mayfly

Pope Benedict

Benedict XVI’s papal visit to the United States occasions some reflection on the history of attitudes within the Churches of Christ toward Catholicism. I have previous written about the anti-communist bent in the Stone-Campbell movement, particularly within the acappella Churches of Christ. Preachers like G. C. Brewer and educators like George S. Benson became vehement anti-communist campaigners and helped move the Church of Christ from a quiet anti-establishment sect with a not-of-this-world apocalyptic ethic toward a culturally integrated denomination which equated Americanism with Christian fidelity.

There are important parallels in the church’s historical attitudes toward Catholicism, even to the degree that Catholicism and Communism were treated as co-conspirators against God and his true church. I believe most modern adherents of the Church of Christ might be surprised to learn of the depth of the anti-Catholic sentiment in recent church history. This post will touch lightly on some of the anti-Catholic history in Churches of Christ. I will attempt to sprinkle mentions of some excellent resources for further reading.

Alexander Campbell’s early works rarely criticized the Catholic church directly. Although his youth had been spent in Northern Ireland and in Scotland, the Roman Catholic church was not a significant theme in his writing or in his preaching. There was some anti-Catholic sentiment implicit in his rhetoric, given his devotion to a primitivist ideal, but he spent more ink addressing the “little popes” of Protestant denominational hierarchy. Any primitivist movement must identify an ideal period which is to be restored and it must, correspondingly, identify “villains” of apostasy that led away from the pristine form of the church. The Stone-Campbell movement, at its heart a primitivist endeavor, typically identified the Roman Catholic church as the primary evidence of apostasy, the Bishop of Rome usually equated to the “Man of Lawlessness” of II Thessalonians 2.

Once Massachusetts became the last state to disestablish a designated state church in 1833, there was less credence given to his prior harpings against undue influence of denominational hierarchy in civil government. Campbell did however, become increasingly paranoid about a Catholic plot to infiltrate the United States and to subvert the democratic process such that the U.S. would become a pawn of Rome. For one example of the Campbell position, he wrote the following in his paper,The Millennial Harbinger, in 1833:

   “There is on the part of the Roman See a settled determination, accompanied with a lively expectation of success—a fixed purpose, from which ‘His Holiness’ is never to depart, to bring these United States into the bosom of the Catholic Church, and to add all America, North and South, to the territory of its dominions.”

Campbell’s views coincided with, and may have influenced, the rise of the Know-Nothing Movement (The American Republican Party was founded by 1843) in American politics. The Know-Nothings had a distinct anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant stance. Major Eastern urban centers had seen an influx of Catholic immigrant populations who were rapidly assimilated into Democrat machine politics . The increasing immigrant Catholic population and the electoral power of this demographic and societal change prompted strong recourse, especially in the American West.

Cincinnati’s Old Sycamore Meeting House

Site of the Campbell-Purcell Debates

In 1836, Campbell was invited to debate newly consecrated Bishop John Baptist Purcell in Cincinnati, the burgeoning capital of the Western frontier. The ensuing debate and fame forever changed Campbell’s view toward his reformation. Campbell became the champion for Protestantism and, in assuming that mantle, he moved away from his original millennial/primitivist tradition toward a steady union with mainstream Protestantism. While there would continue to be debate and division between Campbell and various Protestants, Campbell and his followers were more apt to pursue uneasy alliances with denominational structures rather than to confront them. It is too simplistic to attribute the whole of Campbell’s evolution to his anti-Catholic stance, but it is apparent that his “pole star” moved about this time from a goal of restoration of the primitive church to a grand ecumenical vision which would unite all Christians.
Purcell

Campbell

The twentieth century found a renewed anti-Catholic spirit in the Churches of Christ and this new form found common cause with the powerful anti-communist movement. G. C. Brewer was raised in the pacifist tradition of David Lipscomb and the Nashville Bible School. This tradition in the movement withdrew from society and cautioned against Christians serving in government, fighting in the military, or even voting for political office. The jingoistic fervor surrounding World War I and the “Red Scares” that followed moved Brewer toward an evangelistic style that conflated America with True Israel and with godliness. The communist threat to all that was good and decent became a common theme in his preaching and the numerous gospel meetings he held gave him ready platform to build a broad church consensus against the threat. His famous 1936 speech before an American Legion convention in Nashville made him a celebrity in many quarters for his promise of “his last drop of blood” in defense of America and its Christian heritage.

