at all times and places.”7 From behind the pulpit, many pastors attacked Smith for his religion, including head of the Anti-Smith Democrats, Bishop James Cannon, Jr. of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and avowed Klan member Reverend C.C. Crawford of Fourth Christian Church in St. Louis. Reverend Dr. M.F. Ham, pastor of First Baptist Church of Oklahoma City, said from behind the pulpit, “If you vote for Al Smith you’re voting against Christ and you’ll all be damned.” On August 30, 1928, the Western Recorder, published by the Baptist State Board of Missions for Kentucky, reprinted an article from the Arkansas Baptist State Convention’s fiercely anti-Catholic paper, the Baptist Advance, entitled A Roman Catholic Throne in the White House. Earlier that year, the Baptist Advance ran an article from Dr. Selsus Estol Tull, pastor of First Baptist Church of Pine Bluff, Arkansas, in which he wrote, “It is impossible for Catholicism to synchronize with American ideals. Every Catholic owes his first allegiance to the Pope. He therefore can not become a true American.”8
During the presidential election of 1960, when Democrats successfully ran Catholic John F. Kennedy, the SBC again passed a resolution against voting for Catholics. W.O. Vaught Jr., then Vice President of the SBC, and later Bill Clinton’s pastor while he was Governor of Arkansas, officially opposed Kennedy from behind the pulpit, declaring Catholicism and communism to be the two most deadly threats to freedom in the world.9
There has never been a time in the four century history of America where a state church was established and religious minorities were treated equitably by the majority. Even after the states revoked, or effectively ignored, their established religions, fervent anti-Catholic animosity remained a strong force in the nation. At its height in the 1920s, the Klan had five million members, nearly one out of every ten adult American men.10 We are the same fallen people they were. Should a group of Christians, led by a call to violently “drive away the open mockery of God and to claim what is [theirs] in Christ” and “unashamedly and confidently assert Christian supremacy over the land,”11 actually achieve their goals, it is difficult to believe that those who do not adhere to the tenets of Christianity, or even to official national doctrine, would be treated with the full dignity that should be afforded all human beings, made in the image of God.
Next:
Ray Allen Billington, The Protestant Crusade,1800-1860, First Paperback (Chicago, Illinois: Quadrangle Books, 1964), 441-415.
Michael Williams, Shadow of the Pope (New York: Whittlesey House, McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1932), 82-83.
Kenneth C. Barnes, Anti-Catholicism in Arkansas: How Politicians, the Press, the Klan, and Religious Leaders Imagined an Enemy, 1910-1960 (Fayetteville: The University of Arkansas Press, 2016), 94.
Ibid., 123.
Ibid., 50, 171.
Ibid., 141; Michael Williams, 195.
Kenneth C. Barnes, 166.
Michael Williams, 193-194, 196-197, 200, 208; Kenneth C. Barnes, 140.
Kenneth C. Barnes, 181, 182.
US Census Bureau, “1920 Census: Volume 3. Population, Composition and Characteristics of the Population by States,” Census.gov, 1920, https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1922/dec/vol-03-population.html.
Stephen Wolfe, The Case for Christian Nationalism (Moscow, Idaho: Canon Press, 2022), 241, 352.