A young Grover Cleveland Brewer
By the late 1940s Brewer’s pattern began to include attacks on Roman Catholicism. There had long been a thread of anti-Catholic sentiment in the movement, witness the Campbell history above, but Brewer’s innovation was to link Catholicism and communism. By the early 1950s he was the pulipiteer for the Broadway Church of Christ in Lubbock, Texas. Broadway had become a large and influential congregation and had been the center of considerable foreign mission effort. Mingled with the evangelsitic efforts was an intention to preach and work against communism and Catholicism on foreign shores. Important personalities like Norvel Young and Bill Banowsky would follow Brewer as preachers at Broadway and they would keep some aspects of that tradition intact.

In 1953, Brewer joined with several influential Middle Tennessee church leaders and launched the journal, Voice of Freedom. Joining Brewer were B. C. Goodpasture, then editor of the Gospel Advocate, and Batsell Barrett Baxter, a Bible professor at David Lipscomb College and an influential minister and television personality. Among the early position statements for Voice of Freedom was the quest to counter those who “make people believe that Catholicism is the only antidote for Communism–that it is the only alternative. We do not believe this, but we believe that Catholicism is another form of totalitarianism and that our freedom would be lost if the Catholics gained power.”

A bizarre series of incidents occurred (related link here and here) in Italy in 1949-50 which had repercussions on Church of Christ rhetoric. While attempting to establish mission churches in Rome, a team of American missionaries was attacked by youths hurling rocks. On another occasion,their assembly was interrupted by police. The “rock fight” event, an impromptu small-scale skirmish which had more to do with Anti-American sentiment in the post-WWII ecomonic ravages of Italy than it did with anti-Protestant missions, nonetheless became a cause célèbre among Churches of Christ in the United States. Demonstrations in Houston and Dallas and appeals to the U. S. State Department garnered attention from then Senator Lyndon Johnson. In news accounts, the combatants were uniformly referred to as “Italian Catholics” and their religious affiliation was taken as sign of a grand Roman Catholic effort toward religious intolerance of outsiders in Italy.
The incident also became a wedge issue among the various splinter branches in the Churches of Christ. The very conservative anti-institutional churches saw the “rock fight” as a chance to criticize the collective mission efforts headed by the Broadway Church. (Read this editorial from the The Gospel Guardian in 1950, a reply letter, and an answer editorial.) Associated with this criticism was a spirit of diapproval of the growth and material wealth of the “worldly” Broadway church. Decrying the organized appeal to the U.S. Government, the “anti” churches became more strident in their criticism of the mainstream congregations. These writers were no less anti-Catholic than the mainstream Church of Christ,witness the typical topics in the publication annals, but they saw a chance to get a few shots in during the uproar.

G. C. Brewer would die in 1956, but his tradition of preaching against Catholics and Communists in the same breath was carried by many others, Goodpasture and Baxter among them. The 1960 United States Presidential election was the apogee of anti-Catholic sentiment among Churches of Christ. A vote for John F. Kennedy was argued to be a de facto vote for Roman Catholic control of the executive branch as it was assumed that Kennedy would be a pawn of John XXIII.  Churches of Christ were not alone in support for Nixon over Kennedy based on fears that JFK would receive his marching orders from the Vatican. Many evangelicals expressed the same concern, not least of whom was Billy Graham. In 1960 the National Association of Evangelicals passed a formal resolution favoring Nixon with that spirit in mind. Thomas F. Zimmerman, president of the NAE, issued a letter stating “If a Roman Catholic is elected president — what then? The Church of Rome will have a new great advantage, and the United States will no longer be recognized as a Protestant nation in the eyes of the world. Don’t you agree that it is time for the Protestants of America to stand up and be counted?”

Goodpasture

Baxter

In 1960, B. C. Goodpasture wrote in The Gospel Advocate regarding the potential election of Kennedy that “those who think no danger to our religious freedom is involved are evidently not acquainted with history. They do know about the fires of Smithfield, the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition, the bloody Massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Day and the frightful slaughter of the Waldenses and Albigenses.”

Not be outdone in this line of rhetoric, Texas evangelist Reuel Lemmons wrote that Kennedy could not be both Catholic and devoted to democracy. “One cannot be loyal to both, regardless of how he may try.”Lemmons wrote in Firm Foundation. Lemmons went on to renew the argument that Catholicism and Communism were twin forces, “Structurally the two are identical. Philosophically they are identical. Militantly they are identical. Their aim at world dominion is identical.”

In October 1960, just before the election, Chet Huntley and NBC News traveled to Nashville where they filmed Batsell Barrett Baxter delivering a powerful anti-Catholic, anti-Kennedy sermon from the tony Hillsboro Church of Christ pulpit. “If the Roman Catholic Church should ever become large enough and strong enough to dominate the United States of America, the rest of us would lose our religious freedom”, further urging his congregation (and the national television audience) to “oppose the growth and spread of the Roman Catholic Church in every legitimate and honorable way.” One of the members of the congregation was long-timeU. S. Congressman Joe Evins who begged for a chance to speak. Evins carefully asked for less bombast and more tolerance, pointedly criticizing Baxter that the church had come to worship but had instead experienced a political rally. The congregation, however, overwhelmingly sided with Baxter. Goodpasture, an elder at the church, later applauded Baxter’s correction of “Romish error” and described Congressman Evins’ plea as “most ill-advised and unfortunate”.

An additional event involving members of the Church of Christ in that election season caught national attention. V. E. Howard, a Church of Christ broadcaster and publisher, confronted Kennedy at a meeting of the Houston Ministerial Association in September 1960. Howard read passages from The Catholic Encyclopedia and pointedly queried Kennedy whether he affirmed or denied his belief in various points. Key for Howard was the “doctrine of mental reservation” in regard to ultimate obeisance to the pope’s authority. Kennedy’s answer was rather direct, but he admitted that he had not read the full context of those passages, adding that he could make a better comment if he had the full passage before him. Howard (and later many others) related this exchange as an example of Kennedy’s evasion of the issue.

Anti-Catholic sentiment has faded from much of the public discourse among Churches of Christ. I do come across isolated statements from time to time,but I have not seen a published work that carries any significant anti-Catholic viewpoint.

In a spirit of some small apology for the history of my chosen religious heritage, I will include a quotation from early church pioneer Barton W. Stone, a peaceful man who generally avoided public controversy. Stone was much more interested in the renovation of the individual heart as a means of church renewal than he was in grand, sweeping, institutional church reform. In that spirit, see how Stone addressed the question of how to “combat” Catholicism:
Barton W. Stone, 1826 Christian Messenger

    We must be fully persuaded, that all uninspired men are fallible, and therefore liable to err. I think that Luther, in a coarse manner, said that every man was born with a Pope in his belly. By which I suppose he meant, that every man deemed himself infallible. Our pride abhors the idea of being accounted weak. To give up an opinion, a sentiment or doctrine, and to receive different one, has been long reckoned a certain evidence of weakness. The public has strangely affixed this stigma on the man, who dares change his opinion. If the various reformers, in the different periods of the world, had been influenced by this principle, what would have been the consequences?

If the present generation remain under the influence of the same principle, the consequences must be, that the spirit of free enquiry will die–our liberty lie prostrated at the feet of ecclesiastical demagogues–every sect must remain as it is–their various and contradictory notions must continue, and strife and division remain, in opposition to the will of God, and to the disgrace of Christianity.

To approach the Bible, with a desire and determination to learn and practise the truth there revealed, in despite of all opposition, requires a greater degree of fortitude and self-denial than is generally possessed by professors of religion in the present day. To be stigmatized as weak–to be accounted as fools, when we take the best method to become wise–to lose the smiles, approbation and friendship of the circle, in which we have long moved with great pleasure–to incur the frowns of our dearest relatives and friends, the sore displeasure of the sect of Christians, with which we may be united–these are not light things; but these must be expected by the man that dares change his opinions, from a scriptural conviction that they are wrong.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 17th, 2008 at 12:52 pm and is filed under history, religion, Church, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.